I still love this website so much because it feels like the last connection we have to an internet that doesn’t exist anymore like I can come on here and scroll through posts that are literally just funny or beautiful or interesting with no intention to sell me something or influence me we are all just here for a laugh. Nothing is just for laughs anymore EXCEPT tumblr dot com
Scully has her theories, of course, but none of them can account for every symptom she’s observed tonight.
Diana frowns down at Mulder. “No, I think that’s enough for tonight, Fox. Let’s get you to bed.” She levels Scully with a dark look. “In your opinion as a medical doctor, wouldn’t you agree that’s more important than answers right now?”
Scully’s eyes narrow. “I would never begrudge Mulder the rest he so clearly needs. But I know I’m owed an explanation. If not for my own sake, then so that I know how to help treat him, if and when he needs help again.”
Mulder scrubs his face roughly, then stands, wincing at the change in elevation. Instinctually, Scully takes a step forward to steady him, but Diana’s at his side before she can reach him.
“Don’t be more foolish than you’ve already been tonight,” the other woman scolds softly. Her eyes flick contemptuously in Scully’s direction. “We can figure this out in the morning. Right now, he needs rest.”
Mulder bats Diana away with a dismissive hand then stumbles unsteadily into the kitchen, where he pours himself a glass of orange juice from the fridge. Unwittingly, Scully meets Diana’s eye and sees more than the woman’s usual derision shining back. There’s hostility there, and a cold, calculating protectiveness too. It’s jarring enough that Scully’s skin prickles with unease. Something’s up, and now that there’s no longer an emergency, she wants to get to the bottom of it.
Crouching down, she reaches for the container of syringes, contemplating their contents. She fingers one of the remaining shots, turning it this way and that to observe its color and viscosity, and finding nothing that could possibly clue her in.
“A scientist at work,” Diana murmurs, her heels clacking against the hardwood as she comes to stand over Scully. “Charming.”
Ignoring her, Scully stands, moving the liquid into the light to check for anything she’s missed. And there, right on the cartridge encapsulating the antidote itself, is exactly what she needs. A batch number, printed in such miniscule type that she considers whether Diana even knows it’s there. She scans it quickly, committing it to memory before tucking it into the waistband of her pants.
She shrugs and shakes her head. “I give, Agent Fowley,” she carefully lies. “There are no latent clues here about what this could possibly be. It looks and moves like any of a hundred injectable compounds already on the market. There’s nothing at all distinguishable about the way this formula looks.” A pause. “So what is it?”
“How’d you come by the antidote?” Mulder interrupts smoothly, and Scully’s eyes flit up at his accusatory tone.
Diana lifts an innocent brow. “You knew exactly what that drug compound does and yet you chased after Daniel Parsons, despite my explicit warnings against pursuing him personally, and took the drug anyway. Knowing you and your tendencies towards recklessly pursuing the truth at all costs to your own personal health and wellbeing, I won’t pretend that you were injected with it against your will.”
Mulder quirks a wry smile at her. “You sound suspiciously concerned with my health and wellbeing.”
Diana hums. “You know that I’ve always cared for you. Deeply.”
Scully’s face flames, but Mulder pins Diana with his eyes. “You didn’t answer my question. How did you come by the antidote?”
Diana sighs, as if Mulder’s line of questioning is exhausting her. “While you were hunting down known criminals and actively trying to inject yourself with a dose of a highly toxic drug, I was busy hunting down the supplier. You’re in abundant luck that I found him just two nights ago.”
“'Abundant luck,' huh? Then maybe I should play the lottery tonight." He winks at Scully, and she blinks in surprise.
His tone shifts abruptly as he adjusts his gaze back to Diana, eyes narrowing. Tension pressurizes the room and Scully’s heartrate pick ups. Mulder’s eyes flit to her quickly before settling back on Diana.
"You should leave,” he tells Diana, his normally mellow voice edged with icy authority.
Diana huffs a laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
He takes another sip of his juice and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand before striding out of the kitchen, his gait slightly steadier.
“I’m not asking,” he cautions, looming close enough to Diana that the already-tall woman has to tip her head up to meet his eyes.
“I am the only person in this room who knows how to treat your symptoms right now,” she warns him coldly. “So am I really the one you want to send packing tonight?”
Mulder nods, thumbing his lip thoughtfully. “It’s funny,” he starts slowly, “funny how we’ve been looking for that antidote for weeks. We weren’t even sure whether it existed or whether that was just a rumor. And yet the moment I go missing, you’ve suddenly got your hands on it.” His eyes narrow as his voice drops to a threatening rumble. “How many people have died from a drug that has been largely considered untreatable? Dozens? Hundreds? I can name at least five deaths you and I’ve personally investigated, deaths that could have been prevented if we’d had just that.” He throws his arms wide, pointing at the case of syringes. “Yet here I am, the only known recipient of this elusive antidote. Suspiciously alive and well.”
Diana’s spine stiffens, but she doesn’t take the bait.
“What are you suggesting, Mulder?” Scully adds.
Still staring daggers at Diana, Mulder answers. “You’ve had that antidote for a while, haven’t you, Diana? You didn’t just find it two days ago.”
Diana breaks his gaze with a condescending snort. “You and your conspiracies, Fox, I swear—”
“You’ve had the medicine,” he accuses darkly, his voice rising, “a medicine that we’ve been searching for for weeks, and yet you’ve been hoarding it away. But for what? For whom? You couldn’t have known I’d seek out the street drug to test on myself. So who were you holding onto the antidote for? What was the purpose of hiding it away?”
The wheels in Scully’s head are spinning, and she feels the slow slide of puzzle pieces connecting in her mind. She steps closer to Mulder, instinct drawing her near, and at this angle, can see that Diana’s hands are trembling just slightly.
The other woman watches Mulder, her face briefly at war with emotions before she schools it into an unmoving mask. When she speaks, her voice is sharp. “You were always right to trust me, Fox. I’d never let real harm come to you.” She reaches for his hand but he takes a cautious step back. “I procured that antidote for you,” she whispers fiercely, her cheeks flushing.
“Who wanted to drug me?” he asks, his voice unsettlingly quiet.
“I never thought you were a fool. I always believed in you.” She reaches for him again, skimming her fingertips across his temple before he gently brushes her off. “But I can’t help you if you don’t help yourself.” She gestures at the case. “This is my only supply. It’s all I was given. If you encounter that drug again, it’s possible I won’t have enough—”
“Given? By whom?” Scully interrupts. “Who wanted him to encounter the drug?” She considers the possibilities. What are the chances that Mulder became the target of a nefarious plot to poison him soon after he started working with Diana on the X-Files? Her heart hammers furiously at the thought.
At her side, Mulder sucks in a sudden breath as if he’s been punched. Turning, Scully presses a hand to his chest and studies his eyes worriedly, watching as some of the color he’d begun to regain now drains from his face. Fear pulses through her, and when he leans heavily into her, her head snaps towards Diana.
“What’s happening now?” she demands, moving her hands to Mulder’s waist to support his sagging weight. “What’s causing him to deteriorate again?”
Infuriatingly, Diana’s lips quirk. “It’s fascinating how the antidote seems to be buying him tolerance, not full immunity. If you keep flooding his system the way you are, you’ll burn through any remaining doses before dawn.”
“‘Flooding his system’?” Scully repeats aggravatedly. “I’ve heard that you’re a smart woman, Diana, so speak like one. You claim to care about him, and if that’s true in even the slightest interpretation of the word, you will explain to me what’s happening to him, right now!”
Unmoved, Diana simply shakes her head, her expression turning somber. “Fox, you ought to have been so much more careful.” Her eyes flicker to Scully, so quickly that she almost misses it. “Not everything you want is worthy of the way you torture yourself. Not everything has to be this hard. If you’d only let that part go, choose a different path . . . .” She steps close to them, her voice dropping to a low whisper, as if she’s speaking only to Mulder. “You know you could have all of that with me. If intimacy is what you crave, you know that I’m here, and you know that I can give you what you want.”
The urge to use violence claws at Scully’s chest but it fades when Mulder fully collapses into her, a low groan escaping him. She bends under his weight as she tries to prop up his head, frantically studying his eyes. His head lolls to the side, destabilizing her hold on him. They careen to their knees together.
“You have to stop, Scully,” Mulder pleads, swaying into her.
She frowns worriedly. “Stop what?” With a steadying arm at his waist, she manages to slip her fingers into her waistband, extracting the syringe she pocketed. “Does this have to be injected into the muscle?” she barks at Diana.
The other woman ignores her, and Scully curses.
“Dammit,” she whispers as she fumbles one-handed with the syringe, but just as she starts to uncap it, cold hands wrap around her wrist and yank the syringe out of her hands. She shouts and lunges up, dropping Mulder, who collapses fully to the floor.
Diana’s face contorts into an ugly scowl as she takes two steps back, palming the antidote behind her back while producing her gun in front of her. Scully stops dead, staring at the barrel of the weapon, knowing her own is just out of reach, draped with her jacket across a chair by the entrance.
“You think you’re his great savior?” Diana asks haughtily. “You’re the entire reason he’s still sick as a dog right now. You may think you add something special to his life, something he can’t get anywhere else, but a warm body is a warm body, and that’s not hard to come by. You’re just friends who sometimes sleep together?”
“Goddammit, Diana, are you trying to kill me?” Mulder grits out, pressing his forehead to the floor.
Ignoring him, Diana continues. “You’re not as clever as I thought, giving yourself up to him so easily, without any expectations in return. Don’t you see he doesn’t really want you? That you were just a curiosity? That’s what always happens in these types of arrangements. Someone pretends that they don’t want more, and then their heart is broken. Because the moment he had a little taste of you, you lost your worth to him. You’re nothing to him.”
At her feet, Mulder’s breaths start to come more rapidly, and ignoring the pain in her chest, Scully falls back to his side, pressing her fingers to the pulse point at his wrist. He grips her hand hard and squeezes so tightly she thinks her fingers might break.
“Lies, Scully,” he grunts. “She's lying!"
Above them, Diana shakes her head disparagingly, pocketing the seized syringe before crouching to collect the remaining doses, weapon still pointed right at them. “I’m confident he’ll live, though it might be a painful few hours as the side effects wear off.” A small, wry smile lifts to her lips. “So why don’t you try calming down like he said, Dana? Or have I made you so angry that you just can’t control yourself?”
“Stop doing this,” Mulder threatens with as much gravitas as he seems able to muster, “stop taunting her. You know what you’re doing.”
Her lips turn down in a sad, contemplative tilt. “You know, Fox,” she says, backing towards the door, pausing briefly in the threshold, “it wasn’t the slow, careful devastation I’d envisioned, but I find I quite like how this played out. Watching you suffer so spectacularly at her hands. We could never have guessed that your reaction would be so intense you’d need multiple rounds of treatment. But it’s really just perfect.”
Scully’s stomach plummets in horror and Mulder curses against the hardwood.
“Skeptic” this, “believer” that: no, the biggest difference between Mulder and Scully is that both are weirdo freaks but Mulder knows it and Scully thinks she’s normal
i dont understand this new wave of txf fans acting like the show is a glee-level trainwreck and refering to it almost as a guilty pleasure.
its a good show.
it has won awards.
critics and fans have in the present and in the past overwhelmingly liked it.
its got good great character building, thrilling even if sometimes clunky world building, amazing cinematography, award winning writing and actor chemistry that literally created words in the vocabulary.
so whats with this whole
"omg guys i just rewatched that shitshow we like and......its actually not that bad??"
dont get me wrong it has a world of issues namely incosistent lore and misogyny abound but what is this frankly lame perfomance of acting like watching your favorite show is cringey.
and yet you, and you alone, is able to overcome its many flaws to find something decent about it?
anyways im kind of tired of consuming things ironically.
tuser benoitblanc's list of x files fics to change your life
below the cut, because this got LONG. happy reading xoxo gossip girl
casefic
beacon by cecily_sass
instinct by light_loves_the_dark
one hand tied by cecily_sass
she's beauty, she's grace by sunflowerseedsandscience
amor non reciprocatus by papernautilus
the boy on the beach by cecily_sass
you send me by spooky_nerd
angst
slow returns by o666666
the wonder that's keeping the stars apart by sisterspooky1013
tremors in the unshakable ground by coppersunlight
in this metallic silence by light_loves_the_dark
pilgrims creeping toward the dawn by softnow
anchored by wonderland
cancer arc angst
the imperfect art of saving a life by softnow
she still has her hair by mizdiz
they don't talk about dying by mizdiz
when you said never by backatpatrickpark
never by sisterspooky1013
dance without sleeping by wonderland
between sorrow and bliss by sunflowerseedsandscience
seaglass blue by melforbes
something better by bloodscully
maniacs in the fourth dimension by illinoise
bestow by o666666
she can just by edie_rone
faith by kittenscully
aus
paracosm by softnow
xtropy by deadcanons
fickle truths by mizdiz
a winter's tale by anjou
pause by cecily_sass
all that is dark and bright by malibusunset
you he did not fail by extraordinarily_ordinary
parallel by sisterspooky1013
six months by markwatneyandensemble
aus that are just slightly canon divergent
nuptiae sub rosa by sisterspooky1013 and xfmaweezy
the early on series by sunflowerseedsandscience
redux iii by softnow
beyond the shore by softnow
true lies by mldrgrl
the light of a clear blue morning by libbyt
how to lasso the moon by cabbagesandqueens (i'll admit this one is mine. i'm including it on this list because above all else i wrote this fic for Me. so it can go on my rec list it's allowed)
levity
the caller you are trying to reach by cecily_sass
love in all the wrong places by sisterspooky1013
x files aitas by maeveofconnacht
lord help the sister by o666666
die siedler von by kittenscully
misc (multichapter)
fox mulder, closet romantic by silhouetteofacedar
the marriage spectacular by cecily_sass
i'd like for you and i to go romancing by journeyintomystery513
baseball season by apostrophic
baseball metaphors by leiascully
four days on the 63rd parallel by frostbitepanda
plus one by alienqueequeg
misc (oneshot)
kiss it better by backatpatrickpark
at least most things by journeyintomystery513
center mass by kateyes224
one percent by bloodscully
unfinished business by all_these_ghosts
snakebitten by onpaperfirst
restructuring the food pyramid at midnight by justlikeswitchblades
your platonic relationship: an owner's manual by nanda
wips
lots and lots of files by fandomme
teacher's pet by fandomme (i am gnawing at the walls for the next chapter of this. ohhhhhh my god. EVIL cliffhanger)
i don't know, first base by fandomme (i am just keeping up with their whole catalogue atm)
blessed and stricken by mamuscript
hand to your heart by oohnotvery
when it all comes down to dust by plausiblestateoforegon
imposter syndrome by wonderx
method acting by mizdiz (will hopefully return from the war at some point. mizdiz if you see this i love you. you write the best cancer arc in the biz)
I’ve been on a Skinner kick recently (hey hey! In an MSR context guys!) and I might not be the only one
Here’s some recent fic recs for you all. Guaranteed to put a smile on your faces - you’re welcome (all 3k words and under):
@bakedbakermom https://archiveofourown.org/works/58024171 Thursday Night Drinkies (rated Teen and Up) - one of most original ficlets I’ve ever read.
@leiascully https://archiveofourown.org/works/64825117 I Can See You (Up Against The Wall With Me) (rated M)- just a chilled drink after work. Oh…wait.
@thursdayinspace https://archiveofourown.org/works/73676646/chapters/235838141 Smut ficlets (rated E) - it’s important to keep your network active. Plus: 🚢
@little-grey-girl-xf https://archiveofourown.org/works/70714311 The Walls have Ears (rated Teen and Up) best and funniest fix-it. Just read it.
And also @little-grey-girl-xf https://archiveofourown.org/chapters/236122211?show_comments=true&view_full_work=false#comment_1265200256 Close observation (rated M) - Scully’s POV sequel to my story Research Files https://archiveofourown.org/works/88677076
@incidentalwriter https://archiveofourown.org/works/48230428 Dad Jokes (rated Teen and up) - funny and so so Mulder
****
🌟 Special mention to the OG @audreyroget The shirt of course (30k+) which kickstarted my Skinner appreciation as a character to move MSR along https://x-libris.xf-redux.com/book/the-shirt/
