Gentle reminder that very little fandom labor is automated, because I think people forget that a lot.
That blog with a tagging system you love? A person curates those tags by hand.
That rec blog with a great organization scheme and pretty graphics? Someone designed and implemented that organization scheme and made those graphics.
That network that posts a cool variety of stuff? People track down all that variety and queue it by hand, and other people made all the individual pieces.
That post with umpteen links to helpful resources, and information about them? Someone gathered those links, researched the sources, wrote up the information about them.
That graphic about fandom statistics? Someone compiled those statistics, analyzed them, organized them, figured out a useful way to convey the information to others, and made the post.
That event that you think looks neat? Someone wrote the rules, created the blogs and Discords, designed the graphics, did their best to promo the event so it'd succeed.
None of this was done automatically. None of it just appears whole out of the internet ether.
I think everyone realizes that fic writing and fanart creation are work, and at least some folks have got it through their heads that gif creation and graphics and moodboards take effort, and meta is usually respected for the effort that goes into it, at least as far as I've seen, but I feel like a lot of people don't really get how much labor goes into curation, too.
If people are creating resources, curating content, organizing the creations of others, gathering information, and doing other fandom activities that aren't necessarily the direct action of creation, they're doing a lot of fandom labor, and it's often largely unrecognized.
Celebrate fan work!
To folks doing this kind of labor: I see you, and I thank you. You are the backbones of our fandoms and I love you.
been meaning to redraw that Lynn Buckham's painting as Mulder and Scully for a while, so here it is! the original painting + close-ups are under the cut
featuring my favorite character, Scully's lavender skirt suit
also if you're wondering whether the watermark on my art gets bigger every time: yes it does indeed. I need to add it to the places where it can't be easily removed because I'm very tired of that happening specifically to my x files art
Smutty fic prompt? Established MSR. Mulder and Scully are on a case, Mulder is being serious, Scully is amused but not convinced - and just wants to stay at the hotel and have sex for the week because the case is a total waste of time. Mulder telling her everything he wants to do to her but ultimately rebuffs all advances, and it’s all fun and games because Scully thinks he’d rather chase monsters than put his money where his mouth is. Anyway — he ends up being a man of his word which takes her by surprise
I think this fills your prompt, anon.
9000 words; M/E for sexual situations including pegging; good little agents don't consort while on assignment, but they really, really want to. (ao3 link)
“You’re serious.” She fixed him with a level gaze over the roof of the rental car.
“I’m always serious,” he said, and they both ignored the inherent fallacies in that statement. “Are you serious? You thought I brought you up here to play house?”
“What else was I supposed to think?” She gestured at the forest around them and the quaint bed and breakfast standing in the clearing. “That you brought me up to an adorable B&B on the wooded shores of Lake Champlain for a week to hunt another sea monster no one’s ever actually seen?”
“There have been over 300 eyewitness reports of a snake-like creature in the lake, dating back to the Iroquois,” Mulder told her. “That doesn’t even include the latest series of reports. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to investigate it.”
“First of all,” she said, “your last lake monster ate my dog.”
“It wasn’t my lake monster,” he muttered.
“Second of all,” she said, fixing him with a steely eye, “last time you took me on a trip that was so obviously a wild goose chase, we hadn’t yet escalated our relationship. So yes, Fox, I thought you brought me here to play house.”
He raised an eyebrow. “We’re back to Fox?”
“I think I’ve earned the right to use your first name now and again.” She smirked. “After all, I’ve been inside you.”
To her surprise, he blushed.
“How many rooms did you get?”
She heard his feet shuffle. He wouldn’t look at her. “Two.”
She sighed. “Lake monster.”
“Lake monster that’s been frightening tourists,” he said. He came around the car and stood a little too close to her, the way he always did. “The tourism bureau asked around. Someone told them we were the people to solve their problem.”
She leaned against the car and tipped her head back to look at him. “Two rooms.”
“Come on, Scully,” he said in a low voice that made her tingle. “You know the people in finance already share our expense reports around. I want to win the betting pool.”
“And what will you do with your thousands?” she teased.
He shifted even closer. She felt her lips part in anticipation as he leaned down, but he skimmed past her mouth to whisper in her ear: “Take you on a real vacation.”
She reached out past the loose lapels of his suit jacket and hooked her finger into the waist of his trousers. “You better.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He stepped back, taking her with him like they were dancing. They’d always been dancing, she thought. Two steps forward, three steps back, but rarely entirely out of sync. He reached behind him to pop the trunk and pulled out her suitcase, pretending to strain against the weight of it. “Maybe you won’t need this many clothes for our vacation.”
“Hmm,” she said, “maybe I’ll bring something less bulky than a suit.”
“You could wear one of those little t-shirts,” he suggested. “Some cutoff jean shorts.” He paused, clearly caught up in an intriguing possibility. “You could wear my boxers.”
She smiled at him. “Maybe even something more abbreviated than that.”
He dropped his voice even more. “Scully, are you holding out on me? Do you own lingerie I haven’t seen?”
She leaned into him, slipping her fingers further into his trousers to graze the elastic of his boxers under his shirttail. “I guess you’re not gonna find out this week.”
He groaned.
She gave her fingers one last wiggle and extracted them from his waistband. He heaved his own suitcase out of the trunk and closed it. They trundled their luggage along the brick path and up the stairs. She looked at him one last time as they stood on the porch in front of the lobby windows.
“Two rooms?”
“Don’t worry, Scully,” he murmured. “I’m sure I’ll be able to hear you through the wall.”
Heat flooded her body as he opened the door and ushered her in with one hand at the small of her back. This time, she didn’t mind that he’d gotten the last word.
+ + +
When they were checked in and settled, she went to his room and sat on the bed. All the furniture in the place seemed to be charmingly mismatched antiques. Mulder’s bed had four posters and it creaked picturesquely when she shifted her weight. “Tell me about our suspect.”
“Champ?”
She sighed and rubbed her hand over her face. “Of course it’s called Champ.”
“We’re dealing with a protected species here, Scully.” Mulder leaned against his dresser. He’d taken off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “The lake was declared a safe haven for its resident monster in 1981. In 1984, 58 different people claim to have seen Champ. Early reports declared it to resemble an enormous serpent with the head of a sea horse, a white star on its forehead, and a band of red around its extremely long neck.” He stepped forward to pass her a fuzzy copy of a photograph. She studied it. “This is the Mansi photograph. No one’s ever been able to debunk it, but Sandra Mansi destroyed the negative, so nobody’s ever been able to authenticate it either.”
“Naturally.” She got up and went to the window. The lake was visible as a blue glint through the trees. “And what crimes has Champ perpetrated?”
“Overturning small watercraft, biting fish off people’s lines, that kind of thing.” He joined her at the window. “No human casualties.”
She let her shoulder brush his chest. “So what are we doing here? It doesn’t sound like there’s anything for us to investigate. If anything, this level of activity would draw in tourists and benefit businesses like this one. The loss of a fish here and there seems negligible.”
“No human casualties yet,” he said, “but there have been reports of people feeling something large brush against them in an area where there was no underwater debris.”
“Are there fish in the lake?”
“Big ones,” he said. “Sturgeon and gar, for starters.”
She gestured. “Ta da. There’s your suspect.”
“Neither sturgeon nor gar are capable of disappearing multiple swimmers and boaters.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “You never lead with the most pertinent information.”
“Impertinence is my middle name.” His eyes twinkled as he grinned at her.
“I think I read that in your file.” She turned to face him. “So what are we supposed to do about it?”
“We do what we do. Dredge the truth up from the depths.”
She looked longingly at the bed. “Wouldn’t local law enforcement be better at this? We know nothing about the area.”
“Local law enforcement hasn’t turned up anything.” He sat on the bed and took her hands, drawing her close to stand between his knees. “Help them, Scully-Wan Kenobi. You’re their only hope.”
She softened, gazing down at him. By default, they’d become two of the foremost experts in American cryptozoology, and their solve rate on missing persons cases was the envy of the Bureau. Maybe it was Mulder’s intuition; maybe it was her eye for detail. She couldn’t deny that their expertise was unparalleled in cases like this, paranormal or not. “I want a nice vacation after this.”
“I promise.” He raised her hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles.
“And not to Loch Ness.”
He laughed, soft and low. “I promise that too.” He looked up at her and his eyes were like a forest fire. The blaze in them kindled an answering flame in her belly. “I’ll make it up to you.”
She pouted a little. “How?”
“Very, very slowly.” He licked his lips, making his meaning clear. Scully squirmed and he pressed his knees into her hips, pinning her there.
“Did we ever decide if we can consort during a case?”
“Go against the regulations?” He turned her hands over and rubbed his cheek with its incipient stubble over the soft skin of her wrist. “Why, Agent Scully, it’s like you don’t even know me.”
She curled her fingers around his jaw and ran her thumb over his lips. “And if we solve this thing tomorrow?”
He lifted one shoulder. “Then I guess I’m buying plane tickets and you’re buying lingerie.”
“This B&B could be haunted,” she suggested. “Then we’d have to stay and investigate.”
He squinted up at her fondly. “Why didn’t I know you were susceptible to the charms of creaky floors, Scully?”
“Maybe you don’t know me very well.” She tilted her head, challenging him to challenge the patent absurdity of the statement.
“Then I’d like to know you better,” he said in a voice like velvet. Damn him, he always understood exactly how to disarm her.
“Not until we solve this,” she scolded him, and stepped away. “I’m going to freshen up.”
“Hey, Scully?” he said from the bed.
“Hmm?” She turned in the doorway to face him.
“How big a box of condoms do you think the drugstore will sell me?”
She thought for a moment. “I don’t know, but buy two.”
She heard him exhale in a rush as she slipped out the door.
+ + +
As it turned out, they shared a bathroom. She’d been too distracted to think about the geography of it when she’d glimpsed the door in his room. The B&B was an old house with a lot of additions. She doubted there was a true angle in the place. But it was charming. There was a clawfoot bathtub that she was definitely going to get better acquainted with.
She freshened up and changed into her small-town uniform of jeans and a windbreaker. People in places like this often distrusted suits. She’d learned over the years that she needed all the credibility she could get. For some reason, showing up armed with federal credentials and factoids about cryptids didn’t garner much respect.
Mulder was also wearing jeans when she found him downstairs. Scully was suddenly glad he’d cut his hair. If he’d been looking like that with his hair falling over his forehead, she would have dragged him straight back upstairs, and let anyone missing stay missing. His ass, hugged by denim, was a more compelling force than anything previously discovered in her known universe.
Instead, she took the file folder he offered here and spent the drive to the local police station reviewing the details. Behind a thick stack of garbled reports of enormous, half-visible underwater shadows and unexpected friction, she found the reports. Most of the people who’d gone missing had been found a few hours or a day later, including a group of teens who’d been stranded when their boat ran out of gas. Fortunately, they’d been in shouting distance of Burton Island State Park, and someone had spotted them the next morning. There was the occasional death by drowning, but the bodies turned up with marks of predation that didn’t indicate anything bigger than fish. Frankly, Scully didn’t know why most of them were included. A nine-year-old who’d wandered away in search of ice cream and been rediscovered sleeping in his parents’ car didn’t deserve a missing persons report. But it was a small town. Maybe local PD didn’t have much else to do.
There were two people who had disappeared the previous week and hadn’t been found. Both women in their thirties. A place like this would need seasonal workers, but when Scully checked their addresses, they were both townies. Grown and raised here, graduates of the local high school (go Panthers). One worked in an antique shop (of course). One managed an ice cream parlor and its attendant roster of high school employees.
“Just these two actually missing persons?” she asked.
Mulder drummed on the steering wheel. “So far.”
“Mmhmm,” she said. “And you’re sure this isn’t a joke case? Something you dreamed up so we could dillydally on someone else’s dime?”
“This is a legitimate investigation,” he assured her. “Cassy Miller and Naomi Diaz are gone. No one’s seen or heard from them. They were fishing buddies. Their boat was found washed up on shore halfway across the lake with all their tackle in it.”
“I take it this was uncharacteristic behavior.”
He nodded as he flipped on the turn signal. “Neither of them’s missed a day of work in years without a doctor’s note. Never late. Reliable as the sunrise.”
She examined Naomi’s photo. A young-looking thirty-something with dark wavy hair. She was smiling in the photo, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “And now…what, devoured by a mythical creature?”
“It’s a possibility,” Mulder said. “However extreme. The boat wasn’t far from one of the areas where frequent sightings have occurred.”
Scully flipped the page and re-read the sparse details of Naomi’s life. “Allegedly.”
He dipped his head in acknowledgment. It was a familiar push and pull between them. No case would have felt complete without it.
They reached the edges of the town, and then, very quickly, the center. The police station was easy to find. When they walked in, Scully knew jeans had been the right choice. It wasn’t the kind of place a suit would garner any kind of respect.
“Gosh, we will be glad of the help,” said the police chief. Her name tag said Hughes. She seemed earnest enough. “We do stay busy around here during tourist season. Not just people going missing, but petty theft, the occasional fire, all that. A lotta DUIs, if I’m honest.”
“And you’re…experts?” Chief Hughes’ second-in-command was standing in the corner of the room, thumbs hooked into his pockets. “In…Champ?”
“We’ve done extensive work in cryptozoology,” Scully said coolly. “Champ, as you call it, is just one example of a larger clade of hypothetical marine reptiles. If these women were consumed by such a creature, we would be able to verify that predation occurred. If there are other, less fantastic explanations, we’ll find those.” She glanced at Mulder, who was lounging in his chair. “Isn’t that right, Agent Mulder.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth, Agent Scully.” He smiled at the police chief, who blinked back at him, her mouth open just slightly.
He was such a little shit sometimes.
+ + +
They spent the day on the lake. It might have been romantic, if it hadn’t been for the trio of deputies assigned to them. They kept looking at Mulder and Scully, nervous or envious or skeptical or some combination of all three. She was used to it. Big city feds in their sunglasses and windbreakers inspired a variety of interesting feelings in their less cosmopolitan counterparts. She’d seen it all.
“Bet I could bully them into letting me drive the boat,” Mulder whispered to Scully, leaning in so the deputies couldn’t hear them.
“You’d have to dump me in the lake first,” she whispered back.
“And let you get eaten by Champ?” His eyebrows crimped together under his sunglasses in an exaggerated expression of woe. “Scully. I would never.”
“I would,” she told him.
“I accept my fate.” He sat back, stretched his arms along the side of the boat.
The deputies showed them where the boat had been found, the boat, the intact tackle. Scully examined it all dutifully. Mulder examined it less dutifully, gazing out over the water. He had one hand on his hip, the other shading his already shaded eyes. He looked like a statue.
“Does he see something?” one of the deputies asked Scully. Her voice was hushed, almost worshipful.
“I’m sure if he does, he’ll let you know,” Scully told her.
The purported victims’ boat having yielded nothing, the deputies herded their federal charges back onto their own departmental boat. Scully peered into the depths, Mulder’s hand braced on her back. No serpents emerged. There wasn’t so much as the silver flicker of a fish, although that was telling, in its own way. But they’d disturbed the waters with the wake of their boat, coming and going. The fish had fled the limnetic zone because of the noise of the motor, not because of some primordial beast.
Still, it was nice: the sunshine on the water, the convivial throng of tourists on the beaches. She and Mulder talked to the assistant manager at Cassy’s ice cream parlor, a young man clearly flummoxed by his brevet promotion.
“I don’t know,” he said, bewildered. “She’s great. Runs this place - ran this place - really well. I mean it’s hard to deal with a bunch of kids sometimes, right? But she started working here when she was a kid and just never stopped. I don’t know. I don’t know.” He put his face in his hands. Scully patted him on the shoulder, a little gingerly.
Afterward, they got ice cream: strawberry for Scully, butter pecan for Mulder. They carried their windbreakers folded inside out over their arms to hide their credentials. They might have been anyone. They walked along the lake shore and he smiled down at her and they could have been an ordinary couple. The sunshine gleamed on his skin and brought out gold flecks in the green of his eyes. She couldn’t stop looking at his mouth.
“What?” He licked his lips exaggeratedly. “Ice cream?”
She shook her head.
“Then what?”
She squinted up at him. “You’re just really pretty sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
She smiled. “Sometimes.”
“Well, you’re really pretty all the time.” He bumped her with his arm. “And that’s my professional opinion, by the way. I’ve been working on your profile a long time. I don’t want to brag, but I’m known for my powers of observation.”
“That’s not what profiling is,” she said sternly.
He tilted his head at her. “Sometimes.”
She huffed: not a laugh, not a sigh, but happy. “Sometimes.”
+ + +
They got dinner at a little restaurant. The fish was fresh, the coleslaw was crisp, and the fries were hot. There was homemade pie on the menu and Scully indulged in that too. If she couldn’t have Mulder, she was going to treat herself in other ways. It had cooled off by the time they finished dinner. Scully shrugged her windbreaker on. On the drive back to the B&B, they rolled down the windows of the rental car.
“This is summer,” Mulder said with satisfaction. “T-shirts in the afternoon, sweaters in the evening.”
“Not like DC,” Scully said. She put her arm out the window and spread her fingers to feel the breeze push through them.
“Not like DC,” Mulder agreed. “Unless you like being wrapped in a wet wool blanket.”
Scully let her head loll over on the headrest, gazing at him. “I can think of other things I’d rather be wrapped in.”
Mulder flicked his eyes at her. “Or maybe you’d rather be unwrapped?”
“Maybe I would.” She tipped her hand so the breeze washed over it. “But someone put a note on me that says ‘Do not open until Christmas’.”
“Not until Christmas, Scully,” he said, amusement in his voice. “Just until we’ve wrapped the case.”
“Wrapping begets unwrapping. I see.”
“A little motivation for us,” he suggested.
“You know, I always thought that I’d be the one who insisted we separate work and play,” Scully mused.
He chuckled. “I did too. Turns out you’re not the good girl you play on tv, Agent Scully.”
She wished that didn’t send a little thrill through her. “Aren’t you glad I’m not?”
“Desperately,” he said, with a raspy edge to his voice that sent another frisson up her spine. He pulled into the little lot of the B&B and turned the car off, then slung his arm over the steering wheel and turned to her. “Don’t think I wouldn’t unwrap you right now, Scully.”
“Haven’t we paid enough cleaning fees to the rental agency?” she said, leaning toward him just a little. Mulder’s event horizon extended too far - she’d been pulled in unexpectedly so many times.
“Not for this.” His voice strummed a chord inside her. “Variety is the spice of life, Scully.”
“Uh huh.” She tipped her chin up. “And what would you do with me, if you unwrapped me in this rental car?”
“Obviously, I’d start with kissing,” Mulder told her. “I’m a gentleman. I’d never jump right in unless you asked for it.”
“Mmhmm,” Scully said.
“Oh, sorry, I misspoke,” Mulder said. His eyes glinted. “I meant I wouldn’t jump right in unless you begged for it.”
Scully licked her lips. “And under what circumstances do you think I’d beg for it?”
“If I kissed your neck for long enough, you might,” he said. She was staring at his mouth, half-hypnotized. “That spot behind your ear. If I put you on my lap and played with your tits and you could feel how much I wanted you.”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I’ve always considered myself to be a stubborn person. I don’t think that would do it.”
“Maybe if I stretched you out in the backseat. Braced myself over you. Stroked my way up the inside of your thigh,” he suggested. “Never quite touching exactly where you wanted. I’d use my hands, my leg. Maybe my lips. Just teasing until you can’t stand it any longer.”
“Mulder.”
“Yeah?”
“Is that what you were doing for the past seven years?”
“Metaphorically,” he said, twinkling at her. His eyes were dark. “Are you ready to beg?”
She leaned forward, her lips nearly touching his. “Good night, Mulder.” She climbed out of the car and left him in the dark surrounded by the song of crickets.
+ + +
Later, in bed by herself, she touched herself just like he’d imagined, drawing her fingertips up the soft skin to brush her curls over and over until she was shivering with need. She didn’t stifle her cries. When she finally dragged her thumb over her clit, she said his name. She thought she heard a groan from the other side of the wall.
She was glad it was a small B&B. That meant fewer eavesdroppers. The other guests all seemed to be adults, at least. Maybe their vacations would be improved by this kind of soundtrack. It was her turn to be the one gasping in her tangled covers, even if she was doing it alone.
+ + +
The next day, she fell in the lake.
They’d borrowed the boat and the deputies again. Mulder was studying a map of the lake. It was all marked up with places of particular interest. Maybe that’s what he’d been doing while she was raking just the edges of her nails up the crease of her thigh.
“Right down there,” he said, peering over the gunwale. “There’s a deep spot. Maybe that’s where its den is.”
“Its den?” Scully said, joining him. “Doesn’t it have to breathe? Or is that part of the myth?”
“There could be pockets of air underwater,” Mulder said. “An intricate system of caves. Or maybe it can hold its breath.” He turned to look at her. Scully glanced over his shoulder. The deputies were watching them breathlessly. “Some whales can hold their breath for hours. Maybe Champ can too.”
“Maybe something cold-blooded needs less oxygen,” she said. “It might have a slower metabolism. And the red band around its neck - that could be a primitive system of gills. That could allow it to stay underwater, even in the benthic zone.”
“I love it when you come out to play,” he murmured, just quiet enough that the deputies couldn’t hear.
She opened her mouth to reply to him and then the boat rocked on a huge swell of water and she went over the gunwale before she could reach for the railing.
“Scully!” Mulder shouted, and grabbed for her, but she was past the point of no return and his grip on her ankle just meant she banged her side hard on the boat as she splashed into the water. It was cold in the lake. She was soaked instantly, water pouring into her shoes and down her collar. The current swirled, tugging at her, pulling at her until she couldn’t tell which way was up. Scully opened her eyes. She was deeper than she’d thought. The darkness under her rippled. She kicked toward the surface. Mulder was reaching toward her almost as soon as her head broke the water. He and one of the deputies hauled her into the boat while the other two braced themselves against the other gunwale.
“Are you okay?” he asked. A deputy passed him a towel and he blotted her face gently with it.
She spit out a bit of lake water and took the towel from him to squeeze water out of her hair. “I lost my sunglasses.”
“Tragic.” He took off his own and settled them on her nose. They were too big and slipped down, but she loved him for it all the same. She patted her pockets. She still had her badge and her wet brick of a phone and her wallet. Fortunately, Mulder had the keys to the rental car.
“Agent Mulder?” said one of the deputies. “What made the boat tip?”
“Heavy wake from another boat,” Scully said automatically. “A gust of wind that created an abnormally large wave. Unregistered seismic activity.”
“Or a lake monster,” Mulder said, still looking her over. Seemingly satisfied with what he found, he turned to the deputies. “What did you see?”
“Nothing,” said one.
“Not a boat big enough to pull that kind of wake,” said another. “You’d need a ferry.”
The last one shuffled her feet. “A shadow,” she said at last. “I think. Maybe nothing.”
Scully coughed. Mulder rubbed her back. He was pressed against her side. Her wet clothes were soaking him, but he didn’t move away. “Sorry to say, Deputy, you’re going to spend a lot of time investigating shadows if you stick with this job.”
The deputy’s brow was furrowed. “Do you think that’s what happened to Cassy and Naomi? A wave? But they could swim. Everyone here can swim.”
“All their gear was still in the boat,” Mulder pointed out. “They fell out and the tackle box didn’t?”
“I guess not.” The deputy looked troubled. “The lake’s too deep to dredge and too big to dive.”
“Then all we can do is our best,” Scully said. She shivered. The sunshine was bright, but the breeze ruffling the water kept it from warming her.
“Let’s get you somewhere where you can dry off,” Mulder said, and the deputies took the hint and powered up the engine.
+ + +
Scully ran a very hot bath in the clawfoot tub. Her clothes had dried a little in transit - they were definitely going to get a cleaning fee for the rental car, and not for any entertaining reasons - but she was still too wet and too cold to be comfortable. She peeled off her clothes and hung them on the towel bar with her damp towel from the boat underneath to catch drips. It was a relief to climb into the steaming foamy bath. She sighed, her whole body relaxing into the warmth as she tipped her head back to rinse her hair.
When she thought of the lake, she got fragments of memory. The breathless moment going overboard. The splash. The cold. The dark. It had only been an hour or two and yet it slipped away from her. She was glad she’d given a report before they’d come back to the B&B. Had there been something looming below her in the darkness? Even in the moment, she hadn’t been sure. Had she been brushed by a tangle of floating weeds? Had the water been agitated by cross-currents from boats speeding over the busy lake?
Had a monster tipped her into the water, or was it a silly mistake on a slippery deck?
She sighed again, sinking into the water up to her chin. For a while she drifted, eyes closed. The window was open for a crossbreeze and the smell of lake and pine mingled dreamily with the lavender scent of the bubble bath. She lay there, imagining the life of a prehistoric creature trapped in the modern world. If there were a monster, what had it seen? How much did it understand about the changes in its habitat? Did it long for the past? Had it eaten Cassy Miller and Naomi Diaz? Had there been other victims?
The adjoining door creaked open. Mulder walked in and knelt by the tub, pillowing his arms on the side.
She opened one eye. “I thought we weren’t consorting while on assignment.”
“We’re not consorting.” He brushed a wet strand of hair off her forehead and resettled his chin on his arms. “We’re conferring.”
She made a skeptical noise. “How collegial of us.” Most of the bubbles had popped, and what remained didn’t provide much modesty. They’d had less-clothed conversations about work, but not many.
“What happened at the lake?” she asked.
“You tell me.” He gazed at her. “You were the one in the drink.”
She pushed herself up a little in the tub so they were face to face. His eyes dropped predictably to her breasts and dragged back up to her face. “A larger-than-average wave rocked the boat. I fell in. There was some kind of current that pulled me further under than would usually result from a fall of such a short distance. I can’t speak to its origin. During my brief time under the water, I thought I saw movement below me, but it could have been anything, Mulder. A shadow. A log.”
“An ancient reptile.” The sun had shifted and the bathroom was draped in shade. What light there was reflected patchily off the bathwater to dapple Mulder’s face. She wondered if there had been a time in her life when she hadn’t known how beautiful he was. She couldn’t remember that either. Her life before Mulder felt somehow insignificant.
“What did you see?” she asked him.
“I only had eyes for you,” he said.
“You’re losing your touch,” she said lightly.
“I’m all right with that.” His eyes searched hers. “As long as you’re all right.”
“I’m fine. I’ve been wet before.” Her lips quirked. “You of all people should know that.”
“I had a suspicion.” He tipped his cheek onto his bicep.
“I have a suspicion of my own,” she said. He raised his eyebrows, inviting her to continue. “Cassy Miller and Naomi Diaz ran away or disappeared through otherwise un-supernatural circumstances.”
“Going out on a limb there, Agent,” Mulder told her. “I don’t know if I can present that kind of wild theory to Skinner.”
“If, and I stress if, there were a mysterious reptile that had been inhabiting this lake for centuries if not millennia, I don’t think it would target humans. We’re too noisy, too fast. Increased activity on the lake would likely drive it deeper, not provoke it.”
“Unless it were desperate,” Mulder said. “A drop in the population of fish. Rising temperatures in the lake.”
“A species would take generations to adapt to the changes that have occurred in the local environment, but this is one hypothetical individual, Mulder. One organism can alter its behavior on a timescale far more rapid.”
He nodded against his arm, just a little. “They were last seen in a boat.”
“So the report says,” Scully said. “But Cassy Miller’s car is missing.”
“There are actually a surprising number of car thefts for a town this size,” Mulder told her. “Something about teens and tourists.”
Scully opened her palm above the water. Her fingers were pruny. “That’s my theory.”
“I respect it,” Mulder said. “But I haven’t decided yet whether I agree.”
“Why am I not surprised.” She cupped water in her hand, let it pour over her breasts. The bubbles sluiced down the slope of her chest, pearling around her nipples. She watched Mulder watch her. His breath caught a little and his pupils darkened. “Are we still conferring, or have we moved on to consorting?”
“You know there’s nothing I want more than to climb into that tub with you,” he said in a low voice.
“I can recommend against wet denim,” she said. “The chafing ruins the mood.” She thought of straddling his lap, feeling the friction of the sodden fabric against her skin, and rubbed her thighs together in anticipation. Up until the chafing, it would be delicious.
“I think I learned my lesson today,” he told her. “No clothes. Just you on top of me, skin on skin. You could take your time. I’d worship your tits.”
“I think your vision ends up with water all over the bathroom floor.” She let her hand drift down her body.
“Worth it.” Hunger flickered in his eyes.
“Is it consorting if I’m pursuing solitary pleasures while we’re discussing a case?” she asked.
He laughed. “If so, we’ve been consorting for years.”
“I knew it,” she said. Her fingers wandered down her belly, strayed lower.
“Fuck, Scully,” he said roughly. “You know I can withstand anything except temptation.”
She toyed with her curls, imagining the slow swell of his erection. He shifted a little on his heels as she pushed her fingers between her folds and stroked slowly. She let her head loll against the porcelain. Her other hand rose to stroke her breast. Mulder took a deep breath and let it out in a slow hiss.
“You know there’s nothing but your own conscience stopping you from getting into this tub.” She arched her back, pushing her breasts out of the water.
“I told you,” he said. “I’m trying to take this seriously. I take you seriously. Everything we’re doing deserves our full attention, Scully. The work. This.” He gestured between them. “Whatever you think about my lake monster theory, there are two women missing. People are worried about them.”
“I know that,” she said, an edge creeping into her voice. Her hands slipped away from their pleasant tasks.
“We crossed a line together,” he said. “I don’t regret it. I’ll never, ever regret it. But there are other lines we shouldn’t cross.”
“You’re the one who keeps telling me all the things we’d be doing if we weren’t working,” she snapped.
“And I mean every word of it.” It sounded like a vow. “When we’re done here, I’m going to fuck you until you can’t remember your name. But we’re not finished.”
“I’m finished.” She toed the stopper out of the train and hauled herself up out of the water, too cranky to finish what she’d started. He rocked back on his heels, looking wounded. “With this bath, Mulder. I’m tired. I’m going to take a nap. Wake me up for dinner.”
“I will,” he said. He handed her an enormous fluffy towel and helped her out of the tub.
“Scully,” he said as she opened the door to her room, and she turned just enough to indicate she was listening. “I’ll make it up to you.”
She went back to her room, dried off, rolled naked into the bed. She was too keyed up to sleep. She rolled onto her stomach and thrust against the ridge of her hand until pleasure spiraled tight within her. She moaned into the pillow, suddenly boneless as release hit her, and drifted into sleep.
+ + +
The rest of their investigation yielded nothing. They dutifully went in each day to work with local law enforcement. They searched a few other areas of the lake. The deputies made Scully wear a life jacket, but there weren’t any other mysterious waves. They followed leads to dead ends. Wherever the women were, they weren’t using credit cards. Cassy Miller’s car was found a few miles away. It wasn’t far from a bus station, Scully noted, but she kept her thoughts to herself. Subsequent trips to the lake produced no evidence of a lake monster or any foul play. No bodies. No torn clothes.
“We’ll keep following up,” Mulder assured the chief of police. “I’ve added their names to our list. If anyone turns up matching their descriptions, we’ll let you know.”
“I appreciate your help.” Chief Hughes shook their hands.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t help more,” Scully told her.
“We’re grateful anyone showed up,” Chief Hughes said. “Not a lot of feds would care about our small-town problems. But two of our own disappear, that’s something we feel here. Like a missing tooth.”
Chief Hughes’ smile was watery. “Neither will we.”
+ + +
“I thought the breakfast at the B&B was excellent,” Mulder said as they walked to their gate at the airport. “Those scones were homemade.”
“The beds were also excellent.” Scully glanced up at him. “At least, mine was. I can’t speak to the quality of any other accommodations.”
“I’d stay there again,” he said. “Recreationally.”
“Oh? Are you seeing someone?”
He stopped suddenly in the middle of the passageway. She stopped too and looked at him curiously. He took her face between his hands and kissed her. It was profound. It was passionate. It was making her weak in the knees in the middle of a fucking airport. She put her hands on his waist to steady herself.
“It wasn’t because this is a secret, Scully,” he said. “I’d get your name tattooed in five inch letters on my ass tomorrow if that’s what you wanted.”
“I know.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I know. The work matters. It was just weird not to be on the same page.”
“It was,” he agreed. His eyes searched her face and he smiled at whatever he saw there. “Should we go home?”
“Are you conferring with me in a professional context, Agent Mulder?”
He shook his head, the smile turning into a grin. “I’m not interested in your professional opinion at this time, Agent Scully.”
“Then yes, we should go home.”
He slung his arm around her shoulders as they walked and she leaned into him.
+ + +
In the DC airport, Scully caught a glimpse of curly hair and a familiar profile. “Naomi,” she said quietly to herself, and then louder. “Naomi!”
The woman turned, blanched, tried to push through a crowd. Scully swore. It was the suits. It was always the suits. Scully pursued, Mulder at her heels.
“Naomi! You’re not in trouble. We just want to talk.”
Naomi turned at last, eyes bright but her chin held high. She was clutching the hand of a blonde woman Scully had seen in a dozen photographs.
“Naomi Diaz,” Mulder drawled. “Cassy Miller.”
“How do you know our names?” Naomi demanded.
“We’ve been looking for you.” Scully showed them her badge. “Police Chief Hughes called the Bureau to follow up on a missing persons report.”
“And here you are, remarkably unmissing,” Mulder said. He was enjoying himself too much for someone who had been completely wrong, Scully thought.
“We shouldn’t have left the way we did,” Naomi said. Her mouth trembled. “I know that. But we couldn’t stay.”
“Why not?” Scully asked, and then looked again at the women’s clasped hands and understood.
Cassy stepped in front of Naomi without letting go. “It’s a small town, ma’am. Everybody knows everybody there. The kids at my store, I watched them grow up. I babysat half of them. Their parents are the older siblings of the kids I went to high school with. If I changed shampoo brands, the whole town would know by the end of the week.”
“I see.” Scully put her hands in her pockets. A week looking for two women and no one had mentioned they were lovers. The picture drew itself.
“I have loved this woman for a decade and everyone pretends they don’t know that,” Cassy said fiercely. “They just look right past me. It’s almost worse than if they were hateful.”
“It was like we were already dead,” Naomi put in. “We can’t get married. Landlords kept losing our application when we tried to get an apartment together. So it seemed easy. Everybody knows that people get drunk and stupid on the lake and nobody ever sees them again.”
“We read the reports,” Mulder told them. “Nobody in that town thought either of you would be drunk or stupid.”
“It was better than staying,” Cassy said in a firm voice. “Now we can start over. We can have a life that’s real. I’m thirty-two years old. I can’t spend the rest of my life playing pretend. Not about her.”
“They think you were eaten by the lake monster,” Scully told them.
Cassy laughed. “Champ? That’s just a legend.”
“No, it’s not,” Naomi muttered.
Scully exchanged a look with Mulder. “Regardless,” Scully said smoothly, “I think in this case, we can file a report saying that all evidence was inconclusive.” She paused. “Being eaten by a lake monster isn’t the worst way to go.”
Mulder was scribbling on a piece of paper. He passed it to Cassy. “Go to this address. The attendant in the Metro can show you the best stop. Tell them Mulder sent you. They’re weird guys, but they’ll help you.”
“And that’s it?” Naomi asked. “You’re not going to turn us in?”
“Leaving town isn’t a crime,” Scully told her. She started to turn away, and then turned back. “This may sound strange but…it’s never too late to start living the life you want. For what it’s worth, I think you’re both brave.”
“Thank you,” Cassy said.
Scully nodded and walked away with Mulder at her shoulder. They were quiet as they picked up their backs at the luggage carousel. She said nothing as they got into Mulder’s car. She waited until they had exited the airport road and merged onto the highway.
“Mulder?”
“Hmm?”
“I told you so.”
+ + +
He parked in front of her apartment and carried her bag in for her. “What a gentleman,” she started to say, but before she could get the words out, he was pressing her into the door, his hot mouth descending on hers. She tugged at his lip with her teeth and then surrendered, opening her mouth to the insistent slide of his tongue. Their hands tangled trying to get to each other’s buttons. But finally, fucking finally, his hands were on her bare tits and she was digging her nails into his back. She could feel his erection against her belly. She cupped it with her palm and he groaned.
“Fuck, Scully.”
She dragged his head down and nipped at his ear. “Time to put your money where your very active mouth is, Mulder.”
“Anything you want,” he promised.
“Tease me,” she said. “Worship me.”
He pressed his body into hers, fumbling at the closure of her skirt. After a moment he gave up and just pushed it over her hips. His hands ghosted over her skin, barely touching, until her nerves crackled and fizzed like a plasma globe. By the time his thumb traced up the damp gusset of her underwear, she was almost panting.
“What do you want, Scully?” he whispered, his tongue flicking at the shell of her ear.
“I want to give it to you,” she gasped. His hips jolted against her and she moaned.
He bit gently at her shoulder. “I’m confused but very turned on.” His thumb grazed her underwear again and she arched into the touch for a moment. It was difficult to wriggle out from between his body and the door, but she had the fuel of a week’s worth of frustration. He followed her, shedding his pants as they slid off his hips.
She dragged her suitcase into the bedroom and tipped it onto the floor. She unzipped it and pulled out a bundle of straps wrapped around a slender purple dildo.
“That was in your suitcase the whole time?” he said from the doorway.
“I thought it was a different kind of trip,” she told him. She shook out the straps; they resolved into a harness. The dildo fit neatly into it. She’d practiced assembling it. There was no fumbling here. She shed her skirt but didn’t bother with her underwear, stepping into the harness and buckling it tight.
“I thought you were going to be the one begging,” he said, sauntering closer. “Looks like you’ve turned the tables on me again.”
“Say ‘please’,” she told him.
He knelt in front of her, gazing up her body. As she looked down at him, he lapped slowly at the head of the dildo. She shuddered at the way his eyes closed in pleasure. He opened them again and stared up at her. “Please.”
“Clothes off. Get on the bed.” She ducked into the bathroom and grabbed a towel. He caught it when she tossed it and spread it under his hips. “You’ve done this before?”
“Not in a while,” he admitted. “I didn’t know if you’d be into it.”
“It’s got more reach than my fingers,” she said. “And honestly, Mulder, I’ve wanted to fuck you speechless for years.”
“Is that a challenge?” His eyes gleamed.
“It’s a promise,” she said, pulling a latex glove out of her suitcase and snapping it on.
She took her time preparing him. A single finger up his ass in the heat of passion was different from the dildo, even if it was the smallest of the set she’d bought. He lay on his belly on the bed. She knelt between his legs, pushing his thighs wide with her knees. The marks of her nails were pink half-moons up and down his back. She liked seeing them: proof he was hers.
She worked him open slowly, slicking him with lube until he was dripping, rubbing her fingers up and down and up and down between his ass cheeks. One finger, slow and steady. Her pussy throbbed under the base of the dildo, aching for him. Two fingers and he was groaning, lifting his hips toward her. Three fingers - that was probably the same girth as the dildo, and he rocked against her eagerly.
“Are you ready?”
“God, Scully, please.”
“Turn over,” she commanded. “I want to watch you while I fuck you.”
He flipped himself over with a surprising amount of grace. She gestured and he tossed her one of the pillows. She dragged the towel over it and helped him wedge it under his hips. He looked so vulnerable like this, splayed out before her. His cock banged his belly and she couldn’t resist dragging her tongue up it to taste the salt. Her thumb stroked the tender skin under his balls, sliding back and back to push inside him. More lube. More pressure at his entrance. She circled it with her thumb, slicked the dildo with yet more lube, let the head of it rest against him.
“Scully, please,” he said in an urgent hush.
“Please what?”
“Pretty please,” he said. “Pretty please, please fuck me.”
She checked her watch. “It’s only 4:58 p.m., Mulder. Are you sure we’re off the clock?”
“Please,” he said. “I swear we’ll talk about it next time we take a case that looks like a vacation.”
“In that case,” she said, and pushed into him oh so slowly. He took the toy an inch at a time. She would have sworn his eyes got greener the deeper she pushed. He made a noise like she’d touched his soul. When she started to pull out, he whimpered. The naked need on his face floored her.
“I’m not done,” she assured him, and thrust again. Fuck, it was hard not to just snap her hips into his. She wanted to fuck him rough. Maybe once he had graduated to something bigger, she’d bend him over her couch. Maybe she’d pull out her most indulgent dildo, the one that was almost too big, and let him gag on it. Not tonight, but maybe if he pulled a stunt like that again.
For now she fucked him slowly. The base of the dildo ground against her pubis, not quite the contact she needed, but good. And his face while she fucked him, God - she could have come just from the way he looked at her.
“Enough,” he gasped when she was so on edge she was gritting her teeth to keep going. “Fuck, Scully, enough.”
She pulled out of him and he reached for her and dragged her up the bed. He undid the buckles on one side of the harness and she undid the other side and the straps fell away. She tossed the dildo to one side. And then she was straddling him and his beautiful fucking cock was pressing against her and how was she already this goddamn close? She was seeing stars and he’d barely touched her yet.
Mulder wrapped his hand around his cock and rubbed it against the wet cotton that separated her skin from his. She reached down and pushed it aside and moaned. His shaft slid between her folds. Fuck, yes, that was what she’d needed. She wasn’t waiting any longer. She cupped her hand over his and used her other hand to pull her underwear away and then she was sinking down onto his cock.
“Not yet,” he said. His hands grabbed her hips, urging her higher until she was sitting on his face. Her underwear had slipped back into place, but that didn’t seem to bother Mulder. He licked at her through the fabric, lips and tongue working together. The cotton blunted the edges of his teeth when he scraped them over her clit. She moaned, a high urgent sound, and he pulled her down hard and sucked her clit until she saw stars.
“Mulder, yes,” she was saying, over and over. Her legs shook. He lessened the pressure, then swirled his tongue in rapid circles until she was coming again, grabbing at the headboard. He slid out from under her and pressed up against her back, his big hands on her tits, thumbing at her nipples until she was almost coming again. She turned her head to kiss him hungrily as his fingers slipped lower, spreading her folds so that he could push two fingers inside her. His thumb circled her clit and she came again, a warm wave of pleasure that surprised her.
“I think these need to come off,” he said, and helped her wriggle out of her panties.
“Now will you fuck me?” she panted.
“However many orgasms that was wasn’t enough for you?” He grinned.
“It’s different,” she said. “It was good - it was fantastic - but I need you inside me, Mulder.”
He didn’t have anything to say to that. He surged up behind her again, nudging her knees apart roughly, and pushed into her, filling her pussy in a way that immediately soothed the ache inside her and made it worse all at the same time. His arm locked over her shoulders as he heaved up into her, holding her in place on his cock. She whimpered and sank her teeth into the corded muscle of his forearm. She was clinging to the bars of her headboard. The motion of his hips rocked her up and down. His other hand was braced next to hers, his fingers curling over her fist. She leaned her head against his shoulder. Fuck, she loved him.
The pressure of him inside her made her desperate. She freed one hand, touched herself with trembling fingers. She was coming undone, again, her muscles clutching around him. He moaned and pulled out of her. She cried out in protest, still shuddering, but he put his back against the headboard and hauled into his lap, thrusting up into her like he’d never stopped. She braced her knees wide and took him as deep as she could, grinding against him. His thighs were tensing under hers. She was amazed he hadn’t come yet, and grateful, and determined.
“I want you to come inside me,” she whispered, and his whole body shivered. “I’ve been so good, Mulder, please.”
He bent forward and took her nipples into his mouth, first one, then the other, his mouth hot and desperate. She kissed his forehead, scraping her fingers through his hair as he squeezed her tits. And there, so unexpected, another orgasm building inside her. She rubbed herself against him in a frenzy. She’d never come this many times in a row, with a partner or a toy, but a week’s tension had wound her tight.
“I’m close,” he warned her. He rubbed his cheek over her nipple and the friction of his stubble made her gasp. “Scully.”
“I’m coming,” she said, and it was true. Sparks burst behind her eyelids and he held her hips down and pounded up into her and she could feel him inside her, the wet heat of his pleasure. It seemed to last forever as he surged into her and then finally, finally, she was back in her body, wrapped in his arms. When he eventually pulled out of her, it felt like a loss.
“I want to lick you clean,” he said. His voice was shaking.
“Next time,” she promised, wincing just a little. She was too sensitive everywhere, but it had been worth it. Fuck, it had all been worth it. They eased down together. Mulder flopped on his belly, ass in the air.
“Did I make it up to you?” he asked.
“I believe I got the rewards I was promised,” she said.
“If I’d known you’d brought your own equipment, I don’t think my conscience would have won,” he told her. “It was hard enough seeing you in that bath, all flushed and damp.”
She patted his ass. “You took it like a champ.”
He huffed a laugh into the crumpled sheets. “I would have absolutely bought a novelty t-shirt that said that.”
“I know,” she said.
He pushed up on one elbow and gazed at her. “And you would have stolen it to wear to bed.”
“With no underwear underneath,” she agreed.
He swore under his breath. “We could go back.”
“Let’s go somewhere else,” she suggested. “I don’t want you getting distracted by the local legends. Do you think I can find you a t-shirt that says ‘Rode Hard And Put Away Wet’?”
“We’ll have to get matching ones,” he said.
“We can do that.” She smiled at him. “You can wear it to work.”
“I think that would leave Skinner with some questions.”
She shook her head, yawning. “I think that would answer most of his questions.”
“You’re probably right,” he said.
“Mulder?”
“Hmm?”
“I changed my mind,” she told him. “Lick me clean.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and settled between her legs like it was his job. His mouth was gentle on her tender skin. His eyes were closed like he was praying. She pushed her hands through his hair and let herself drift into a dream of a life where they could do this anytime they wanted, forever and ever, amen.
Mulder had not been convinced that drinks with Bambi and Dr. Ivanov was a good idea, but Scully seemed to enjoy it. She and Bambi shared one side of the table and became so engrossed in conversation that Mulder had to reach across and touch Scully’s wrist to get her attention. She was even content to stay and have a second glass of wine with Mulder after their two companions left.
“They didn’t leave together, did they?” Mulder wondered morbidly, craning his neck in an attempt to see Dr. Ivanov’s retreating chair.
“Mulder,” Scully said with a fond smile, “no. Bambi wasn’t interested in him in that way after all.”
“Oh?” Mulder said, arching his eyebrows. “And how do you know that, Scully?”
Scully shrugged. “It came up.”
“Really?” Mulder leaned forward on the table. “How did it come up? What were you talking about?”
“Mulder,” Scully said in warning.
“She told you she wasn’t into Dr. Ivanov?”
“Well, not Dr. Ivanov per se,” Scully said. “It came up that she wasn’t interested in dating men.”
Mulder’s mouth fell open for a moment, and then he discreetly closed it. He folded his hands in front of him on the table with calm decorum. “I see that I really should have been sitting on that side of the table.”
“We were talking mostly about our work,” Scully said defensively.
“So … how did her sexuality come up, exactly?”
Scully’s cheeks turned pink. “We were talking about there not being as many women in the sciences. She mentioned it was difficult in terms of dating women exclusively. Difficult to meet people.”
“Hold on. Wait.” Mulder made a show of scooting forward in his seat as far as he could. “Scully. You’re in the sciences.”
Scully shot him a disdainful look and sipped her wine.
“Did she hit on you?”
“No,” Scully scoffed. “That’s ridiculous. We were talking about work.”
“Did she give you her number?”
“Yes, but only so we could have dinner sometime if I’m in the area.”
Mulder’s mouth fell open again in deadpan disbelief, and Scully squirmed in her seat, visibly flustered.
“That’s not hitting on me, Mulder. Being attracted to women doesn’t mean you’re attracted to every woman.”
“Scully, you may be surprised to learn that I actually have experience being attracted to women,” Mulder said. He drummed his fingers on the table a second and bit his lip. “So … are you going to have dinner with her?”
Scully eyed him suspiciously. “Mulder.”
“What will you wear?”
She treated him to an unamused glare.
“Come on, I’m asking innocent questions.”
“I’ve seen those tapes that aren’t yours, Mulder. I think they’ve skewed your perception of relationships women might have with other women.”
“You’ve seen those tapes that aren’t mine?”
“Don’t you have one about amorous scientists specifically? Ph Double Ds or something like that?”
Mulder cleared his throat. “Scientist porn is a common genre,” he said. He eyed her slyly. “Actually, you might want to watch a little to prepare for your dinner date.”
Scully downed the rest of her glass of wine in a huff.
“Aw, come on.” He changed directions, smiling winningly. “Don’t take me so seriously. I’m just jealous. I’ve been trying to get her attention, and here you sail in effortlessly and win her over.”
“I don’t think that’s what happened, but I’m sorry to spoil your erotic fantasies regardless, Mulder.”
“Trust me, Scully. This conversation has not spoiled my erotic fantasies in the slightest.”
Her eyes narrowed, and Mulder wondered if he’d pushed it too far. Maybe it was crossing a line to allude directly to her being featured in his sexual fantasies like that.
But her tone was changing. “I’m sorry, really, Mulder,” she said, softening. “I do think she’s a nice woman, and she’s smart and beautiful. I see why you’d like her. I wish you could have dated her.”
“Thank you,” he said, taken aback. He wasn’t sure what to say in response to that, so he found himself shifting uneasily. “Do you want another glass?”
She stared at her empty wine glass contemplatively.
“I’m going to take that as a yes,” Mulder said. He gestured to the waiter across the room, pointing at Scully’s glass and his own.
“Can I ask you a personal question, Scully?”
“About what?” Her sideways look was suspicious.
“I have a theory about you,” Mulder ventured. “Call it a profiler’s hunch.”
“What comes out of your mouth next could not possibly be complimentary.”
“My theory is that you’re one of those people who’s oblivious to when someone has romantic interest in you. That you never know when someone is hitting on you. That this isn’t the first time. Would you say that’s true?”
“No,” she said definitively. “And I told you, she wasn’t hitting on me.”
“But see, you wouldn’t know. That’s the whole point.”
“I consider myself a fairly perceptive person.”
“Let me ask you this,” Mulder continued, aware now of the jagged little edge of the alcohol in his system. “Why do you think Skip the IT guy hangs around to talk to us in the basement for so long? And why do you think Caroline in requisitions is so nice to us?”
“If you’re implying that it’s because they’re interested in me, I reject that interpretation,” Scully said indignantly. “Personally, I think it’s simply because I’m nice to them. Being civil goes a long way.”
“Come on,” Mulder groaned. “Skip tries to see down your shirt almost every time he’s down there. And he’s made about a thousand thinly veiled references to getting drinks after work.”
“Maybe,” Scully said skeptically. “But Caroline?”
“She gets all tongue-tied when you walk in.”
“When we walk in,” Scully pointed out. “Maybe it’s you who’s having that effect. That’s not exactly an unknown phenomenon.”
“Noooo,” Mulder said emphatically, shaking his head. “She stares at you. Like you’re a beautiful statue. Like this.” He demonstrated by putting his chin on his hands and gazing at Scully, batting his eyelashes exaggeratedly.
Scully rolled her eyes. “Ridiculous, Mulder. If she did that, I would notice.”
“You’re proving my point left and right here, Scully.”
Scully scoffed, taking the new glass of Syrah the waitress handed her. Mulder accepted another beer.
“Admit it,” Mulder said. “In your past there’s a pattern of friends and acquaintances who unexpectedly confessed feelings to you, shocking you beyond measure because you never saw it coming.”
Scully sipped her wine. “Come on. Doesn’t that happen to everyone?”
“No.” Mulder began to laugh. “It absolutely doesn’t.”
“It’s never happened to you?”
“I didn’t say that,” Mulder said, amused. “But I wouldn’t say it was a pattern.”
Scully’s face was flushed just in the apples of her cheeks: the effect, Mulder assumed, of the wine. “That seems very hard to believe,” she said flippantly. “That you’ve inspired so few declarations of secret love, being … I don’t know, the way that you are.”
Mulder’s eyebrows shot up in delight. “Whoa ho, the way that I am? Thank you, I think.”
Scully waved her hand dismissively.
“It only happened to me once that I recall,” Mulder said. “A classmate at Quantico.”
Scully waited for a moment, but he didn’t elaborate.
“How often has it happened to you, Scully?” Mulder asked.
“A few times,” she allowed with a little shrug.
“Give me an example.”
“Mulder, I don’t know…” she groaned.
“Okay, who was the first?”
Sighing, she put her chin in her hand and considered. “Probably tenth grade,” she said. “My debate partner Phil Costello.”
Mulder smiled. “Ah, Phil.”
“He was very serious. Very competitive.” Scully took a generous gulp of wine. “And then one day, he’s stammering and not meeting my eye and asking me to go mini-golfing.”
“Mini-golfing,” Mulder said. “Classic.”
“But mini-golfing doesn’t necessarily imply a date,” Scully said. “I was watching Charlie that afternoon, so I brought him along.”
“Oh no,” Mulder said. He winced and shook his head. “Oh Scully.”
“And I later gathered from friends that I hurt Phil’s feelings,” Scully sighed, swirling her glass slightly.
Mulder thumped his hand on the table triumphantly. “Exactly. Phil had probably been putting the teen moves on you for months.”
“I would argue that story isn’t an example of me being especially oblivious,” Scully said. “I’d argue that it was an example of both of us being adolescents and not skilled at communication. Phil didn’t make the situation entirely clear either.”
“Let’s change the question then,” Mulder suggested. “How often would you say you get hit on?”
“At this stage in my life?” Scully said. “Almost never.”
Mulder rolled his eyes dramatically.
“Why don’t you believe that? What makes you such an expert on this, Mulder?”
“Let’s look at this objectively, like scientists.” He took another large swig of beer, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’re a young woman, at your sexual peak, extremely attractive, in a male-dominated profession, constantly surrounded by men. Looking at it from the outside, doesn’t it seem implausible to you that you would never be hit on? Isn’t the most likely explanation that you’re just not someone who notices?”
Scully didn’t say anything in response, just held her wine glass and stared at him, her face impassive.
“I assume I convinced you?” he said triumphantly.
“I think I’m not hit on as much any more,” she said with precision, “because I’m almost always with you.”
He scowled, and his eyes scanned the rest of the bar for a moment. There were other people there: couples having drinks, some kind of birthday party in the corner, and a group of apparently single men at the bar having an extended happy hour. They were thirtysomething, wore suits, had been joking around all evening. None of them were especially looking towards Scully, at least not after a quick glance. That did seem strange to Mulder. Why would guys like that miss checking out a pretty woman? Why wouldn’t someone try to make an approach? Then again, what’s the point of hitting on a woman who’s already sitting at a table with someone?
“Hmm,” he said. “I admit, that’s an interesting consideration.”
“Do you get hit on a lot, Mulder?”
He looked at her, surprised. “No,” he said. “But that’s different.”
“How?” Scully asked.
“I’m a little more of an acquired taste,” Mulder said modestly.
Scully startled him by bursting into loud, unrestrained laughter. She threw her head forward as she laughed and let her hair spill over her face as she lifted it back up.
“What?” he said, self-conscious.
“An acquired taste?” she said, still laughing. “What does that mean? Since when is being tall and good-looking an acquired taste? You’re the kind of man single women in bars … dare one another to approach.”
Mulder’s eyebrows shot right into his hairline this time. “Oooh, tell me more, please,” he said, licking his lips. “Would you approach me in a bar?”
“Of course not,” she said dryly. “I know you, and your personality works against the good looks.”
It was a joke. Obviously. She didn’t mean anything by it. But it happened that he’d heard that exact critique from women before, that it was something held to be true about Fox Mulder. Hearing it from Scully—from the lips of his partner, who these days knew him better than anyone else—just really stung. It hurt so immediately he couldn’t quite hide his reaction as it flickered across his face.
“See? An acquired taste,” he said, quickly trying to play it off. “And some people never acquire it.”
She already had a stricken expression. “Mulder,” she said, soft regret in her words. “I was only kidding.”
“Come on,” he said with a smile. “I know. We have to be able to joke about our own flaws.”
“No,” she said, looking down at the table. “No, it was a thoughtless thing to say. I’m sorry. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your personality.”
“I think we both know that’s not entirely true, Scully.” She wasn’t meeting his eyes, still looking at her hands on the table. “There’s a reason they call me Spooky and keep me alone in the basement. There’s a reason I’ve been single for years. Something’s broken, right?” He tapped his temple playfully. “I know it as well as anyone.”
She raised her clear blue eyes to meet his and surprised him by grabbing his wrist.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Mulder,” she repeated urgently. “You could be working anywhere in the F.B.I.. You could be dating anyone you wanted. You just chose another path. You did that because there’s something whole about you, not something broken.”
He stared back into those shockingly blue eyes, moved, not sure what to say in response. He thought about how many times he called Scully on this case, how she drove all the way up to help him, how no one on earth seemed as accepting of his quirks and faults as she was. She was the best friend he’d ever had. No one else was even close.
“I shouldn’t say things like that even as a joke,” she said, her fingers still enclosed around his wrist. “And I shouldn’t get annoyed when you have the occasional flirtation on the job. You deserve to have that.”
“Annoyed?” Mulder repeated. “When were you annoyed?”
She shook her head. “Not important.”
“On this case? By what? By Bambi?”
She smiled a tiny, tolerant smile and withdrew her hand, leaning back on her chair. “Besides, Mulder,” she said, “you may have noticed that they don’t keep you all alone in the basement anymore.”
He smiled slowly, examining his beer glass. “Yeah,” he said. “I did notice.”
They didn’t speak for a moment.
“Anyway, I’ll try to pay more attention,” she said, returning to their previous topic of conversation. “To see if I think you’re right that I’m constantly the object of desire.”
“Obviously I’m right,” he said with a sigh.
“It’s a flattering idea, I guess,” she said. She seemed to immediately regret her words, looking down in embarrassment.
“Yeah, of course,” Mulder said encouragingly. “But you should enjoy it, Scully. You should go out with female friends sometime, go to a bar, let the guys have a chance to talk to you. I bet you haven’t done that for a while.”
Scully shook her head, her cheeks actually turning darker pink. “You’re right. I haven’t.”
She was quiet again, and he tried to imagine Scully actually acting on his suggestion. Maybe talking to some guy at a club—some guy with an ordinary job, a loosened tie, and an empty smile like those men drinking over there at the bar. He knew she deserved this kind of flirtation and fun, but he found, to his ashamed surprise, that he hated the idea.
“I don’t think I will, though,” she said, picking up her glass again. She looked at him over the rim. “That’s not where my head is these days.”
“Yeah,” he said. He immediately pictured their office, his view of her leaning over her work, her hair and a pencil tucked behind her ear, her expression serious and intent. “I know what you mean.”
She sipped the last dregs of her wine as they looked at one another. As he met her eyes, Mulder reminded himself the partnership might not last forever. Most likely, she would answer his calls and do his autopsies right up until the day her head was somewhere else.
“Probably time for us to go,” she said. She smiled and gave him a playfully stern look. “We need to get back to D.C. tomorrow and try to write up your killer cockroach case in some reasonably sane way for Skinner.”
“I’ll write the report,” Mulder agreed. “I’ll just need help with the sane parts.”
“Good thing I’m here,” she said lightly.
***
After Scully finished the last drops of her wine, she excused herself to use the bathroom. The waitress came back and set the check down in front of Mulder.
“Going well, isn’t it?” she said in a thick Massachusetts accent.
Mulder stopped getting out his credit card to look up at her, confused. Arms crossed over her ample chest, she looked down at him, smiling broadly.
“What’s going well?” he said.
“Your date,” she said knowingly. She winked. “She likes you. Trust me. I can tell when a lady is interested, and she’s interested.”
Mulder smiled politely back, putting his card down on the tray. “Oh, it’s not a date,” he said. “We work together.”
The waitress just smirked. “If you say so, sweetie.” She took the tray and shrugged. “It’s pretty obvious though.”
***
Rated X / 1130 words / Posted on AO3 / Tagging @today-in-fic
Mulder leans across the console with a familiar impish glint in his eye, the corner of his mouth already cocked in amusement.
“That’s a direct violation of the Bureau’s agent conduct policy, you know,” he teases, so close that the heat of his breath warms her cheeks.
The skunky bite of cheap motel coffee creeps into her nose, alongside something so distinctly Mulder that she could never properly describe it. When did she learn to recognize the smell of his breath?
She lifts her head and smiles at him mirthfully, knowing that the rest of their day will be spent carefully suppressing flirtatious one-liners and sidelong glances.
“You’re not going to report me, are you?” she asks, feigning helplessness, and he laughs, sending another waft of his toothpaste-spiked coffee breath her way.
She feels a flush from her shoulders to her pelvis, ending in a hearty throb from her clit. Her face falls, caught off guard by her own arousal, and Mulder quirks his head at her curiously.
“Something wrong?”
Scully shakes her head, turning towards the windshield and sitting up straighter in her seat.
“We should probably get moving,” she tells him, and he starts the engine.
She’s recently learned that he’s handsy in the morning, pawing at her under her T-shirt while she spreads butter over freshly toasted bread. He likes to watch her get ready for work and then hike her skirt up around her hips so he can eat her pussy before they drive to the Hoover in separate cars, or bend her over her kitchen table with her slacks bunched up around her knees and fuck her so hard it makes her eyes water and her mascara run. He doesn’t even come most of the time, perhaps as a courtesy so she doesn’t have to feel him leaking out of her half the day—not that she’d mind it. When he sleeps over, she wakes to the smell of coffee brewing and realizes she’s already turned on.
He might get her in the shower, two fingers curled up inside her and the butt of his palm pressed against her clit, the huff of his coffee breath and the sight of his stiff wet cock taking her over the edge. He could pop her up on the edge of the kitchen counter, still in her robe, and fuck her in long, deep strokes while he sucks on her earlobe. Sometimes she doesn’t even make it out of bed before he rolls her onto her belly and slips into her from behind. Prone and half asleep, she’s coming before she hears the coffee pot beep its announcement that it’s done brewing.
But today she woke up alone in a motel bed, the only identifiable smell the musk of a prior occupant who did not adhere to the room’s non-smoking designation. No one watched her strip off her pajamas or slipped in behind her in the shower. No one waited until she was primped and polished to defile her below the waist. It makes her feel like pouting, which she knows is ridiculous.
Scully huffs an overly dramatic sigh and watches the flat pasture land surrounding the highway whip past them. She has a feeling it’s going to be a long day.
“Do you wanna stop for coffee?” Mulder asks, and she turns and looks at him.
He looks markedly delicious in his navy suit and gray tie, and she can practically feel the smoothness of his freshly shaved cheek on her lips. Coffee isn’t the pick-me-up she wants right now.
He flashes her a surprised smile and her cheeks heat up at her own boldness; she hadn’t entirely meant to say that last part out loud.
“It’s another half hour to the police station,” he says, reaching across the console and playing with the hem of her skirt between her knees.
Scully looks around like someone could be watching, but the road is next to deserted and his hand is hidden well below the window.
“I don’t know…” she says weakly, but she feels blood rushing to her cunt and she knows she’s already wet.
“Pull your skirt up,” he says, eyes on the road. His tone is just commanding enough to make her want to comply.
She tugs her skirt up past the tops of her thigh-high panty hose, exposing the cherry red gusset of her panties. She looks around again, then spreads her legs to make room for his hand. She tells herself that she’s doing it for him.
Mulder groans when he touches the damp fabric between her legs, and she watches the side of his face as he slips two fingers behind it and gently strokes her slippery lips—the flex of his jaw, the narrowing of his eyes as he forces himself to keep them open. He plays with her clit a little before he finger-fucks her steadily, his breath huffing and his free hand gripped tightly on the steering wheel. He looks at her in short flashes, sometimes her face and sometimes his hand between her legs. She can see the tent of his erection at the front of his slacks and she slumps down a little, curling her hips forward to give him as much access as possible.
Scully swallows hard and tries to keep her expression neutral and her eyes open. She tries not to look like her partner has one arm slung over the console and his fingers inside her, like she’s not quickly approaching climax.
Mulder slips his fingers out of her and pushes her panties to the side with three of them while stroking her clit with his index finger. Soft, consistent, concentric circles that lift her higher and higher, making her legs tingle and her mind go blank.
“I’m coming,” she whispers, and he stuffs his fingers back inside her just as she erupts.
Scully turns her face toward him, tucking her chin to hide her expression from any onlookers, and comes long and hard around his fingers.
“Exit’s coming up,” he says, pulling his hand away.
She sits up quickly, tugging her skirt down and checking her reflection in the visor to be sure she doesn’t give herself away. Her clit is still giving off latent throbs when they pull into the parking lot of the police station.
Mulder parks and looks over at her, a self-satisfied smirk on his mouth. He takes a sip of tepid coffee from the paper cup he brewed at the motel, then smacks his lips and pops his eyebrows at her.
“Feeling better?” he asks, and she suppresses the urge to kiss him.
“Much,” she says casually. “I could go for a cup of coffee, though.”
He laughs, and she smiles, and they go to work like they always do
Summary: A look into the way Mulder and Scully’s relationship became intertwined with mundane domesticity. WC: 2,262 | AO3
Tagging @today-in-fic
The melding happened so gradually that they could both pretend it was normal and justify their commingling as convenience.
It was small things at first, learning each other’s favorite coffee, a key so she could feed his fish and get his mail. Scully imagined their bond to be one of fellow soldiers in war; fighting together and having each other’s backs. There was a romanticism to the whole dynamic, being part of something bigger than oneself and the intensity paled in comparison to any other relationship she’d ever experienced.
He used to date. Not a lot, but there was usually a woman willing to share a few meals and his bed before they realized just how broken he was. Mulder had long ago abandoned the romantic notion that there was someone who’d understand him, let alone tolerate him long enough to be anything more serious. During the first year of his Partnership with Dana Scully the frequency of which he asked women out had gradually diminished. He found the rudimentary pleasantries exchanged during first date conversations tedious and would swing for the fences with outlandish topics that brought the conversation to an awkward standstill. With little more than a good night kiss on the cheek, the dates ended and Mulder would call Scully to see how she’d answer whatever hare brained topic he’d crashed and burned on. Her answers never ceased to exceed his expectations, and eventually it just seemed more practical to stop asking other women out.
Dana Scully had no trouble attracting male attention. It seemed inevitable that her new Partner would be her lover; just as her Advisors, Supervisors and one Professor had before him. His frequent late night phone calls and his general invasion of her personal space aside, Mulder never made a move. Her feelings on the subject ran the gamut of refreshing to frustrating, unsure as to why he hadn’t used one of their late night work sessions to finagle his way into her bed. So she went on dates with other men, nice guys with respectable jobs who complimented her beauty and feigned interest in whatever she had to say. It all seemed so superficial and her desire to endure these dates waned dramatically. With Mulder, she never had to wonder if his interest was genuine and his ulterior motives were transparent. He made it very clear his desire was to have her by his side while he chased the fantastic, respecting her candor and the value she added to the work. Which is how she found herself caught in some perpetual state of “dibs” by Mulder. A sweet torture only made endurable by the knowledge it was wholly reciprocated.
So, they both dined together instead of with others. Their meals quickly became a well choreographed dance. Lunch; a Turkey club on wheat with a side of fries, split between the two. Scully distributing half a salad, careful to leave out the olives.
Mulder adjusted to the low sodium soy sauce and brown rice with Chinese food; and their choice of pizza toppings were the embodiment of peace treaties in order to reach the perfect compromise.
When they first started working together Mulder skipped breakfast, drank black coffee and pilfered jelly donuts from the station or the office. Usually ready with a napkin, Scully had a remarkable knack for preemptively catching errant jelly globs before they stained Mulder’s ties. Only years later would Mulder come to realize that the times Scully had failed to intercept the jelly spills coincided with ties that she found particularly egregious and was attempting to phase out.
It only took a few months, but the enjoyment of having breakfast with Scully was enough to break Mulder of his donut habit. His new routine; a split order of wheat toast, which he smothered in jelly.
‘What’s the difference between this and my jelly donut?’
‘About 300 calories and 12 tablespoons of sugar.’
Like a kid, Mulder was unable to eat his toast without a blob of jelly always collecting in the corner of his mouth. Scully found herself unable to resist cleaning it off, and without fail Mulder always kissed the stray jelly off Scully’s thumb. Each and every time this was met with a smile from Scully, no matter how tired or irritated she was with him, and he always thought if she smiled at him a second longer he’d just have to kiss her. Scully always turned away with a demure blush because if she looked at his goofy smile a second longer she’d just have to kiss him.
As the years of their partnership go by, so do the clothes in Mulder’s wardrobe until the majority have been purchased or approved of by Scully. It started early on, an airline losing his bag, handing some cash to Scully to pick him up some clothes while on assignment. Giving her his credit card to pick up some new shirts for work after she announced she was shopping with her mother on the weekend. Mulder detested shopping and was grateful to relinquish control to Scully in this domain. There was something about shopping for a man that Scully has always loved, and Mulder was the perfect specimen. Unsure whether Mulder’s mismatched ties and suits were a result of his color blindness or lack of fashion, Scully picked suits that were better fitted and easier to mix and match for Mulder. She loves soft textured sweaters on him and supplies him with colors that made his hazel eyes sparkle. Even though Scully knew his sizes by heart, Mulder always made a show of trying on his new clothes for her, pretending to be oblivious to her stares as he parades around half naked while changing.
The two agents have more tactical clothing in their respective wardrobes than any other agents at the FBI, which is something they’re both proud of. It started as a battle with Finance on their first case. The FBI would not reimburse Mulder and Scully for their suits that were destroyed in the Field as a matter of policy. Outraged, Scully challenged the decision, adding the expense of every additional clothing item that was destroyed between the pair to the ongoing exchange regarding the expense report and then kept including more senior officials to the debate.
Finally, a Director who may have had more than a passing interest in Scully, responded and explained the policy was due to the IRS. Essentially, the issue came down to suits and dress shoes being a non-deductible expense so they could not just be reimbursed financially for the loss of work clothing, however they would receive credit for any lost clothes so long as it was used for items deemed as tactical gear.
Thus began the great L.L Bean haul, where Mulder and Scully tried to recoup close to a thousand dollars worth of lost work clothing on hiking and sporting gear. They both got multiple sized mag lights, hiking boots, thermal underwear, socks, trench coats and a variety of waterproof jackets. As far as bureaucratic victories goes, this was one of their greatest triumphs and buying new “tactical gear” became a beloved ritual between the pair as they got some form of justice for their destroyed garments.
When it came to cleaning their clothes, a clear division of labor had been established between the pair. Mulder was responsible for taking all their dry cleaning in and picking it up. They had an understanding that Mulder always pays to clean both their clothes as he owed Scully a lifetime of free dry cleaning based on Tooms alone.
Scully does the rest of their laundry at her place because she has a machine in her unit and knows how to soak and pretreat things. Mulder loves that his clothes smell like her and wonders what she does to his undershirts to make them so soft. He would ask her, but doing it himself would lose the magic because part of the truth is that it is the care Scully puts in that makes it special.
Most professional travelers rarely check luggage, opting for carry on only. With the size of Scully’s medical kit and the sheer variety of climates they end up in, the pair often share a checked bag as well as their individual carry on. Where possible they try to avoid transfers, opting to drive from major airports to the towns, trying to reduce the risk of lost luggage and missed connecting flights.
They usually carpooled to the airport in a routine so familiar it became muscle memory. Mulder puts Scully’s bag in his trunk while she settles in the passenger seat and starts sipping on the coffee he’s brought for her. Without discussion Scully takes a bite of half of Mulder’s bagel and always makes a face when she realizes it’s light cream cheese. He resists the urge to kiss her pout, but keeps his bagel order the same; tempting fate each time they travel.
There are ongoing games they play while traveling; spotting license plates, hypotheticals, twenty questions, fact or fiction, thumb wrestling. They try to keep the games fun and light hearted, but Scully is competitive and Mulder loves goading her. On long stretches of empty highway Mulder liked to pretend that they’re the only two people left on Earth and for some reason that thought made him happy.
Despite his adamant denial, Mulder gets car sick when attempting to read in the car so often he drove and Scully navigated. For all her many skills Scully isn’t great with maps, but much to her annoyance Mulder has an almost eerie intuition when it comes to directions. She questioned him every so often, willing him to be wrong just once, but so far it has only made her more certain that Mulder is part compass.
Between the pair they’ve taken a two star tour of motels across America thanks to the FBI’s guide of approved accommodations. The fixtures, beds and set up between the rooms vary slightly but after a few years of working with Scully these motels start to feel more like home to Mulder than his own apartment.
Mulder has no qualms making himself comfortable in Scully’s room, leaving clothing behind and lying on her bed. Despite her futile objections, Scully understands that their rooms are a shared space, and has grown accustomed to her motel pillow smelling like him.
Scully regularly falls asleep in his room; late nights reviewing case notes, jet lag or just watching tv.
Through their partnership they’ve shared a bed more often than not, but it doesn’t seem to count if they don’t talk about it and one of them leaves before the sunrise.
It was Scully’s suggestion that on the weekend they start spending time apart, eager to create some work life balance. For Mulder, this seemed like a punishment, and initially he spent the first few weekends calling her with feckless excuses simply to hear her voice. Despite feigning agitation, Scully never hesitated to take his calls, and enjoyed their chats more than she let on.
Within a few weeks a compromise was made and Mulder was invited to join her in eating leftovers made by her mother on Monday nights. On mention of this new routine, Maggie quickly started making up plates specifically for Fox, baffled as to why Dana just didn’t bring him to dinner on Sunday. Scully noticed that Mulder’s plates always had the biggest pieces of casserole and he was always supplied with dessert (even at the cost of a dinner guest not getting seconds).
Friday nights became when they would watch movies at his place. For years they kept up a pretense of reviewing case notes on these nights, but the rented video and take out easily distracted them and their productivity never eventuated passed a vague discussion of whatever case they’d been working on.
Scully’s boundary to maintain some professional distance over the weekend began to fail miserably as they started bumping into each other at museum exhibits or movies they’d mentioned to each other during the week, so it just became logical to coordinate to go together.
Soon grocery shopping became an activity they started doing together because the supermarket in Virginia stocked the fancy cheese Scully liked and she could make sure Mulder bought more than just beer and poptarts. Scully always stocked poptarts and sunflower seeds at her house for him. Mulder always has diet soda and carrot sticks in his fridge for her.
She steals his shirts and sleeps in them because they smell like him. Mulder steals them back after she cleans them and pretends not to notice when he sees her wearing one to bed or around the house.
He has accused her of being a cat because she always snuggles into him when she’s cold and only wants affection on her terms, she also gets pissy when she gets wet. This is met with an eye roll and a decidedly feline look of disdain from Scully that Mulder adores. If Scully is a cat then Mulder is her unwieldy golden retriever, a statement met with glee by Mulder as he shakes his head like a dog and gives her a big slobbery kiss on the cheek, earning him a laugh while Scully scratches her hands through his hair.
One day they’ll argue over when exactly their anniversary is because how could you possibly pick which milestone gets precedence? The truth is they were a couple long before they were ever ‘together’ and perhaps that alone means the start was their beginning.
Note: This is a completely new style for me, it’s almost head canon and kind of poetic. I’m contemplating doing other chapters but I’m not sure if it works. Let me know in the comments if it’s worth doing a Relationship chapter and an IWTB era chapter. No beta, just me and my scrambled brain.
It’s been just 7 days since she came out of the hospital and two days since she was cleared to work again. She opted to take some extra time at Skinner’s behest when a dizzy spell had her teaching the rest of the lecture from her desk.
We kind of really need her back, the schedule manager had said to him when Mulder protested that she had beaten a particularly aggressive form of cancer and was still recovering.
Goddamn parasites, he thought bitterly as he headed to Scully’s apartment to inform her. The office wasn’t the same without her. There wasn’t much to do. But more importantly, he missed her. While he would have rather swallowed glass than openly admit it, he showed it in other ways, like bringing with him some Chinese food. It was around lunchtime anyway. He hoped she’d approve… she hadn’t been eating much because of the treatments but now, she was starting to get her color back.
He let himself into the apartment like she so often did, and saw her on the couch, cleaning her gun. He paused, before clearing his throat quietly. She looked over and there was a ghost of a smile on her features that grew as she spotted the food.
“Mulder, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
He smiled despite himself and moved to put the food on the table.
“It’s lunchtime and there’s not really a lot for me to do when you’re not there. I also thought it would soften the blow of me telling you that they want you back in to work tomorrow because they’re extremely short staffed from you know, the shutdown and all. Sorry. I talked to them, and they steamrolled me and Skinner,” Mulder admitted as he set up lunch for them. When she didn’t answer, Mulder glanced over and caught the look on her face, like he had found something she had been looking for years.
“What?” He asked, pausing with the carton of rice he was about to open.
“This… I mean… I didn’t think I would see you until I had to come in. You could have called. But you came here and brought lunch. Thank you, Mulder.”
Mulder rubbed the back of his head bashfully.
“You make it sound like I never—“
“You don’t—“
“That’s not true I—“
Scully laughed, and the sound of it made his hair stand on end. There was a warmth in his belly that made him smile, and he realized that it had been a long time since he had heard her laugh. It felt good to make her laugh. She approached him slowly, and took his hand, using her thumb to rub large, lazy circles over his knuckles.
“Thank you, Mulder. Really. I’ll be okay, I’ve been out of commission for a while. Those autopsies aren’t going to perform themselves,” she said, and Mulder felt a twinge of sadness.
“Scully, I’m…” he stopped himself with a sigh, and collected his thoughts before saying,
“I’m really glad you’re okay. This is the second time I’ve almost lost you… I’m very glad that you’re still here. That’s… that’s really all I wanted to say.”
Scully seemed to study him as he brought her hand to his lips and pressed a soft kiss on it. There really wasn’t a proper was to describe the kind of relationship they had, but he didn’t think he wanted to label it regardless. It was fine just they way it was.
They’ve been debating which case to work on next week so long that the car windows are all Rorschach test splotches of fog.
There’s a moment’s lull in conversation. Mulder reaches into the console, fishes out his bag of seeds and pulls it apart. His eyes lock on twin silhouettes in trench coats moving through the mist about twenty feet outside their car.
“You know, I hear they’re more than just partners,” he offers in a conversational tone.
“Who?”
“Gillis and Perez,” Mulder says, cracking open a sunflower seed, gesturing out the front windshield. “That’s the water cooler gossip, anyway.”
“Spending a lot of time at the water cooler, Mulder?”
“I’m in the know, Scully.”
They’ve been waiting in the car outside a row of weather-battered warehouses for two hours, part of a coordinated raid that hasn’t gotten its go-ahead yet. There have been days of briefings and prep, but something seems to have gone to shit, because they’re sitting positioned with practically the entire Bureau twiddling their thumbs. Dressed for action with no place to go.
Mulder suspects they’re probably not really necessary in this operation, which is about the size of the invasion of Normandy. They’d probably not be missed if they drove off and went to pick up some hamburgers.
But they’re nothing if not team players. And besides, this isn’t so bad. Scully sighs next to him, and he subtly glances at her. She’s leaning back against the seat, the soft arch of her neck exposed and her lips slightly parted. There are worse ways to spend an evening.
He turns back to watching Gillis and Perez through the front window. They’re dutifully walking the perimeter of the closest building.
The two agents don’t look overtly romantic, he decides. If it’s true, they’re discreet. They do walk side by side, very little distance between them, but they don’t touch one another. Gillis is a tall woman, so she stands almost at Perez’s height, and their heads keep arching towards one another to talk.
He wonders what they’re talking about. It could be anything—the raid, the weather, their favorite sexual positions.
Scully’s eyes track them, too, seeming to note every possible tiny physical clue.
“Hmm,” she says slowly and thoughtfully, “I admit, that’s interesting.”
“Interesting that it’s an open secret and there don’t seem to be any repercussions?”
“Yes,” Scully says, pushing back against the seat and stretching out her limbs like a cat. “And interesting in other ways, too.” She reaches down and, peeking first, helps herself to some of his sunflower seeds, her small hand slipping into the bag’s interior without crackling the wrapper.
Mulder makes an affirmative humming sound. “I thought so, too.”
“I mean, on some level it’s perfectly understandable,” Scully adds, placing some seeds between her lips, her eyes still focused out the window where the pair have disappeared around the corner. “They’re both very attractive. It’s hard to date in this job. People have needs.”
Mulder glances at her warily again. Jaw working on his own handful of seeds, he doesn’t answer right away, cautiously processing this statement. “Sure,” he says mildly. “I guess you’re right.”
And then the car is quiet, only the sound of cracking seeds and the rustling of the bag as he reaches for more.
“Actually,” Scully says casually, “it makes me think that we could do something like that.”
Mulder turns to her. “Something like what?”
“What Gillis and Perez are doing.”
“What?” He blinks rapidly. “Are you being serious?”
“Yes,” she says. Staring out the front window, she certainly appears serious, if a little uptight.
“You’re teasing, right?”
She looks down and carefully smooths the dark pants she wore for the raid, as if she has just noticed many sudden wrinkles. “If you don’t want to, fine. I was just raising the idea.”
“Raising… the idea,” he repeats, bewildered.
“Okay, Mulder,” she says with a small sigh. “I get it. It’s out of the question.”
“I’m just shocked that you would bring it up like … that you would just … it’s unexpected.”
“Let’s change the subject then. How do you like the Knicks this year?”
“I mean…” Mulder runs his hands down the sides of his face, dragging his cheeks. “What are you suggesting, exactly? How would you see it working?”
Scully’s eyes flash to his. “I’m not suggesting something in particular. It would be open to negotiation.”
“Open to negotiation,” Mulder says, shaking his head in disbelief. “Jesus, Scully.”
“What’s your concern exactly?”
“So this would be a ‘meeting needs’ kind of deal,” he says, using finger quotes. “A ‘taking care of basic urges’ situation.”
“That’s one possibility,” she says brusquely.
Mulder’s head twists rapidly back towards her. “What are the other possibilities?”
“Well,” Scully says. Her face changes color. “It could be a little more traditional than that, I suppose.”
“Traditional like what?”
“I don’t know, Mulder,” she says, throwing her hands up. “It would be open to negotiation. Is there an arrangement you would prefer?”
“To be honest,” he says, “I’d prefer not to have an arrangement at all.”
“Then we certainly don’t have to discuss it any more.” Her lips draw tightly.
“No, no,” he says, and he reaches out to place his hand on hers without thinking. “That came out wrong.”
“Mulder,” she says, stiffening under his touch, “let’s just gracefully drop it, okay? I regret bringing it up.”
“I just don’t want an arrangement,” he repeats meaningfully. “I don’t want a negotiation.”
“I get it,” she says shortly, jerking her hand out from under his.
“No,” he says. “No, you don’t.” He takes a deep breath. “It’s not that I don’t want … what you suggest. I’ve thought about it. A lot. Maybe too much.”
Scully’s mouth twitches at the corners as she apparently absorbs this. “Okay,” she responds. A pause. “Then why not?”
Mulder rubs his temples aggressively.
“I don’t think I could do it without … all of it. I mean, that’s not strictly true. I could do it. I’m only human. But I think it would end … really badly.”
“End badly how?”
“I don’t know about you, but to me sometimes it seems like things are too complicated between us already. This would be upping the ante. I’m pretty sure I’d always be wanting the whole thing.”
She’s confused. “What do you mean by ‘all of it?’ The ‘whole thing?’ We could negotiate that, if you wanted it. Make it part of the arrangement.”
“Scully,” he says in a fond, exasperated tone. “You can’t negotiate being in love. You know that, right?”
He thinks for a moment she’s not going to respond.
“And that’s what … you want?”
“Well, it’s probably not something I’m going to have a ton of willpower about, so don’t test me,” he says with a rueful hitch in his voice. “But in my experience, it’s a bad idea to enter into a sexual relationship with someone you’re in love with if they’re not in love with you.”
Scully is very still, apparently reacting to the implied revelation. He steels himself for more.
“I admit, I’ve done it in the past,” Mulder says. He’s proud of how calm he sounds. “I might even be prone to it, whatever that says about me. It’s ended in spectacular fucking heartbreak. You think it will work out, that you’ll convince the person, and it feels real. But it’s not. And in those cases, it wasn’t like…” He breaks off. “Well, it wasn’t like this partnership. Which, as I hope you know, is ... already different from most other kinds of relationships. I just think this would be a lot worse. More painful.” He hesitates before saying the last word. “Devastating.”
They don’t say anything for a moment. Scully has a strange, almost dazed expression on her face.
“Gillis and Perez,” Scully says, gesturing to where they’d walked around the corner. “Is that a meeting-basic-needs situation?”
“I have no idea,” Mulder says. “Maybe. Or maybe they’re one another’s soulmates. I don’t know. Water cooler didn’t cover that.”
She nods once. He hears her toying with the edge of the sunflower seed bag.
“For what it’s worth,” she says, after a moment, “I didn’t bring up the meeting-basic-needs idea. You did.”
Mulder’s brow furrows. “Did I? I thought you mentioned ‘needs.’”
“I used the word ‘negotiation,’” she continues, in her precise work voice. “Which doesn’t really reveal anything about the feelings of any of the parties. It just means parameters would have to be agreed on in advance.”
“I guess,” Mulder says doubtfully.
“I don’t know if it would be as risky as you’re thinking,” she adds with finality. “It seems to me that you’re making some faulty assumptions.”
“I don’t think I am,” Mulder says stubbornly. “I know myself pretty well, and I know my feelings.”
“Yes,” she replies, “but you don’t know mine.”
A pause.
“No,” he says in a different tone. “Now that you mention it, no, I guess I don’t.”
“It never occurred to me that we would have an arrangement without … attachment. I suppose I took the attachment for granted.”
“Attachment?”
She nods shortly.
“And by attachment, you mean…?”
She bites her lip and rolls her eyes. “Mulder.”
“That embarrasses you, Scully? Talking about feelings?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Just a little hard to believe when you were propositioning me for sex a few minutes ago.”
“I wouldn’t describe it as propositioning you for sex,” she says huffily.
“No? Come on. You were basically like: let’s negotiate a contract and take your pants off, Mulder.”
“That’s not what I was like,” she replies, flushing.
“I know what I heard.”
“I was only trying to say that maybe we should talk about this option … that we don’t ever talk about,” she says tightly. “That we both think about.”
“Scully—”
“An option that’s literally sitting right in front of us. That Gillis and Perez chose for themselves.”
He squirms in his seat, then pulls in a long, slow breath. “Yeah.” He’s not looking at her. “You’re right.”
“You were the one that made me sound so…” She composes herself. “You were the one that took feelings out of the equation.”
He steals a careful look at her. “I’m sorry.”
She doesn’t respond, and she’s looking away from him, but he suspects, from past experience with the various cadences of her voice, that she’s got tears in her eyes.
“I should have realized you had some protections up, too, Scully,” he adds roughly.
She looks down at her hands.
“Scully,” he tries, gently, “just to be clear in negotiation here—are you saying that … it might be possible for you and me to have a relationship where both parties hold equivalent feelings?”
She lifts her head, and there are indeed tears pooling in the corners of her clear blue eyes. “Don’t you know me at all? Haven’t you been paying any attention?”
He reaches over and takes her hand in his. Her small fingers feel gritty, like the salt coating his sunflower seeds.
“I thought I was paying attention,” he says. “But then you go and do something really, really surprising.”
“I thought I was being logical,” she says primly, looking down again.
He places a finger under her chin and tips her face up. “Very logical,” he says in a low, playful voice. “Nothing says logical like initiating a relationship with Fox Mulder.”
24 Days of X-Mas Files Challenge -- Day 17: Scully loves presents
Most of the family is engaged in watching Matthew joyfully rip open a new Mega Bloks castle set, but Mulder's attention—perhaps unsurprisingly—is drawn to Scully this early Christmas morning.
She will never, never admit it, but Scully adores getting presents. He's seen numerous times how her entire demeanor changes to that of someone decades younger at the mere thought of being given a gift. He still remembers the soft lilt of surprise and delight in her voice when he bought her a small glass paperweight to celebrate her one year of remission. ("Mulder...is this for me?" God.)
Hindsight 20/20, he wishes he'd saved the spa day gift certificate for when it was just the two of them...given the trembling, anticipatory nature of their current relationship it almost feels too intimate having her open it surrounded by her family now. Even though they're hardly alone, the way her eyes glimmer as she reads his note makes him desperately crave that they were together by themselves in his apartment. He wants to take her to bed and make her eyes glimmer for a different reason. She looks up at him, happily flushed, and whispers 'thank you' silently. He makes a mental note to consciously make more effort on her birthday in a couple months. He wants to please her like this again.
"Fox? Do you want to open one of your gifts?" Puzzled, he alters the trajectory of his gaze from his partner to her mother, who is expectantly pointing from where she sits on the sofa to a small pile of gifts that he hadn't noticed before tucked beneath the tree. His throat nervously tightens.
"Oh, eh—I didn't um..." he trails off, embarrassed. Aside from a handful of gifts for Scully, he'd only brought a store-bought box of fudge for Maggie as a last-minute hostess gift. With his impetuous decision to show up unannounced at the Scully holiday event, he'd neglected to get gifts for the rest of the family.
Scully, as always, comes to his rescue. He feels her small, warm hand slide over his forearm as he has a small internal combustion.
"They're just little things, don't worry Mulder," she consoles him quietly.
He's slightly relieved to find there are only four gifts for him (including a Secret Santa gift—shockingly—from Bill, a necktie that is admittedly too subtle a pattern for himself but probably still too loud for Scully...he's tickled about that one). Two of them are from Scully and one from Maggie.
Maggie's gift is a simple one, but no less lacking in care—a handmade scarf and gloves; hunter green, his favorite color. Scully's gifts are tasteful and thoughtful as always: this year's VHS of Super Stars of the Super Bowl (a yearly running gag gift between the two of them) and the other a brand new coffee machine with a to-go thermos. Something compels him to pop the lid off the thermos and look inside. When he does, he finds a folded sticky note tucked inside the aluminum cylinder.
You being here is the greatest gift you could have given me...one amongst the many. Xx S
He doesn't need her to explicate the gifts to which she refers, although she is completely unaware of just how much more he'd be willing to sacrifice to keep her safe and happy. He feels his throat tighten again, this time with gratitude and love...so much love that he still does not believe himself worthy of receiving.
He thinks back, for probably the fiftieth time this week, to his grandfather's pocket watch hidden in a lone wool sock in the corner of his suitcase. He's agonized about it for years now, wondering if he'll ever have the guts to pass it on. A handful of times he's obsessed about it to the point where it's almost made him sick with nerves and doubt.
My beloved
For the first time he's completely certain of his decision...he's going to give it to her.
Set between Rm9sbG93ZXJz & My Struggle IV, Scully moves back into the Unremarkable House after her smart home burns down and returns to an age-old ritual: coloring her hair.
T, 1.8k, fluff/domestic fluff, read on ao3 here.
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Lamp light casts shadows on the wall as Scully unpacks in a place she never thought she’d find herself again: the master bedroom she and Mulder shared for almost a decade. She lays her remaining clothes on the tribal-patterned bedspread and smirks at how little the room has changed. She expected to be put up in the guest room and was perfectly fine with that. They had rarely gotten any use out of it--she figured an inhabitant would do it some good. Imagine her shock, then, when Mulder told her he hadn’t slept in “their” room since she left. That the room was all hers.
It shouldn’t have surprised her that after a decade of a bed, he returned to what he knew upon losing what he had known. He swapped the couch he slept on for seven years for a Barcalounger. An old man needs his amenities, he joked while showing her its heat and massage functions. And she felt a gnawing in the pit of her stomach, the mark of a fool.
She salvaged what she could from the fire, but most of her Bethesda things were ruined. That soulless smart house was never worth its automated thermostat system, let alone any of its other data mines disguised as gizmos. Mulder hated it--hated it, like, wouldn’t step foot in it, and if she’s being honest, that was the only selling point for her: the shelter it offered from his incessant search for truth & his unsatisfiable conscience. This was back when she felt like that was something she needed to get away from, of course. She had wanted to settle somewhere and mean it. Now, she realizes they were settled all along.
She rests a pile of folded clothes in the crook of her arm and pulls open her old dresser. She envisioned cobwebs--maybe even a whole family of spiders--in there, but instead, a ratty New York Knicks t-shirt greets her. And a Spaceship Earth one under that, and a Wile E. Coyote one under that. Her holy trinity of Mulder t-shirts. She refused to take them when she left, though he insisted. And in protest, he hadn’t worn them. She knows this instinctively, though the lack of laundry scent confirms it. They’ve been waiting in this drawer all along, captives to Mulder’s fantasy that one day she would open it again.
Scully squeezes her eyes shut, slips the pile in next to the shirts, slams the drawer, and grabs her toiletries bag off the bed, striding into the bathroom. She can’t dwell...she can’t. She’s learned by now that regret is a state of mind that freezes her up, and there’s no being frozen, not any more.
Unzipping the bag, she lines her various products along the counter. Age-defying this, anti-aging that...sunscreen is really the only thing that’s done her any good. That, and hair dye. She keeps the others around for show.
Speaking of...she pokes at her roots, scouring the mirror for signs that yes, she could theoretically be a grandma--and she can’t say for certain that she isn’t--but to her knowledge, she’s not, and as long as no one calls her Grandma, she won’t accept the title.
She won’t accept the gray hairs, either. One day, sure, but not yet. Mulder’s not even gone gray yet, and he has years on her. She’s told him that he would look great, and that the silver fox nickname would be nothing short of perfection, but he swears that he just hasn’t lost his “natural luster” yet, that he’ll embrace the gray when (if!) it comes.
Scully’s not been so lucky, though it doesn’t show. She’s been coloring her hair every three weeks since she was twenty-eight to keep the ravishing red. She’ll never forget when Mulder realized it wasn’t her natural color...the way his eyes widened as he moved between her legs…
It’s not as if he didn’t know; her mousy auburn had been on full display when they first met, and yet he’d gotten so used to seeing her as she is that it slipped his mind that she hadn’t always been that way. And once they moved in together--in this very bathroom, actually--he loved to help her with the coloring process, was as fascinated by it as the prospect of alien-human hybrids.
She chooses the tube of Rock it Like a Redhead dye from her product line-up, looks at her reflection. It’s been five--no, six--nearing seven--years since she performed this ritual in this room. She glances down, and sure enough, the tile still bears a rust-colored stain from one of her sessions gone wrong. It makes her smile...she has a history here. They have a history here.
She sighs. For old time’s sake, she might as well...she’s found herself thinking that a lot lately.
Her old robe--her usual attire for the occasion--fell victim to the fire, but she’s got a good substitute in mind. She pads back into the bedroom and plucks the Wile E. Coyote shirt from the drawer. It’s black, hopefully that will hide any stains. Her slacks are too damn expensive to risk an accident, so she briefly considers stripping to her panties before settling on a pair of gym shorts.
Her get-up in place, she grabs a few clips from her bag and pins her hair up in four sections. This is one of the reasons she got her chop; her long hair was sexy, but it was a bitch trying to cover all those layers. Plus, Mulder is fond of “the Scully shag” as he calls it, though she corrects him every time (it’s not a shag Mulder, it’s a bob!). It reminds him of their firsts, she imagines. It’s almost as if the longer her hair got, the further apart they drifted. And once they were okay again, it was imperative that she bear her neck to him...show him the place where his lips should land.
She decides to stand in the shower (water off, of course) so any mess can be rinsed away. She wonders, suddenly, if the square mirror they used to keep is still suctioned to the glass interior. It’ll be hard to do this alone if it’s not.
She peeks in, and it’s not there, and that must be the only thing in this house Mulder has moved. Figures. She slips off her shoes and grabs the applicator and dye tube. She’ll do the best she can, then use the bathroom mirror to make any touch-ups.
Scully steps into the shower. Its characteristic lemon scent is gone, and that makes her sad. It used to be a welcome change from the antiseptic hospital smell she dealt with all day. Wielding her tools, she starts at her roots, spreading the dye along her scalp with expert precision. Surely this counts as a workout--it takes a lot of energy to hold your arms over your head for this long. Will her Fitbit calculate how many calories she’s burning, she wonders?
She’s just started a new strand when a gentle rap echoes through the wall.
“Scully?” Mulder’s voice rings from outside the bedroom. She pulled the door slightly shut when she entered.
“Come in!” she calls. “In the bathroom.”
She hears footsteps in the adjacent room, then a hesitant breath as Mulder pauses at the doorway. “Are you decent?”
Scully looks down at herself. What a picture. “I’m in a Wile E. Coyote t-shirt and gym shorts. Does that answer your question?”
Mulder shuffles in, smirking at the sight of her through the open shower door. “What are you doing?”
She points to the crown of her head--which is already well within his field of vision--so she’s not sure why he needed to ask the question.
“Well, I see that,” Mulder concedes, “but I mean, why are you hunched over in here like you’re hoping to grow a third arm?”
Scully shrugs. “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
“That’s just as lame as ‘boys will be boys,’ and you know it,” he counters, remembering a spirited lecture she once gave him on the misogynist undertones of the phrase. Scully smirks. They had that conversation years ago...post-William, pre-Bahamas. She’s surprised that it stuck with him.
She tilts her chin in a way that makes Mulder certain she’d have her hands on her hips if they weren’t occupied. “What do you suggest?” she challenges.
“Let me help you,” he proposes before she can launch a protest. His sneaker’s rubber sole meets the shower tile as he slips in beside her. The wall is cold against her elbow as she scoots back to make room for him.
“I’m fine. I’ve been doing this on my own for years, and I was long before you.”
“But now you have me,” he professes. “Here. Right now,” he clarifies, not meaning to label their as-yet undefined relationship status.
Their eyes meet, and Scully’s hit with the last time the two of them were in here--her legs around his waist, his hands sliding through her hair, droplets that couldn’t be placed as shower water, sweat, or tears. Her spine straightens against the very wall where she was pinned. Times change, yet they don’t. History repeats itself in a slightly different key.
“When I was younger, I did this because I liked the color,” she tells him, finishing a section and lowering her hands. “Now, I do it out of necessity. It’s sad, Mulder.” She juts her lower lip out in a faux pout. “We’re getting old.”
He would hug her, but he’d mess up her hair and it would be a whole thing. “Hey, I’ll be pushing your wheelchair with my wheelchair, remember?” he says, taking her slip into sentimentality as permission.
Scully nods, the delicate memories of years past bringing a slight frown to her face.
“Can you do me a favor?” she asks, raising to her tiptoes, then lowering again. Her eyes twinkle.
“Of course.”
She offers him the tube of dye, looks up at him with a smile.
“Can you get right here?” She points to a spot right above her temple, one she could definitely reach herself if she wanted to.
Mulder admires her. His woman, back in his old t-shirt and all. He plants his lips on her temple, breathing her in. No matter what she says about aging or being old, he’ll never believe her. She is as she was back then: the only semblance of peace he’s ever known.
He pulls away to meet her gaze, his voice warm and smooth. “Is that about where you want it?”
Could you write a story about that trash scene where Scully isnt completely okay after the fall?
Hurt/comfort for "Nothing Lasts Forever". This is set the night before the scene in the church.
Fictober Day 7 | Tagging @today-in-fic @xffictober2022 | Wc: 1328.
There's No Place Like Home
Scully’s pungent smell may be worrisome for his nose, but it’s not why Mulder keeps shooting concerned glances at his partner after her fall down the trash chute. It’s the way she walks. 20 years of having her walk beside him, towards him, and away from him, but this is new. She’s limping. As much as she’s trying to pretend she’s fine and trying to disguise it by moving slowly, Mulder isn’t blind – even if his eyesight is no longer what it used to be.
“Stop staring at me, Mulder,” she says. “Please.”
“You’re not fine,” he says.
“I’m just a bit sore.”
“You should get checked out at a hospital. I can drive you.”
“No,” she says, picking up speed to prove her point to him. “Look, I’m fine. I just need to walk it off.” He loves her stubbornness. Once, she told him that she fell in love with him because he was stubborn. Well. That was the pot calling the kettle black. No one is as stubborn as his Scully. Any other day, he finds it cute. When she refuses to budge because she knows how things should be done, he admires it. But when she’s hurt, hobbling away from him, holding her side and grimacing, just so she can appear invincible, he can’t accept it.
“Scully,” he says gently, taking her arm. She stops walking but avoids his eyes. “You can’t outhobble me, you know.” His words have the desired effect and she chuckles, only to wince a moment later.
“And you can’t just make words up.”
“Watch me. Where does it hurt?” He asks. “And please be honest,” he adds, searching her face.
“My back,” she admits in a whisper. “My hip, too.”
“That’s it,” Mulder says. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“Mulder, wait. It’s not that bad,” she says and he’s ready to protest when she stops him with a hand on his chest. “I don’t need to go to a hospital. Take me home.”
“Home,” he repeats slowly as if he’s just learned the word.
“Yes, home,” she says, taking his hand into hers. They hobble to the car together.
Just like he suspected, Scully falls asleep on the drive home. For just a moment he considers driving to the hospital anyway, just to have her checked out. He can’t help but worry about her. Now, or ever. But he values her trust too much to disrespect her wishes like that. He will be by her side, her best friend, her partner, and her substitute doctor all in one. If anything changes, if her condition worsens, he will drive her to the hospital, no matter what it is.
He glances over at her, smiling softly. How long has he wanted to hear her say these words? Take me home. He wishes it hadn’t been because of her fall, but these days he takes whatever he can get. And after all, he gets to bring her home, where she belongs.
“Scully,” Mulder murmurs, gently touching her hand. “We’re here.”
“Home already?” She opens one eye to squint at him and his heart soars when she gives him a droopy smile. “Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” he replies with a quick laugh. “Want me to carry you?” She seems to consider it, but then she shakes her head.
“Just help me out.”
This, he figures, might just be a taste of their future when they’re old and frail. Well, older and even more fragile. They need twice as long to cover the distance from the car to their house, taking baby steps. Mulder is half carrying Scully, his arm around her waist, but making sure he’s not putting pressure on her sore hip.
“You sure you don’t want me to carry you?”
“I’m sure, Mulder,” she says through gritted teeth. “I can do this.” In the end, they do it together. Step by step and always in sync, they make it inside the house.
“You made it,” Mulder says, kissing her cheek.
“I might need your help with the stairs,” she laments.
“That’s what I’m here for.”
They both know they’d get upstairs faster if only she’d let him carry her. But she refuses. Instead, she grips his hand tightly, his knuckles turning white, and does it herself. Five minutes later they take the last step and Scully leans heavily against him.
“Bed,” he says, leading her into the bedroom.
“I can’t go to bed like this,” she says, following him on slow feet.
“You can wear an old shirt of mine. You haven’t stolen all of them yet.” He winks at her.
“I mean….” She looks up at him, almost shy. “I fell into ten years worth of trash. I need a shower.”
“No way,” he says. “You barely made it up the stairs. I’m not letting you into the shower, no matter what you smell like.” Her face falls. “But I have an idea.”
Mulder helps her undress, having done it hundreds of times. They don’t speak as she rests her hands on his shoulder so he can take off her pants and underwear. He’s meticulous in his work and Scully lets him do it, following his movements like a marionette.
“Oh Scully,” he says when he sees colorful bruises growing on her beautiful skin. He runs a finger over one that's purple and deep before he kisses it gently.
“Mulder, I stink.”
“No, you don’t.” She raises her eyebrows, giving him a skeptical look. “Fine, you do. But not for long.” Mulder wets a washcloth and puts some of her shower gel on it that she left and that he never had the heart to throw away. He keeps his touches light and delicate as he runs the cloth over her skin, wanting to be thorough but gentle.
“Tell me if I hurt you.”
“You won’t,” she assures him.
By the time he’s done, she’s leaning heavily against the wall with half-lidded eyes, her skin peppered with goosebumps. He’d feel self-conscious about her falling asleep while he’s touching her, but instead, he’s honored. No matter what they are or aren’t at the moment, she trusts him enough to let him take care of her.
Together they get her into an old pair of boxer shorts and one of his shirts. Scully takes a deep breath, a smile playing around her lips.
“What?” Mulder asks her, carefully leading her back into the bedroom.
“Smells like you,” she says. “Smells good.”
“Get into bed,” he says, his voice full of emotion. She crawls in, claiming her side of the bed. Mulder tucks her in and presses a kiss to her forehead. Just as he’s about to get up, she grabs his arm.
“Where are you going?” She asks him.
“The couch,” he says.
“Stay here, please.”
He stares at her, mulling over her words, wondering why she’s doing it now. After their tryst a couple of months ago, he had hope. So much hope. Only to have it crushed again. They keep coming back to this moment, to toeing the line, always falling back on the safe side, where they don’t share a bed or a home.
“I’m not high on painkillers, Mulder,” she says as if reading his mind. “Or in any way compromised. I just want you here with me. If that’s… if that’s what you want to, too.”
“More than anything else in the world, Scully.”
“Then take off your clothes and get into bed.”
“You’re bossy,” he says with a grin, undressing quickly.
“I thought you knew that,” she replies with a yawn. Her eyes are closed when he gets in next to her, but she scoots closer to him like she used to do back when things were different. He barely dares to breathe, worried he might hurt her, worried she might change her mind.
“I missed you so much,” he whispers into the dark, convinced she’s already asleep.
This story deftly and perfectly explores the idea that Mulder is home for Scully even more than the house where they live.
Title: in the vacant places, we will build with new bricks
Author: zauberer_sirin (@becketted)
Summary: Post-I Want To Believe
Length: ~1,375 words
Classification: Angst, Fluff
Rating: Not rated
Spoilers: I Want To Believe
Favorite line: A cent has its own symbol, the pierced lowercase C, the “¢ “ and Mulder wishes all things could be labeled with something that was entirely theirs, no confusion, a true name of their own.
Read the story!
I agree with you about Mulder’s softness; chiseled muscles are overrated. Mulder is snuggly but defined and we love him very much
yes we do anon. obviously all body types are loveable, but personally i love when there’s a natural softness. don’t need you to get chiseled at the gym and bring home an 8-pack. even when mulder gets beefier, he’s still a softboi. i also love jake johnson for the same reason, i wanna cuddle him. I know there’s a lot of pressure on men to have unreasonable ‘sexy’ gym bodies too but tbh…don’t need that to find someone attractive at all.
Picture this: Scully comes in from a long, double shift at the hospital. It was emotionally taxing; one of the children at the ward she works at took a turn for the worse, and the parents are losing hope. She’s losing hope. It’s late, around 1 in the morning when she leaves the hospital to go home.
She makes the hour and a half drive from the city to the house she shares with Mulder. Just seeing the porch lights turn on as she approaches the front steps instantly allays some of her stress. She fumbles with her key a bit, but opens the door.
Mulder is on the couch in his undershirt, napping. The TV is on and muted, the light from the set flickering in the dimmed living room, dancing across Mulder’s sleeping form. Scully isn’t moved to do anything other than stare at Mulder’s features, of which she notes a particular naturally occurring softness. He had taken to exercising, to stave off the encroaching feeling of boredom and depression; it shows in his muscles, of which are defined on his body, in particular, his arms. No, he isn’t Terry Crews. Far from it, and yet this brings a smile to her face because he’s just Fox Mulder—her Fox Mulder.
Scully sheds her coat, and takes off her shoes. She heads over to the couch and climbs on to join him, tucking her smaller frame under his larger one and drawing his arms over her in an embrace. She can’t see his face, but she feels him shifting, his chest pressing against her back in a comforting way, and his arms tightening every so slightly around her.
“Long day?” He mutters sleepily into her ear. It sends shivers down her spine, and she turns in his arms to face him, her hand tracing the faint impression his figure gives off through his undershirt. Yeah, he’s soft, but it’s perfect. He’s Mulder shaped, and it makes her forget, just for a while that the world beyond their door is evil, cruel and uncaring sometimes.
“Yeah.”
They share this moment on the couch, Scully feeling safe and secure in his perfectly-suited-for-her arms.
