Open Mouth, Insert Foot

married, mommy, writer, lover, singer, goofball, fur-mom. Executive Producer of www.VoiceofTV.com Lover of Bones, Parks and Rec, Friends, Gymnastics, and life.

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar (15/?)

Roads began to populate their path just after noon. First one—a narrow, rutted thing bordered by hedgerows—then another, wider and more worn, with travelers heading in the same direction. That was the first sign.

Then came the smoke.

Not woodsmoke, but the sharp, layered tang of a settlement: coal, animals, metal. The kind of scent that clung to everything and didn’t belong to the forest. By mid-afternoon, they were passing signs carved into posts, the occasional milestone with faded letters, and an increasing number of people.

Dana had tucked her hair beneath her hood and pulled her cloak tighter as they passed a man selling dried apples from a cart and two women pushing a wheelbarrow full of wool. She hadn’t needed to say anything to Fox. He’d already vanished into the underbrush.

It wasn’t until later, when the light was going golden, that she found the farmhouse. The farmer she encountered by the gate had three redheaded daughters and a weathered kindness in his face. When Dana asked if she could stay the night in the barn, he offered her a place by the hearth and a cup of broth. But she had declined—politely, firmly, insisting that she would be more comfortable in the outbuilding. She wanted to stay close to Fox. 

The barn smelled of straw, warm hide, and something sweet and sour—maybe old apples fermenting in the small root cellar. It wasn’t comfortable, exactly, but it was safe. The animals shuffled in their stalls below, and an old cat watched her from the rafters with slow-blinking eyes.

Fox sat at the edge of the loft, back braced against the wall, long legs stretched in front of him. He had returned to his human form at sundown. The tunic she’d dug from the bottom of her satchel looked loose on him, but not ill-fitting. It was still wrinkled from being in her bag.

Dana, nestled into a corner of old blankets and hay, tilted her head toward him. She’d pulled out the book she’d bought on the uses of plants and had been trying to read it. But Fox’s silence had been especially loud. "You’ve been quiet."

He didn’t answer right away. His eyes were on the sliver of night visible through the loft’s hay door. Beyond the frame, the stars had begun to appear.

"You’re thinking about entering the city," he said finally.

She nodded. “We’re close enough now. We need things.”

He made no sound of agreement or protest.

“I’ve still got coin,” she went on. “Not much. But maybe enough for a few days of food. Bandages. Another warm blanket. The nights are getting colder.”

He shifted slightly, resting one arm along his bent knee. Still watching the sky.

“You hate the idea,” she said, not accusingly.

“I hate the idea of you walking into a city alone.”

“There will be a plethora of people about,” she said. “I’ll hardly be alone.”

He exhaled expansively, though he didn’t call her out on her evasiveness. 

“I’ll blend in,” she said with good humor.

He finally looked at her. “You don’t blend in anywhere, Dana,” he said frankly. “You’re too stunning a beauty.”

She felt her face go hot. Her village had few looking glasses, but she knew the delicate features of the girl staring back at her in the water trough. Mildred often told her how fine she looked, and she could feel it in the collected looks from the village men. No one but Agnes with her voluptuous bust and bee stung lips drew as many stares.

But to be noticed by Fox made her feel something else entirely. Not once had he ever leered at her. He treated her as an equal, a partner. She felt safe with him. Safer than she’d felt with any man, ever.

She breathed out through her nose.

“I’ll wear my hood. Smudge dirt on my face.” 

The side of his mouth twitched up ever so slightly. 

“And if something happens?”

She looked him in the eye. “You’ll be nearby.”

A breath. Not quite a sigh.

“I’ll go in during the day,” she continued. “You’ll stay hidden beyond the walls. Meet me at the field outside the gate before sunset. We’ll keep heading north after.”

At that, Fox turned to look at her. The moonlight caught the edge of his profile—steady, quiet.

“You still feel it?” he asked.

North, she thought. He was asking about their destination.

She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. Not a voice, exactly. More like… pressure. Like standing near something just out of sight.”

He gave a slight tilt of his head. “That’s how it started for me too.”

Dana looked over at him, surprised. “You felt it before I did?”

“I’ve always felt north pulling,” he said. “Even before I found you. But now… it’s stronger. Sharper.”

She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “It’s strange. I’ve always needed a map. A plan. But this—I don’t doubt it. I just know.”

He didn’t say anything, but there was something in his gaze that anchored her. A calm acceptance. As if her magic—whatever shape it was beginning to take—was something he had been waiting for all along.

She set down her book and lay back against the hay, her eyes half-lidded. Her voice came out soft. “Try to get some rest.”

“I don’t sleep much at night,” he murmured.

“I know.”

A silence stretched between them—not awkward, but thoughtful. She could hear the low noises of the animals below, the slow creak of the wood beams in the cool air.

After a while, Dana’s eyes slipped closed.

***

They left before sunrise.

Mist clung to the ground like dew, curling around Dana’s ankles as she made her way to the road. She’d memorized the path the evening before. Fox trailed behind her until they neared the edge of a small rise.

“Go,” she said softly, without turning around.

She didn’t need to look to know he was gone. Just like that. As the sun peeked above the horizon, he slipped into the underbrush.

She joined the flow of morning travelers heading toward the city. A slow line of carts and figures on foot, some pushing wheelbarrows, others leading donkeys or goats. Dana kept her head down and her hood up. She listened to the quiet thrum of morning voices, the rattle of wheels, the distant bark of dogs.

Here and there, she caught sight of movement along the road’s edge. The faintest flick of a russet tail. The gleam of gold eyes. Fox, never far, but always just out of reach.

By late afternoon, the city walls rose above the hills like a gray crown. The river glinted to the south, wide and slow, and the road bent sharply before reaching the gates. Dana felt the energy change around her—tension rising, bodies pressing closer, guards calling instructions from the gate towers.

“Closing soon!” someone barked. “Sun sets fast these days. Move along!”

Dana slipped from the crowd before she could be swept through. She offered a faint smile to a woman selling loaves from a cart and ducked down the side path that curved back into the fields.

The wheat was high this season, pale gold with streaks of rust. She waded into it, brushing the stalks aside, until she found a patch flat enough to rest. The sun burned low in the sky, turning everything copper.

She waited.

Time passed slowly in the field. The breeze picked up. Dana shifted, stretching her legs, adjusting her cloak. She caught sight of the city bell tower in the distance and watched its long shadow creep along the wall.

Then, from the far edge of the field, she saw him. The fox, bounding through the wheat. Every few seconds, he leapt high above the stalks like a fish breaching water.

She smiled.

And then—he changed.

The light touched the treeline, the city gate clanged shut with finality, and his form shimmered, shifted, grew. His body arched with the transformation, muscle and bone realigning. For a heartbeat, he looked as though he was in pain. Then it was over.

Before her, Fox stood tall—his chest rising and falling with exertion, his tunic clinging damply to his frame. Stray stalks of wheat clung to his hair, and the last streaks of sunset cast his bare arms in molten gold. He looked half-wild, half-mythic, like something called up from a story told around a fire.

Dana couldn’t speak. She had watched it happen this time—really watched. The moment when fur gave way to skin. The impossible folding of limbs. The outline of him reshaping. It hadn’t looked graceful. Not entirely. It had looked… painful. True. Like a body fighting itself to become what it was always meant to be.

He reached her at a jog, breath sharp in his throat. She took a step back without meaning to—only half-aware of it—her heart hammering, unsure whether from what she’d just seen or what was written across his face.

“There’s something—” he panted. “We’re being followed.”

The words snapped the air between them.

“What?!” Her voice pitched higher than she’d ever heard it, and her fingers curled instinctively at her sides.

“I wasn’t sure at first,” he said, voice rough from the run, from the shift. “But I started watching the treeline while you were walking. Always the same bird. Same path. Just beyond the branches. Always too far to spook.”

Dana’s stomach tightened. “A bird?”

He nodded once, still breathing hard. “A raven.”

There was a beat of silence. The field around them suddenly felt too open.

She swallowed, a sense of confusion washing over her. “Why would a bird–” 

And then his eyes met hers, sharp and dark in the falling light. “She’s like me.”

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar (12/?)

It was pissing rain. The kind of downpour that made the browning leaves on the trees overhead droop and curl under the weight of the constant onslaught. Dana was soaked through, cold even in her new wool cloak, and miserable beyond belief.

Beside her, the fox looked slightly less worse for wear as the water ran off his thick coat in stream-like rivulets.

They had been walking for over a day now in an aimless direction. It was time, Dana thought, to come up with some kind of plan. If the townspeople pursued her—which she thought likely due to Alexander’s scorching anger—they had probably long since given up. The label of ‘witch’ had likely not followed her this far from her village.

There was, however, nowhere at present to go. No towns were nearby that she could see, no bells ringing in the distance, not even another crofter’s cottage where she could wait out the weather.

Ahead there was a tall evergreen tree, and she stepped under it and onto the fragrant needles littering the forest floor. It was drier here, but the rain still collected and dropped. Fox sat primly next to her and as she looked down at him, connecting eyes, her body gave a full-on shiver. His ears twitched and he nosed her cloak in question. “I’m cold,” she said, her teeth starting to chatter, “we need to find shelter.” She looked up at the stately tree. “Better than this.” Fox took off in a flash of damp fur, and she could only assume he was off to look for a place she could warm up. Doing her bidding. Like a familiar should. Christ, she thought. If she were a witch she would warm herself. Summon some spell that dried her clothes and conjured up a cup of warm, spiced wine.

But she was powerless. She had no magic, even if magic did exist, which, knowing her companion, she had to reluctantly accept. She lowered herself to the forest floor. Unwilling to soak the seat of her dress on the soupy wet needles, she leaned back against the trunk of the tree and pressed her weight into feet that felt like two blocks of ice.

Ten miserable minutes later, Fox reappeared. “Have you found something?” she asked him through chattering teeth.

He yipped once—the first sound she’d ever heard him make—and darted off ahead, turning to make sure she followed.

***

The cave was barely a cave at all—just a shallow recess tucked beneath a jutting rock face, sheltered from above and dry enough to feel a bit like salvation.

Dana stumbled into it and dropped her pack. “This’ll do,” she muttered. It would have to.

She scraped her wet hair out of her face and pulled Bite out so the blade wouldn’t rust. Then she began gathering what bits of wood she could find beneath the trees just outside the mouth of the cave. Everything was wet. Twigs snapped, but they wept water when she tried to light them. She scraped flint against iron, again and again, hands shaking, sparks landing and dying in the damp mass of would-be kindling.

Fox watched her from the cave mouth, unmoving. Patient.

“I just need—” she growled, striking again. “Just one spark to catch. Just one.”

But nothing caught.

Her hands were numb. Her knees were soaked. Her bones ached.

She sat back on her heels, shoulders collapsing, and stared at the sodden pile. Her throat felt thick. Her vision blurred—not from smoke, not from wind—but from the raw helplessness gnawing at her chest.

If I could will a fire into existence, she thought, I would. I would burn the forest down for just a flicker of warmth.

She stared miserably at the wet triangle of kindling, her fingers curling into fists.

And then—

A thread of smoke.

Fox lifted his head.

Dana blinked.

A soft tendril rose from the center of the pile like a hot breath sighed into cold air.

She leaned forward, not breathing. And in the same moment that a sudden pressure bloomed just behind her sternum—hot and tight and unfamiliar—a flame flared.

Real. Bright. Hungry.

It licked up the damp kindling like it was dry and seasoned and soaked in oil.

She jerked back. Her hands sparked with warmth—her fingertips tingling as though they'd brushed a hedgehog’s back. She looked down at them, then at the fire, then at Fox.

He had stood.

He padded closer, watching her, then the fire, then her again. His gold eyes were alert, calculating, but beneath it—excitement. Recognition.

“I…” she whispered. “I didn’t do anything. I just—”

But she had.

And Fox knew it.

He circled around her and then lay beside her, his fox body pressed close to hers.

Dana didn’t argue.

Her whole body still shook. Her fingers trembled. She was soaked through, head to toe, and now that the fire had caught, now that there was a small, focused ball of heat just in front of her, the cold settled into into the rest of her, into her very marrow with fresh cruelty.

Fox nosed at her hip and curled closer, tucking himself against her side. She hesitated only a moment, and then, as she’d longed to do for as long as she’d known him, she buried her hands in his damp outer fur, seeking heat. She found it just beneath his thick outer coat. It was like the warm fuzz of a young chick—plush, thick, soft.

Warmth radiated off him like a living stove. His fur wasn’t just a pelt—it was something enchanted, something meant for her.

She sank her fingers deeper.

Heat spread slowly through her frozen knuckles and down into her wrists, her arms, her chest.

The last thing she remembered before sleep took her was the sound of the fire cracking and the feel of thick, warm fur beneath her palms.

***

She woke to the sensation of movement—change.

It started beneath her fingertips, which were no longer tangled in fur but pressed flat against warm skin. Smooth. Hot. Alive.

Her eyes flew open.

Fox—not the fox—sat beside her.

She jerked upright with a gasp and snatched her hands away.

They had been under his tunic. Flat on his bare chest.

He blinked at her, unbothered. His hair was damp and pushed back from his face, but the autumn-colored tunic he wore was dry—laced only halfway, and he wore dark breeches underneath. The fire beside him made his skin glow.

“Leave them,” he said calmly, watching her. “Your hands are like ice.”

She flushed, full and fast.

“No. I—no.” She scrambled backward slightly and tucked her hands under her arms. Her pulse thudded in her ears.

Fox didn’t press.

But he watched her in that way of his—quiet and unblinking.

The fire burned low but steady. But her clothes were still soaked and her body still shivered.

Fox frowned, as if just seeing her again.

“Do you have any other clothes?” he asked.

Dana reached for her satchel. Opened it. Rifled through her old cloak, the linen shift, the extra pair of socks, the bundled chemise. The blanket from the monastery, wet and useless.

All of it was soaked.

She didn’t need to answer.

“You need to take your clothes off,” he said simply, “so we can dry them.”

Her head snapped up. “Absolutely not.”

“There’s no heat in them,” he replied. “You’re going to get sick.”

She glared at him, her whole body shaking now. She hated that he was right.

He seemed to sense her hesitation. He stood–only able to stoop under the low overhang of the rock–and gestured toward the open air just outside the cave. “I’ll leave you to your privacy.”

“No!” she said, more forcefully than she meant to. “Then you’ll be wet, cold, and miserable as well.”

He paused. Looked at her.

She was certain her lips were blue. Her teeth chattered.

Without a word, he stripped off his tunic and handed it to her.

“Take off your clothes,” he said gently. “Lay them out on those rocks. And wear this.”

He kneeled and turned his back.

The cave was too small to offer real privacy. But he didn’t peek. Didn’t shift.

Dana hesitated—then slowly, cautiously, peeled off her soaked boots and garments. She watched him like a hawk as she undressed, but he didn’t turn around. Not once.

His back was smooth and muscled, faint scars trailing down one shoulder. He was strong, lean and powerful.

She laid her clothes on the rocks and finally pulled his tunic over her head.

It was still warm. Still smelled like him—woodsy, wild, clean. Something like pine and something like smoke.

She curled up, pulled her knees to her chest, and wrapped the fabric over the top of them like a cocoon.

“I’m decent,” she said.

He turned around—and Lord help her, he was magnificent.

Wide shoulders. Strong chest. Muscles that moved like coiled rope beneath skin. A trail of dark hair disappeared below the edge of his breeches. His eyes met hers, and she quickly looked away, heat rushing to her cheeks.

He sat beside her in the only space there was—close. Almost too close.

“Are you warming?” he asked.

“I am,” she said, though her feet were freezing.

He looked down at them as if he had read her mind—pale and bare and poking out from beneath the hem of his tunic on her body.

“May I?”

She hesitated—then nodded, lifting her feet toward him, her misery outweighing her sense of propriety.

He took them in his hands, large and warm, and began to rub.

She had to twist slightly to face him, lift her legs, and she realized with a flash of panic that he might be able to see up the edge of the tunic.

But then his thumbs pressed into the arch of her foot and she moaned.

Her head fell back. “God.”

Something flashed in his eyes.

She felt it—low in her belly, hot and startling.

And she did not pull away.

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar 10/?

She’d come back to the fire the night before, quiet and pensive. Distant. She settled down to sleep on the other side of the fire from him with nothing but a muttered goodnight. 

He was worried that he’d offended or scared her with his admission that one of the few things he knew to be true was that the two of them were tied together somehow. Of that he was absolutely certain. He didn’t know how or why, but it was one of the few things he carried with him when he was both a man and a fox; they were tied to each other. Bound to each other. 

The first night when he changed into a man and there she was, standing on the steps of the small cottage and looking up at the sky, he felt a connection to her, taut as a bowstring. Like a whip cracked around a branch, coling tight–a gyre of the strongest fiber tying them together.

At first he thought it was just attraction. She was, he thought ruefully, staring at her sleeping face as the flames licked shadows and light across her features, perhaps the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. 

But the fox felt it too–that much he could sense–and the fox had no interest in women. Human or otherwise.

As the sun set each night, he knew, for only a moment, everything that the fox knew and more. All of his memories, the whole of his past, were there–right there. But trying to hold onto them was like trying to hold water in a cupped hand–quickly they all leaked away and the only thing left was her. 

He forced himself to sleep, knowing he needed the rest. But sleep took her away from him. It robbed him of the hours he could be spending with her, talking with her. His heart wanted nothing more than time with her, and his mind told him he should be gleaning whatever insight he could into why they were bound so tightly. 

There were only three things he knew to be true: She was a witch. He was her familiar. He must protect her at any and all costs. 

But he didn’t know the how or the why of it. And until she had started asking questions, he hadn’t given it much thought. 

His job was to protect her, to serve her, and to help her come into her own as a witch. 

And it wasn’t until he realized he might feel things for her other than loyalty and service that he started contemplating anything more. 

He rose early, stoked and fed the fire so that she wouldn’t get cold and sat watching her as the sky turned from black to purple to pink. And as the clouds on the horizon turned a fiery orange, he felt the tingling in his bones as the sun crept toward the horizon. The first rays of light touched Dana’s face, and the change surged through him. 

For a moment, he saw and understood all. 

*** 

They stood on a rise overlooking a town. An actual town. It must be where the monastery sold their wares. She stood with her arms crossed, her travel cloak pulled tight around her as the breeze lifted her hair from her face. Below them, the town clung to the riverside like a patch of moss, rooftops clustered together beneath a low mist. The chimneys puffed smoke. She could just make out the sound of hammering—metal on metal—and the smell of something warm baking drifted up the slope to meet her.

“I have to go in,” Dana said.

Fox, in his four-legged form, didn’t answer. He sat beside her, tail curled neatly around his feet, ears flat with disapproval.

“You can’t come,” she said gently. “Not like this.”

It felt odd, leaving him after days spent in only his company, but he wouldn’t be safe inside the city. Even if he found a place to hide.

His ears flicked.

“There are too many people. You’d be noticed. And not just because you’re a fox. You move like something that remembers being more.”

She couldn’t pinpoint how, exactly, but it was true nevertheless. 

He turned his head to look up at her. There was a flicker of understanding in his amber eyes. And something else too—resentment, maybe. Worry.

She crouched and placed her hand lightly on the top of his head, the first time she allowed herself to touch him. His fur was soft and wiry all at once. Thick. Warm. She wanted to luxuriate in it, press her face into his flank and huff his oily, wild scent. Instead, she gave him one pat and pulled her hand back. 

“I sewed coins into the hem of my cloak,” she explained. “Enough to get us what we need. A pack. Clothes. Food that isn’t burned on a stick.” She gave a soft smile. “I’ll be back before dark. Wait for me in the trees.”

He gave a short huff through his nose and padded off without further argument, vanishing between the trees like he’d never been there at all.

Dana stood alone for a moment longer, then turned and began the walk down the hill.

***

The town gate stood open, though two guards lingered near it. One was half-dozing, the other chewing a bit of something he probably called tobacco. Neither paid her more than a glance. She passed through with her hood low over her face and her hands hidden in her sleeves.

Inside, it was all noise and smell and motion.

Cobblestone streets twisted through the market district like veins. Chickens clucked from cages stacked against walls. Children ran barefoot. Smoke curled from forges and ovens alike. A woman with thick braids called out about goose eggs, while another waved a tray of woven talismans strung on twine.

Dana moved through it with purpose, stopping here and there, cautious with her coin but thorough. She purchased a tunic and leggings that actually fit her, a warm wool cloak in forest green, and a satchel of sturdy leather with a hidden inner pocket. She replaced her worn boots with a pair that hugged her calves and didn’t pinch her toes.

At a stall run by a stooped old man with ink-stained fingers, she found a small book of common plants and their uses. She bought it before she could talk herself out of it.

By afternoon, her coin purse was significantly lighter and her bag considerably heavier.

She sat on the edge of a public fountain to eat the roll she’d been given in exchange for a bit of help lifting crates at the baker’s stall. It was sweet and light and gone too fast. Her legs were sore from walking. The wind had picked up and with it came the scent of something more tempting than anything she'd eaten in weeks—roasted meat and fresh bread, spices, and the bitter tang of ale.

She followed the smell.

***

The tavern was called The Buckle and Thorn. Warm light poured from its windows, and laughter drifted from inside. It wasn’t the kind of place she normally would have entered, but the ache in her stomach outweighed her caution.

Inside, it was all wooden beams and smoke-stained rafters. A fire crackled in a great stone hearth. The scent of food wrapped around her like a spell.

She sat alone at a small table near the fire and ordered a trencher of stew, a hunk of brown bread, and a mug of watered wine. It might have been the best thing she’d ever eaten.

By the time she scraped the bowl clean and wiped her hands on the cloth tucked under the plate, her shoulders had dropped. Her limbs were warm. The fire behind her lulled her bones into something close to peace.

She sighed. Just for a moment, she let herself feel human.

Then she looked out the window and realized it was full dark.

Her heart climbed into her throat. Fox. He would be pacing, circling, searching the shadows near the road. She couldn’t stay here. It wasn’t safe for a young woman alone, and she didn’t have the coin for a room anyway.

Dana pushed back her bench and rose to leave—just as a shadow moved beside her.

A man sat down heavily on the bench, too close. He smelled of old ale and damp wool, the scent clinging to him like a second skin. His beard was patchy, more stubble than style, and the veins in his nose and cheeks suggested years of drink. His smile was wide and uneven, revealing crooked teeth stained the color of old parchment. It didn’t reach his eyes—small, sharp things that watched her with a predator’s intent masked behind clumsy charm.

His presence unsettled her. He wasn’t loud or leering, not yet, but there was something oily about him, something that made her stomach coil tight. He sat like he belonged there—like she belonged to his evening now, a prize caught by proximity. Dana could feel the heat of his body through the space between them, and though he hadn’t touched her yet, it felt like a violation. A slow panic bloomed beneath her ribs. The tavern’s warmth turned stifling. Her fingers itched toward the strap of her satchel, her legs tense, ready to flee—but her instincts warned her that sudden movement might only make things worse.

“Where you going off to, love?” he asked, voice thick with drink.

“I was just leaving,” Dana said, taking a half-step back. Her first thought was of Fox. In his absence she suddenly felt the sure safety of having him by her side. In either form.

The man reached out and grabbed her arm—hard.

“I think,” he said, his grip tightening, “you should stay for another drink.”

The words turned her stomach. She tried to pull free, but he held fast.

“I said I was leaving.”

“You don’t have to be so—”

Another hand appeared, closing around the man’s wrist like a vice. Pale fingers, long and strong, locked over sunburned skin. The drunk let out a hiss of pain.

“I believe,” a voice said, low, dangerous and familiar, “I heard the lady say she would like to leave.”

[slippinmickeys]

Funfetti

Love this series

Quonochontaug family vacation and finding a puppy

The call of a gull, the low rumble of surf, the screen door whacking into weathered shaker siding. It felt like 1973 all over again. If he looked in the loft, Mulder was half-convinced he’d find Samantha up there, twirling her braid in her fingers and reading Charlotte Sometimes. 

“William!” Scully hollered from the deck, hand hovering over her brow to block the glare. “You need sunscreen!”

From closer to the roar of the waves, Mulder heard their son shout something back, and Scully wandered back into the cottage, a sour look on her face. 

Mulder sidled up to her and pulled her in for a low body hug, leaning forward to collect a kiss. 

“He’ll be fine for a little while without it,” he said. 

“He has my complexion,” she replied. “He won’t.”

“Let him get a few ya-yas out first,” Mulder said. “He’s excited. That’ll dim. He’ll be complaining that he’s bored in less than an hour.”

“He’ll be red as a lobster in less than an hour.”

“Then he’ll have something else to complain about,” he murmured into her lips, collecting another kiss and lingering for a moment before Scully pushed him off of her. 

“Go,” she said, shooing him away. “We have a lot to unpack.”

A week in Quonochontaug with a newly minted ten year old, the start of summer break. Scully actually agreed to five days off the clock, a record as far as Mulder knew, though he’d have to clamshell her laptop onto her fingers a few times to get her off her email. Then he’d have to hide her charging cord. 

They’d broken the drive in two, the meaty chunk having been the day before with an overnight in New York City–William’s first time. A long day in the car capped off with an early dinner at the Palm and the Lion King on Broadway. Mulder had shown William how to tie a Windsor knot, and when he thought back to the moment, his throat closed up a little. 

“I’ll get the groceries from the car,” he volunteered and ducked out the back door to the car port which was surrounded by overgrown hydrangea and woodsy, unproductive lilac. Out on the road behind the house, the mailbox listed tiredly, the faded stickers with the family name missing the R. 

It had been years since he’d been here, not since William was little. He paid a local vacation home management company to turn on the water and drive by every few weeks. There were still sheets to pull off of furniture and it needed a serious airing out. There were shadows lurking in corners. And memories. And a bullet hole in the old wood paneling. 

A scattering of small stones pulled away Mulder’s attention and Will came bounding up to him from around the side of the house. 

“Dad!” he said, out of breath. “Look what I found!” 

The boy held up the carapace of a small horseshoe crab, his face full of wonder and delight. 

“Nice,” Mulder said. “Though don’t bring it in the house, it’ll stink the place up.”

“More than it already smells?” William joked and tossed the dead creature into the bushes. The house had a closed up redolence of mildew and stale air. 

“You have no idea.” Mulder popped the trunk of their car and pulled out a couple of fully loaded grocery bags, handing them over to his son. “Take these and put them in the kitchen, would you? And then I want you to go around and open all the windows. We’ll get this place aired out.”

William reached forward and took the bags without complaint. “Can I sleep in the loft?”

Mulder thought of his sister, of over-warm July nights bunked up with her because she was afraid of the sound of fireworks. 

“Sure, bud,” he said, his voice a little quiet. 

***

Scully at the sink, a billowing plume of steam over the carmine cap of her hair as she dumped a pot of spaghetti into a colander. Beyond her, in the kitchen window, sat a dusty bowl full of sea glass. Mementos were hiding in every corner of the house. 

“Should we eat outside?” Scully asked. 

Mulder had tongs in one hand and an ancient ratty oven mitt in the other, pulling a cookie sheet of garlic bread out of the tired old oven. The smell that wafted up and over him was heavenly. 

“I didn’t get a chance to clean the bird shit off the picnic table yet,” he frowned. 

“Inside it is,” Scully said, upending the dripping colander into a bubbling pot of marinara. “Will!” She called out. “I need you to set the table!”

Mulder ended up helping, the muscle memory of childhood reminding him what cabinet plates were in, which drawer held the serving spoons. The ice tray wasn’t frozen yet, so they sipped tepid water out of olive green glasses, and Mulder opened a bottle of Chianti, fortifying himself with its acidic dryness, warmth spreading through his stomach. 

Around a mouthful of spaghetti, Will piped up hopefully. “Can we go kayaking tomorrow?” 

“Sure,” Mulder said airly. They’d have to rent some. Maybe an ocean kayak they could keep for the week. 

“It might rain,” Scully cautioned. 

The light went out of Will’s eyes. 

“We’ll go rent one anyway,” Mulder said, giving Scully a look. She apologized with her eyes. “Even if it rains,” Mulder went on, looking at the boy. “That way you can go as soon as the weather clears.”

William perked up at this, and took a massive bite of garlic bread. 

“Slow down, William,” Scully said, then turned to Mulder. “Do they rent them at Quonnie Pond? I can’t remember.” 

Mulder shook his head. “There’s a place in Charlestown that delivers. I’ll call first thing in the morning.”

***

With the sunrise came the rain. 

Will stood in front of the sliding door morosely, complaining of boredom. 

Scully was curled up on the couch with a paperback and Mulder was so shocked by the sight that he was suddenly and quite determinedly of a mind not to let anything mess it up. Particularly tween ennui. 

“Grab your coat,” he said to his son.

“What for?” 

“We’re going into town. You and me.”

Will looked at him suspiciously. 

“What for?”

“I don’t know,” Mulder said, pulling on his own rain slicker and tossing his son’s to him. “Shopping. A tee shirt to prove you were on vacation. Ice cream. I don’t know. Maybe we’ll buy fudge. Come on.”

Scully gave them a Toodleloo wave without looking up from her book. 

As he and Will climbed into the car, he noticed the gutters were full and overflowing next to the house. He’d have to find a ladder and some work gloves. 

The idea of a second house, of a summer home, seemed romantic from the outside, but the logistics of owning two homes–even if his father’s estate paid the taxes on this one–were a colossal headache. And they rarely visited. But he couldn’t bring himself to give it up. It was a place that his sister had been happy. 

“Dad?” William said, his voice tinged in concern. 

Mulder gave him a reassuring smile and cranked the engine.

***

They were running out of shops and the rain was coming down harder, a gloomy June mist that brought with it a particular chill. Mulder had just bought a whale-shaped wooden cribbage board that William was less than enthusiastic about learning how to use. He dropped his change in a ceramic March of Dimes receptacle when the shopgirl gave him a friendly smile. 

“That’ll come in handy,” she said kindly. “There’s a chance it’ll rain all week.”

Out of the corner of his eye Mulder watched William wilt. 

The girl noticed. “Or not!” She backtracked as Mulder took his son by the shoulder and led him out of the shop. “Twenty percent chance of sun tomorrow!”

Will flipped up his hood as they stepped onto the sidewalk.

“Couldn’t we just play Uno?” he said glumly. 

“You’ll get sick of Uno,” Mulder told him. “And your mother tends to get persnickety about Mattel’s rule that you can’t play a Draw Two on a Draw Two.”

“It’s a dumb rule.”

“I agree.” 

They were crossing an alleyway on their way back to the car when William pulled up short and turned to peer into the murk. 

Mulder stopped a step and a half later and turned curiously to his son. 

“Everything all right?”

The boy didn’t answer.

“Will?”

William glanced briefly at his father and then back down the alley.

“Greyskull,” the boy said, distracted. 

Mulder instinctively reached to his hip for his weapon, but his belt loop was empty—he’d left his sidearm in a lockbox at the house. He wrapped the plastic bag tightly around his recent purchase and slid it into his back pocket. 

“What is it?” he asked, placing a protective hand on William’s shoulder. 

“I don’t know,” the boy said. “There’s something down there.”

“Something dangerous?” If there were, he thought, Scully would kill him.

“I don’t think so,” William said, then took a hesitant step into the alley. 

Mulder, not knowing the right course of action, decided to let the boy follow his instincts. 

After a few timid steps, Will began walking with more confidence, eventually stopping in front of a large black dumpster. Mulder waited warily at his elbow. 

“There’s something in there,” his son finally said, looking up at Mulder for guidance. 

After years on the job, Mulder’s first instinct was ‘dead body,’ followed by several other morbid guesses, each one more distasteful than the last. Without his son staring at him with baleful, please-fix-it eyes, he might otherwise have walked away and let someone else handle it. 

Mulder sighed and hesitantly lifted the lid, peering reluctantly into the fusty gloaming. A moment later, something in the darkness moved and Mulder jumped back, the dumpster lid slamming closed with a crack.

William’s eyes went round as saucers. “What? What is it?!” 

When nothing happened, Mulder, chagrined and more than a little embarrassed, licked his lips and stepped forward again.

“I don’t…” he started. “I don’t know.”

He girded himself, and lifted the lid again. This time he noticed—on top of several slimy black garbage bags and days worth of unidentified refuse—a damp cardboard box slumped against the dumpster’s nearest wall. And inside the box, movement.

Mulder swiped a hand forward trying to hook a finger on the edge of the box to pull it closer, but couldn’t quite get a purchase on it. He sighed, stepping away from the dumpster, his hand still holding up the lid. 

His eyes swept their surroundings. 

“Hey Will,” he said. “Grab me that plastic milk crate over there,” he pointed. “I need something to stand on.”

Will skipped over eagerly and came back with the crate, happy to have a job. 

Mulder set the crate upside down in front of the dumpster and scrambled on top of it. 

Movement again from the box, this time accompanied by a low, animal sound. 

Christ, if this was some batshit rabid raccoon, Scully would have his hide. Nevertheless, the added height made it far easier to reach into the mephitic brume of the dumpster, and he was able to grab a corner of the box and heft it up and over the side, depositing it onto the wet asphalt at Will’s feet. 

As he stepped down off of the crate, the boy was already bent over the box, peering inside. Before Mulder could bark some kind of parental warning, William was looking back up at him, his face showing a mix of surprise and delight. 

Mulder leaned over for a look himself. 

Inside the disintegrating box sat a curled-up shivering mass of damp off-white fur. Sorrowful eyes looked up at him, pleading and miserable. 

A puppy. Some kind of lab mix by the look of it. 

William reached into the box and the creature wriggled under his hand, its tail beginning to thump wetly against the cardboard. 

“Can we keep him?” Will asked with a kind of dulled hysteria to his voice, and Mulder instantly knew he had just unwittingly come upon one of life’s great reckonings. 

“No,” he said levelly, putting his hands on his hips and staring down at the conundrum in front of him. 

The puppy, after a couple of gentle pets from William, was already up on its back legs, its sharp little puppy-claws rapidly rendering the side of the box that contained it into pulp in its reckless enthusiasm to connect with its savior. The boy picked up the wriggling mass and instantly got a face full of enthusiastic kisses. 

Will turned a dolorous eye toward his father. 

“We can’t leave him here, Dad.” 

Mulder looked around helplessly, his options quickly winnowing down into his only real choice. 

He sighed again, looking down at boy and puppy. 

“Shit,” he muttered into the fetid air.

*** 

“Absolutely not!” said Scully somewhat shrilly when William walked into the door carrying the dog. They were not twenty feet into the house. 

William threw a look at his father. They had talked about this in the car, betting what Dana Scully’s reaction would be. 

“Your mom is going to kill us,” Mulder had said. 

“No,” William rebutted from the backseat, the puppy on his lap. “She’s going to kill you.”

If Scully’s eyes were any indication, the boy had been right. 

“Mom!” William pleaded. 

“Scully,” Mulder hoped to at least be able to explain the situation before his wife lost her shit completely. 

“Mulder, what the hell-”

Mulder turned to Will, who seemed reluctant to put the dog down, lest his mother march over and fling the poor animal into the wilds. 

“Why don’t you take him outside, Will. See if he’ll do his business.” 

If the dog peed on the floor, or god forbid, took a dump, the level of escalation Scully would take the situation was heretofore untested, as far as Mulder was concerned. And he’d seen her stand up to Congress. 

The second William was out the door, Scully whirled on him. 

“Mulder-”

He held up a hand. “Scully.”

“Mulder!”

“Dana!” she barked sharply.

At that, she pulled up short and closed her mouth. 

“Firstly, he already knows we’re not keeping it,” Mulder said, watching as her shoulders lowered from up around her ears. 

Mulder exhaled so he could speak more calmly. 

“We found him in a dumpster,” he said, trying to drum up some sympathy for the poor creature. “Someone had thrown him out like trash.” 

Scully’s eyes softened. “Why did you bring him here, though? Will’s going to get attached, Mulder. It’s going to be Mr. Bubbles all over again.”

Mulder thought briefly of their week as goldfish owners. 

“We would have gone right to the shelter, but it’s Sunday. It’s closed. We’ll take him over in the morning.”

Scully sighed. Lowered herself onto the couch. “What were you guys doing in a dumpster?”

“We weren’t,” Mulder said. “We were only walking by the alley.”

“Did you hear it or something?” 

Mulder shook his head, moved to sit next to her. “Greyskull,” he said. 

Scully turned to look at him. 

“He knew something was wrong. Could sense it somehow,” Mulder went on. 

Scully looked a little dazed. Mulder knew what she was thinking. William was a kind, empathetic kid. If he could sense the suffering of animals, people, bad situations, the world was going to be a very hard place for him to navigate. To live in. 

“I’m going to make some calls,” Mulder said. “Loop the Gunmen in, too. See if we can find someone to help him learn how to…I don’t know. Shield himself, somehow.”

Scully nodded, leaned back on the couch. “One day at a time,” she said, repeating a necessary family mantra.

Mulder thumped back into the cushions, himself. “Yes.”

“We can’t let him give the dog a name, Mulder,” Scully said after a minute. “Remember when he named those two lobsters we brought home for a Valentine’s Day dinner?”

“Horace and Petey.”

“He cried for an hour and swore off shellfish.”

Mulder remembered. “More Horace and Petey for us,” he said. “They were delicious.”

Just then, the door burst in on a gust of cool air. William trundled in happily, the dog at his heels.

“He pooped and peed!” he reported happily. 

“Nice work, pup,” Mulder said, smiling. 

“Oh,” said William, reaching down to scratch the puppy behind an ear. “His name is Krypto.”

Mulder could feel Scully’s gaze boring into the side of his head. 

***

The rain hadn’t stopped all day, and by evening, it had gotten downright chilly. 

Mulder threw another log on the fire, hoping the flue wasn’t blocked by leaves or a bird’s nest. Next to the fireplace, leaning against the couch, Scully sat on the floor, Krypto curled up against her leg, his little block of a head resting on her thigh. She was staring into the flames, absently running her fingers through the soft fur of the puppy’s ear. 

Near the door were plastic bags of various dog accoutrements; a small bag of puppy chow, a leash and a collar with the tags still on. Just in case. 

William had begged to let the dog sleep with him that night, but Scully had put a stop to the thought immediately, telling William that the dog was likely to need to get up and be let outside in the night and that she would oversee the process. He needed his sleep if he was going to kayak the next day. The boy didn’t like it, but he saw the sense in doing exactly as his mother said in their current situation. He’d gone to bed without a complaint or a plea for ten more minutes.

Mulder poked at the fire until it was burning to his satisfaction, and, confident the chimney was drawing properly, he lowered himself to Scully’s other side, draping an arm around her shoulders. 

“What time does the shelter open?” Scully asked, leaning her head back to rest against Mulder’s arm. 

“Nine, I think.”

“Hmm.”

Next to her, the puppy woke, stretched his legs out and yawned with a soft doggy sound. His sleepy eyes rove up until they connected with Scully’s, and his tail began to thump softly into the floor. 

“Another man unable to resist the exquisite Scully charm,” Mulder commented softly. 

Scully huffed a soft laugh and ran her hand over the length of the puppy, earning her a more vigorously wagging tail. 

“Krypto,” she said, shaking her head. 

The puppy wiggled more firmly into her side. 

“Superboy,” sighed Mulder.

Scully reached over with her other hand and squeezed his leg. 

“We talked about getting him a dog, don’t you remember?” Mulder asked. 

“When he was begging for a sibling,” Scully clarified. “And six years old.”

“Your argument was that he wasn't old enough for the responsibility.”

Scully rolled her head to look at him. 

“I’m not advocating anything here, Scully,” he said. “I’m just saying.”

Scully was silent for several minutes, and the dog eventually sat up. One second of eye contact with the woman before him and he climbed into her lap and licked her face twice. 

Scully reached forward, held the puppy’s face in two hands, gazing into his sweet brown eyes. 

“We’re not going to the shelter in the morning, are we?” Mulder asked softly. 

His wife sighed, still holding the dog’s downy white head. 

“God damn it,” she said. 

[slippinmickeys]

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

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

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

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

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

“What?” she says breathily. “No.”

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

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

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

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

“I don’t remember,” he husks. 

“Me neither,” she says on a sigh. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The way you bound yourself to Diana?”

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

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

“How come you never told me?” 

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

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

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

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

Her flower petal lips creep up into a smile. 

“Is that a yes?” he smiles back. 

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

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

He’s going to marry her. 

[nick-nellson]

The Sound of Music (1965) dir. Robert Wise

[slippinmickeys]

A couple of months ago on Discord, several people were super kind and supportive when I threw out a couple of questions about releasing fic. They encouraged me to post the fics set in the Funfetti Universe (SO GLAD I named it that, womp womp) as its own story on AO3 and @calimanc asked for a prompt: Thanksgiving play at school with Mulder complaining about history being whitewashed while Scully is recording and being like "shut up and watch your son." Something happens with Addams Family Values vibes.

I knew I'd have a minute to write today, so I loaded the old prompts onto AO3 last night, and sat down today and cranked this one out.

Thanksgiving Pageant

It was cute. He had to admit it was cute. The little black outfit with an old white handkerchief looped over his son’s little shoulders. 

Scully had sat at their kitchen table with Elmer’s glue and construction paper, doing her best not to swear as she held together two gummy pieces of black paper that would serve as the headband of William’s Pilgrim hat in the school’s Fall Show. William, oblivious to his mother’s consternation, rehearsed his lines with halting earnestness. 

“We were so thankful to learn how to grow food in this land,” the boy said. 

“In this new land,” Scully corrected him. “‘We were so thankful to learn how to grow food in this new land.’”

“Can you do the part before mine, mama?”

“Sure,” Scully agreed, flitting her eyes to Mulder, who was very much trying to keep his mouth shut. Her look communicated quite clearly that he’d fucking better.  

“‘The Wampanoag showed us how to take care of the land and plant crops like corn and beans,’” Scully recited, part of her glad that it was another kid who had to pronounce ‘Wampanoag.’ 

“We were so thankful to learn how to grow food in this new land,” William finished, beaming at his success. 

“Good job, bud,” Mulder said, turning to his son, his hands dripping dishwater everywhere. “Gonna end the show with a bang.”

“Can I be done?” William asked. 

“You may,” Scully said, and William darted up the stairs without another word, no doubt to the LEGO table Mulder had set up for him. His bedroom door closed with a resounding snick. 

“I can’t believe they’re still doing Thanksgiving pageants,” Mulder said, shaking his head. “It’s such whitewashing bullshit.”

“We can address Colonial violence with him when he’s older, Mulder,” Scully sighed, clearly not in the mood to be having this conversation. “In the meantime, can you grab me a binder clip off of your desk before this capotain becomes a permanent part of my thumb?”

Mulder put the last pan in the rack by the sink and dried off his hands, then swung into his office for the requested binder clip, a piece of equipment he was pretty sure he’d liberated from the FBI supply cabinet when he’d moved from the basement to the fourth floor. 

He set it on the tabletop next to her and leaned down to drop a kiss onto the end of her nose. 

She attached the clip to the hat she was making and looked at her sticky fingers with distaste.

“It’s a kindergarten play, Mulder,” she said, leaning back in the chair. “What would you have them say?” 

Mulder lowered himself across from her and leaned forward, elbows on the table. Upstairs they could hear the distant, muted sounds of William humming happily to himself. 

“He goes last, right?” Mulder said. 

Scully nodded. 

“How about something like ‘What you just watched was a sanitized and oversimplified whitewashing of history. While this story is comforting and well-intentioned, it obscures the colonial violence, cultural erasure, and exploitation Indigenous people endured as European settlers expanded their presence in North America.’”

His wife stood up and gave him a deadpan look. “It’s perfect. Age-appropriate. He definitely wouldn’t stumble over any of those words. No notes.”

She moved to the sink and began washing the gunk off of her fingers. 

“I think so too,” Mulder agreed breezily. He thought but didn’t say that it would be a great touch if William pointed at his classmates dressed as the Wompanoag and highlighted the fact that they’d all be dead of smallpox within five years. That would teach ‘em.  

XxX

Scully held up a small digital camera trying to get the entire stage to show up in the viewfinder. Satisfied by her framing, she lowered the little device into her lap. 

“By filming this, you’re perpetuating-” Mulder started.

“Stop,” Scully interrupted. “What I’m perpetuating is my mother’s tolerance of what she considers our weird choices. She will watch it 33 times and show it to all her neighbors. It is what it is, Mulder.”

The elementary auditorium was chocked full of parents and bored older siblings, coats strung across a line of seats to save them. It was very warm. 

“It smells like feet in here,” Mulder said. 

“It kind of does, yeah,” Scully agreed. 

“We should have sat on the edge. We could have snuck out right after William’s class did its thing.”

“His teacher already hates us, we’re going to be conspicuously present and smiling,” Scully said without looking at him. “Before, during and after the show.”

The school was K-5, which meant they’d have to endure five more Thanksgiving-themed song-and-dance routines. Mulder couldn’t help but twist around in his seat and locate the nearest exit.

“Relax, Mulder,” Scully said, noticing his nudgyness. “There’ll be lemonade and cookies after. You can have as many as you want.”

“I don’t think elevating my blood sugar is going to make up for losing 45 minutes of my life to this-”

“Shhh,” she shushed him quiet. The lights of the auditorium had begun to lower. 

Shortly thereafter, the kindergarten class shuffled out on stage, stumbling into each other and missing their marks. Several waved to their parents in the audience, loudly, and one little Pilgrim began to wail and had to be escorted off the stage. 

After a song in which the music teacher was the only one who knew and sang all the words, William and several classmates took a big step forward and held hands. William was on the far right and would be the last to speak. He waved at Mulder, who couldn’t help but laugh as he waved back. 

The Indian on the far left had to be prompted to speak, but it flowed fairly well after that. 

“We didn’t know much about this land, but the native people taught us.”

“We learned new ways to live and we tried to work together.”

“We wanted to say thank you for all the help we received.”

“So we invited the Wamp. The–how does it go again, Ms. Wendy?”

Beside him, arm holding the camera as steadily as she could, Scully quietly chuckled. It was almost William’s turn. 

He stepped forward with a big smile and Mulder, having heard the phrase maybe fifty times, was ready for We were so thankful to learn how to grow food in this new land. So it was something of a surprise when William said: 

“What you just watched was a sanitized and oversimplified whitewashing of history.” 

The auditorium went deadly silent. 

“Oh my God,” Scully hissed. 

William, unphased, continued, “While this story is comforting and well-intentioned, it obscures the colonial violence, cultural erasure, and exploitation Indigenous people endured as European settlers expanded their presence in North America.”

Mulder was both astonished and impressed. His son had not only gone full Wednesday Addams, but he’d repeated–word for word–the exact words Mulder knew for a fact the boy couldn’t have overheard. 

William then turned toward the stage and pointed at the cluster of his classmates who’d been dressed as the Wampanoag.

“Oh no,” Mulder said, reaching out to grab Scully’s arm. 

“What-” she began.

“In five years,” William announced loudly, somewhat gleefully. “You will all be dead of smallpox!”

Several audience members gasped, even more laughed, and two little Wampanoag started crying. The stage descended into chaos. 

Beside him, Scully slowly lowered her camera and turned to Mulder with a horrified look on her face. 

“Tell me you got all that on tape,” Mulder said. 

“Oh my God, Mulder.”

“You still want to stay for cookies and lemonade?”

[soberscientistlife]

Santa's Reindeer will be well taken care of tonight 😉🦌🎅🏼🎄

[cricketcat9]

💖 good to know everyone is ready

[slippinmickeys]

If you’ve been waiting to read The Unseelie Court in its entirety, you can do so now!

But mostly I’m reposting so you can all see this stunning fic poster from @rosenkranz-does-things!

It is…SO GORGEOUS!

[slippinmickeys]

The Unseelie Court (16/16)

Scully immediately turned to Mulder who rose woozily to his feet, his hand looking small in Aeon’s massive paw.

“Are you okay?” she asked. 

He turned his body experimentally, wincing, and brought a hand to his side. 

“I think I may have a bruised rib,” he said on a truncated breath.

“Oh, Mulder,” Scully said, rubbing a hand up and down his arm, the fleecy material of his pullover soft in her fingers. 

Her heart was coming down from her swivet, her head still swirling with surprise and fear, but she found Mulder’s gaze centered her and stilled the bits of her that were still shaky. 

Aeon grunted and made his way for the door. 

Mulder called out. “Wait!”

Scully could hear her own preoccupations echoing in his voice. Rolled and manipulated and used in the machinations of higher beings, they felt owed some kind of denouement. 

Aeon turned back to him.

“Is that it?” Mulder asked. “Is it…is it done?”

“It’s done.”

“But, what…” Mulder shot Scully a baffled, helpless look.

The fuck just happened, which Scully also wanted to know. 

“Will everyone remember now?” she asked, thinking she didn’t want any dings on her record that she hadn’t earned. 

Aeon shook his head. “No one will.”

The partners exchanged another glance. 

“Then how?” Mulder asked. “Why do we?”

Scully, recalling the leaf in her pocket, reached in and pulled out the evidence bag. The leaf was gone. 

“You were supposed to submit that for evidence,” Aeon said, looking disappointed. “You two have managed to subvert both my expectations and my magic. I’ll be glad to see the backs of you.”

Scully debated whether or not to take some pride in that. The feeling was mutual. Though he’d helped them in the end, the dream ‘warnings’ he’d sent were cryptic at best, befuddling at worst. The fae seemed to operate on an entirely different plane of social communication and mores.

“So you’re Seelie Court, and Avery was…” Mulder trailed off, looking a little gray. “I’m starting to understand.”

“You understand nothing,” Aeon said, haughty and dismissive. 

Scully turned to him. That wasn’t fair. 

“We understand more than most,” she said. 

“We’ve seen things—” Mulder started.

Aeon shook his head and took a step back toward them. 

“You’ve seen things,” he scoffed, looking at them both with extreme derision, one, then the other.

“Deep in the earth, under the mantle and into the core,” he said, his cloak shimmering with the conviction of his words, “there is a vine that grows, invasive and malignant.” Mulder audibly swallowed. “It has been growing since time began, and every now and then in our history and in yours, it breaks the surface, and lives for a time, absorbing energy and whispering a hateful tune to anyone whose ear has turned toward it.” Aeon made a gesture with his hand and the tenor of the room felt suddenly quite bleak. “And it grows and it sings and its message is spread until someone like me finds it and hacks it down and poisons its roots. It retreats back from whence it came until it’s able to creep sunward once more.” He raised himself to his full, if diminutive height. “You have not found the malevolent verdure, Mr. Mulder, you’ve merely looked into the crevice from which it came. And then, seen only a fraction of its depth.”

Mulder mulled over what Aeon had said, trying to process. 

“So you’re a hunter? And Avery was your prey?” he asked, as ever, wanting to understand.

“You think it’s that simple?” Aeon said. “Avery is a mischief-maker, nothing more. And every time he crosses into this realm to collect his little human playthings, he leaves a hole and Hate follows him.”

“So you’re trying to save the human realm from this…this hate that’s coming into it.”

“I don’t give a damn about the human realm. You have it all backwards. He’s not bringing the pestilence here into this realm. It originated here. It’s following him home.”

Mulder reached out and put his hand on Scully’s shoulder.

“So why did you bring Daly back?” 

“Daly had found a way back on his own. He paid for his passage. With sacrifice and coin. As I told your lover, I came to make sure no one took his place.”

Mulder began to put the pieces together. 

“But why did he die?” Scully asked. The only question that still remained. “What killed him?”

“You heard what Ælfred said. Daly’s Luck had run out,” Aeon said levelly. 

Was it another riddle? Scully thought no. Daly had danced with the devil. Beside her, Mulder scraped his shoe over the tile floor, shifting on his feet. 

“Aeon,” she said, a little apprehensive. “You said Avery didn’t know our true names. But he said our names in the hollow. If those weren’t…what are they?”

Aeon, for the first time crooking his face into something like a smile, blinked slowly at her.

“You really don’t know?”

At the door when she left that morning, her mother had hugged her tightly and pressed a cookie tin full of cupcakes into her hands. She tucked a lock of Scully’s hair behind her ear with a watery smile. “Does he call you Dana now?” she’d asked softly. Scully had smiled and shook her head, rueful. 

Aeon’s face now mirrored that look. 

Scully reached out and took Mulder’s hand once more, turning to see if he understood, too. With a shy smile, he squeezed. 

When they turned back to Aeon, he was gone. 

***

They walked to the parking lot in silence, arms brushing against each other. Beside her, Mulder gave a small shudder. His teeth chattered. 

“Jesus,” he said. “It’s not even that cold.”

Scully stopped mid-stride and grabbed his elbow, pulling him up short. 

“You’re shocky,” she said, her brow knitted in concern.

“Yes,” he agreed, the word said through his overbite. 

Scully stepped up to him, thunked the weight of her forehead against the tight beat of his heart. To her relief, it thumped a steady, slow rhythm. She wrapped her arms around him loosely, mindful of his ribs, letting her heat leech through her layers of clothes and into his. The scent of magnolia was petering out and she breathed in deeply through her nose, the scent of him pleasantly pricking her sinuses.

They swayed together for more than a minute and the breeze picked up, a chill knocking between the setting sun and the moon which hung low and full above the treeline. The anticipation of separation hung there too, too close for comfort; they had driven separate cars. 

“How are your ribs?” she finally asked, pulling back to look up at him. 

“Tender,” he said. “But I don’t want to let go.”

A car drove down the street parallel to the building, flipping on its headlights in the burgeoning dusk. 

“Mulder, what just happened?” Scully asked. 

He could still feel the kinking, tight pressure of vines around his throat. 

“Scully, if you Antarctica this, I swear to God…”

Scully huffed a small laugh. “What do you have in your pocket? When Avery tried to grab you—”

Mulder let go of her long enough to snake his hand between several layers of clothes. From his pocket he produced a light yellow plastic likeness of Homer Simpson, head tilted back in sybaritic longing. In Matt Groening script under his face, it read simply “Donuts.” A kitchen magnet. Like hers.

Scully’s face registered a surprised, if distasteful moue. “All that was standing between you and everlasting supernatural purgatory was…Homer Simpson drooling over donuts?”

“I was worried. In a rush,” he said, and the side of his face lifted in a half-grin. “We can’t all carry ‘Invasion of Rarities,’” he quipped. 

“Does it glow in the dark?”

“I think it does, yeah,” his voice cracked, his color starting to return to normal. “I’m not sure where I got it. I think it was a White Elephant gift from the Gunmen. I grabbed the first thing to hand.”

The space in between them was filling up with cool air and the night insects were finding their voices. Scully’s face fell a little, her grip around his middle less sure. 

“Mulder,” she started. “About what Avery said…I don’t put our search for the truth above our—above what you and I—I’m not worried that…” She pressed her lips together, looked up at the moon and inhaled deeply. “He thought he knew me, but he didn’t.”

Mulder let her sweat for a moment, tilted his head back to look at her with sleepy eyes. 

“There are a lot of places I want to…”—he tried to think of less crass phraseology than Ælfred’s ‘fuck’—“…be with you. But in the streets, in the open, isn’t necessarily one of them,” he finished. “Though I’m not one to shame most sexual predilections and I promise to keep an open mind.”

The solidarity that connected them—that saw them through midnight stakeouts and uncomfortable interviews and sweeping flashlights into dark rooms with sidearms at temple index—tightened, knitting them closer together.

Mulder leaned down to kiss her, in front of God and everybody, in the otherwise empty parking lot of the Adrian County morgue. 

“Come on,” he said, straightening, licking the taste of her from his lips. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

Scully, feeling the itch of having stepped through a wrinkle in time, humored him and let him take her elbow. They sauntered the rest of the way to her car, each thinking of what they’d do when they got back to DC—sharing an order of lo mein at his coffee table, his hot skin against hers on cool, rumpled sheets, passing sheaves of the Post back and forth in the light of the late morning sun. They would spend the remainder of the weekend in each other’s arms, and rise Monday morning to face auditors, coworkers, knowledge of other realms only the two of them perceived.

“See you at home?” he asked, reaching for her door handle. 

“See you at home.” In the open doorway of her car, Scully lifted herself up onto the tips of her toes and kissed him one more time. 

[slippinmickeys]

The Unseelie Court (15/16)

Without knowing exactly why she did it, Scully slipped the magnolia leaf back into her pocket. 

Aeon hadn’t moved from where he stood near her, but Avery started walking around the autopsy bay in exploration, flippantly lifting the lids to various jars and sliding open drawers. Scully watched him warily, as a gazelle watches a lion from the other side of a watering hole.

Mulder was moving uncomfortably, trying to loosen himself from the vines that bound him. His eyes met hers for a moment and he licked his lips nervously. Maybe if she distracted Avery long enough, Mulder would be able to free himself. 

Eventually, Avery stopped his slow rotation of the room.

“Not a sandwich. Not even a lukewarm coffee. Who works like this?” he complained. 

“It’s a sterile room,” Scully said, her voice relatively deadpan.

Avery sighed dramatically. “People don’t pay tribute like they used to.”

“Is that what happened?” Scully asked, flitting her eyes briefly to Aeon, to Mulder. “Daly didn’t pay you tribute? Is that why you took him?”

Avery cracked his neck, and pulled at the collar of his uniform shirt. 

“Daly was different,” he said. “Interesting.”

“Interesting how?” Scully wanted to know. 

The fairy shook his head and several green leaves fell out of his hair and onto the floor. 

“I had never met a human who could charm Luck like he could,” he explained. “He was a brilliant addition to court. Everyone said so. But now he’s gone. Luck was so sad, she left.” He pouted, firing a venomous look at Aeon. “You let my plaything go, Aeon, and now there’s an empty place at my table, in want of being filled.”

“Want and need are two separate things, Ælfred,” Aeon said. “That empty spot at your table isn’t yours to fill. It never was.”

“But I’ve already made my choice.” Avery said eagerly, walking around Scully fully, all along peering at her as if she were an exhibit in a museum. “And it was so easy! She came to me! Agent Scully isn’t exactly like Daly, but ohhhh she’s different. And oh is she interesting. Standing there in Death’s perpetual blind spot. How could I not want her? It will drive Death mad.”

It was something she didn’t allow herself to think about, if Fellig had been right. It would be the utmost irony—knowing death intimately when it couldn’t know her back.

“I’ll never understand the company you keep,” said Aeon, wholly unaware or uncaring of the tumult of feeling inside her. 

Avery ignored him completely. 

“Come with me,” Avery said, stopping to appeal directly to Scully. “Your every wish, your every desire…all you need to do is ask for it.”

Scully couldn’t help but look at Mulder. Avery clocked her glance. 

“I’ll bring him, too,” Avery promised, looking at Mulder with sudden interest. “You can be together in the open. In my realm, you’ll be free to love each other. Be with each other. Out in the open. Forever.” 

That may have been a problem when they first arrived in Adrian, but it wasn’t any longer. 

“No,” she said, though it was difficult to find her voice. 

Avery’s smile grew wider, creeping up his cheeks too high, like Pennywise in a storm drain. His hair began to grow and curl, ivy leaves creeping around his head to form a crown. 

“But that’s what you want, isn’t it, Dana? That’s what you really want. You could fuck in the sunlight. You could fuck in the streets. Your Fox could suck the marrow from your bones with a crowd watching.” His voice lowered to a different octave on his last sentence and Scully gave an involuntary shudder. 

“Honestly, Ælfred,” Aeon said, rolling his eyes again. “Keep up .”

From the corner, Mulder strained against his bonds, his breath coming in choppy pants. Avery glanced over at him. 

“Such passion,” he observed with deliberate apathy.

Avery snapped his fingers and the vines around Mulder tightened. He fell to the floor with an uncomfortable grunt.

“Scu—” he began, but the creepers laying about his head shifted, filling his mouth and squeezing his neck the moment he tried to speak. Scully took a step toward him, but Aeon reached out subtly and laid a warning hand on her arm. 

Avery, still too far up his own ass monologuing, continued to watch her quizzically.

“So that's no longer a fear, then. Interesting. There’s still a fear, though, isn’t there?” 

Her fear at present was only for Mulder. It was clear that he was now in pain, and Scully wasn’t sure of Avery’s endgame. Would he, could he succeed in traveling with her into another dimension? The laws of physics didn’t preclude the idea, and it was the only thing that made sense to her brain if these “realms” Aeon and Avery spoke of were dimensions that were still ultimately theoretical. And if he could bring her there, what would happen to Mulder? Would he kill him? Would he bring him too? The fae’s machinations seemed specifically designed to manipulate her.

Using Mulder.

Hurting him.

All to bend Scully to Avery’s will. 

“Let’s see…” Avery said, bringing a finger thoughtfully to his lips. “Hm…” 

Scully felt the same odd, tingling sensation that she’d had when Avery had put his hand on her arm when Daly Carmichael was still laid out for autopsy. An old superstition ran roughshod through her mind. Broom falling, company calling. 

“So you’ve already been found out,” he went on, like it was some grand discovery. “You can deal with that. You’re afraid of your love becoming more important than the work. And you can’t admit to anyone, even yourself, that the work has become the most important thing in your life. You want to find The Truth even more than he does. He’d give it up for you. You don’t want to have to choose.”

Halfway through his oratory, Scully’s gaze rolled over to Mulder and she watched his expression change as he listened, struggling even more against his bonds. It was disconcerting seeing him wrapped up with wild vines and trailing creepers.

Mulder, as big a force of nature as she had ever seen, felled by leaves and greenery and the supernatural magic he was ever in search of. 

Rage washed over her like a rogue wave.

“Stop it! Let him go!” She slammed the autopsy table with her fist. “I swear to fucking God I’ll—”

Scully realized her mistake. Like a girl in a fairy tale (oh god, a fairy tale), she had stepped beyond the boundaries of what Avery considered acceptable behavior for a human such as herself. 

Avery lowered his head but not his gaze. 

“You kiss your partner with that mouth?” he said dangerously. 

Mulder was suddenly airborne, thrown by an invisible force across the room. He landed with a sickening thud, unable to catch himself, bound as he was. Scully could feel the impact of his body in her own bones.

Then, for the briefest moment, they were in a fairy grove—all four of them in the exact positions they were currently in, the grove overlaid with the autopsy bay. Two slides in the same carousel slot. A blink. 

“It won’t work, Ælfred. This is tiresome,” said Aeon.

Avery sent him a vicious look, and then turned his ire on Scully, who stood there wondering how many worlds lay alongside this one. 

“Empty your pockets,” he said, as if a thought had just occurred to him. 

“No.”

On a shelf behind her, a row of glass jars that held skull keys and sterile swabs exploded simultaneously, sending shards of glass all over the room. Several pieces came flying at her face but were rendered to sand when they got within a foot of her. Aeon held her gaze as the grit fell to the floor. 

Avery began to talk, hurling threats, and a jar of scalpel handles went flying.

But the sound of his voice muted as if someone had turned down the volume.

The room, already dim, seemed to blacken around her.

“His threats are empty,” Aeon said calmly, all while Avery jumped around the room, oblivious to the conversation the other fairy was having with Scully. “He won’t be able to take you to our realm. He suspects this, but he doesn’t know why.”

Though muffled, Scully could hear Mulder cry out again in pain. 

“Can you stop this?” she begged, her voice wobbly and weak. Human. 

The Seelie Court fae looked both bored and resigned to his fate. 

“The iron in your pocket, the iron in his.” At this he gestured to Mulder. “He’ll find it difficult to touch you.”

“Avery’s hurting him.”

“He won’t kill him. He wants him, too.”

“As a pawn, to get to me.”

Mulder flipped onto his back, struggling. 

Aeon’s eyes followed him, his brow beginning to knit. “Probably,” he sighed.

“Please,” Scully entreated again, feeling desperate.

She watched Aeon’s face as he seemed to make a decision.

“Go to Mulder. Ælfred won’t see until it’s too late. Grab onto his hand tightly. Ælfred will take you to the grove where the realms pass through. You could walk through voluntarily like Daly did. But to force you, he’ll need your true name. He thinks he knows it, but he doesn’t. Once he tries to take you through and fails, he’ll be forced back through, himself. The leaf will seal it behind him.” 

Scully nodded, her throat thick with the remains of her disbelief. 

“Why are you helping me?”

Aeon considered her for a moment.

“Because of the humans I’ve dealt with, you are by far the least offensive. And I like Ælfred less than most humans.” Aeon looked over at Avery, who was approaching Mulder’s prone form. “Go,” he said. “Go now.”

Without waiting another second, Scully charged over to Mulder and slid to her knees at his side, just as the room lightened and the sound returned to full. Part of Mulder’s hand was sticking out in between the greenery and she reached forward and grabbed it tight.

Then Avery was there, reaching for her. The moment he touched her, he snatched his hand back as if in pain. He cried out, and his face turned into something dark and terrible. 

In grade school, Scully had had a fear of clowns, their exaggerated, painted-on features more sinister to her than funny. Avery’s current look shot the schism and landed on wicked. 

Beside her, Mulder gripped her hand, turning away as much as he could as Avery reached out for him. With a bellow of rage, Avery was forced to snatch his hand back a second time. 

“Don’t let go,” Scully whispered. The vines pulling at Mulder’s face continued to stretch the skin around his mouth like a gag, but he still managed a nod.

Rearing back, Avery rose to a great and terrible height. Taller than Mulder, taller than any man. His head should have hit the ceiling, but it didn’t, the dimensions of the room spreading to accommodate him like a Hitchcock shot. His Sheriff’s uniform shredded to nothing as he grew, revealing an Olympian’s physique, green-tinged and scaly. The ivy around his head beginning to twine down along his body like sumptuous arms.

Looming over them, his face split into a smile with far too many razor-sharp teeth. He raised his right arm and snapped his fingers. 

In an instant they were, all but Aeon, in the hollow at the Carmichael estate, the great tree in its center a magnolia in full, resplendent bloom. The grove smelled like heaven but felt backward and wrong. Above, the canopy was open to the heavens, to swirling masses of stars and nebulae. 

“All the answers you could ever want are here,” Ælfred said, for he was Ælfred now, as sure as he was anything. “The Collatz Conjecture, gravity and the quantum, the cure to every human disease. The truth you’re both so desperately after. You’ll find that knowledge at my court. You’ll find it at my table.” He spread his arms wide in invitation. “Come,” he said. “Your sisters are waiting for you.”

Scully sought out Mulder’s eye, expecting to find him, if not receptive to what the fae was promising them, at least subdued by the enormity of all he offered. But Mulder’s look was as steady as it had ever been, and he shook his head as much as he was able. The skin where their hands met was warm. 

Scully turned back to Ælfred. “No,” she said. “We reject your invitation.”

All around him, leaves burst in a gyre, as though they were coming from him, were of him, swirling in his wake through a satiny low fog. “No more playing,” his voice rasped, spoken through a cloven tongue. 

In her pocket, through the layers of her jacket and her pants, Scully could feel the magnet she still carried begin to vibrate. 

“I summon you,” he went on with a snaky hiss. “Dana Katherine and Fox William, to sit at my table and sup on the divine and potent power of the Winter Court!” 

There was a resounding boom! like a distant thunderclap, but the sound held on far longer than it should have, a groundswell of cold vibration that began to shake the grove in a quaking temblor. The perfect white petals of the magnolia tree began raining down, and the ecstatic look on Ælfred’s face began to falter as he looked around with a dawning realization. 

Around Mulder, the vines that held him began to wither into tight brown cords and Scully whipped up her free hand to pull them out and away from his mouth. 

“NO!” Ælfred shouted, his eyes beginning to glow until they were too bright to look at, a blue and brown so brilliant that Scully tucked her head and threw herself in front of Mulder to protect him from the dazzling radiance.

Through her eyelids she saw and felt everything; death and rebirth, ecstasy and pain. Flint tools and spaceships. Blood on a stone tablet, a crown made of thorns. 

“Mulder!” she called out blindly. In her hand, his fingers flexed and gripped.

Behind her there was a sound like atoms splitting, and she turned to look just in time to see Ælfred fly backwards toward the tree at the grove’s center. The moment he hit it, Scully found herself on the floor of the autopsy bay, still holding onto Mulder who was now free of all bonds. 

Mulder looked at her with a stunned face, the scent of magnolia and ozone clinging to their clothes.

Aeon, who was leaning against the autopsy table with his arms crossed over his chest like he’d been waiting there forever, pushed off it and approached them, holding out a hand to help them both up. 

“About time,” he said. 

On the floor at their feet were a few bright green leaves; maple, beech, oak. As Scully looked at them, they turned brown and then crumbled to nothing.

[slippinmickeys]

The Unseelie Court (14/16)

Scully reached into her pocket and removed the magnolia leaf she’d pulled out of Daly Carmichael’s mouth. 

“I believe this belongs to you,” she said. 

Aeon made a noncommittal grunt and walked up to the autopsy bay doors. 

“Care to step into my office?” he said. 

Scully, very physically aware of the weight of the gun on her hip, nodded and preceded him inside. The light of the autopsy bay was low, and every stainless steel surface dull. In contrast, Aeon seemed to shine, his dark countenance practically luminescent. 

“You’re not an autopsy technician,” Scully said, an understatement.

“I’m whatever I want to be.”

“Are you a—fairy?” Scully asked, the question sounding ridiculous coming out of her mouth. 

Aeon threw back his head and laughed, full-throated and deep. Scully could feel the sound in her chest. 

“A ridiculous moniker,” he said. 

He had neither confirmed nor denied it. 

“Aeon Greene’s a hell of a moniker, too,” Scully said. “Were you trying to be subtle?”

Aeon stopped laughing and gave her a severe look. 

“Names are powerful things.”

“Is this your real one?” She imagined him snapping his fingers and populating the digital world with information. One minute Mulder could find no record of his existence, and the next he was a grunt for free enterprise like the rest of them, with an address and a tax record and parking tickets.

“I have many real ones.”

An uncomfortable sensation crept over Scully as she got the distinct impression that she was being outflanked.

“My partner thinks he knows your true name.” 

“And I think I know his,” Aeon said, conspiratorial. While Scully puzzled over this, he backed up to the autopsy table and hefted himself up, getting comfortable. “What did you come here for Dr. Scully?”

Scully once again held up the magnolia leaf. 

“Magnolia is an interesting plant,” she said. 

Aeon opened his mouth to speak, but it was Mulder’s monotonic voice that came out. 

“Magnolia represents different things in different cultures,” he said, repeating the exact words Mulder had uttered only the day before. “In Chinese folklore it’s a signal of strength. In the US South, it symbolizes luck and stability. In ancient times it was associated with rituals of fertility and spiritual cleansing and was used to bind charms. The dead would carry it to help cross the River Styx.”

Scully swallowed. Unnerved, frightened. If she’d still had any doubt as to the supernatural nature of this case, the doubt was now gone. 

Aeon took pleasure in her discomfort, smiling at her now. “I can say other things in Mulder’s voice, too,” he said, then, switching to Mulder, echoing what her partner sounded like in the throes of passion, “Oh, Scully.”

She needed to wrest back control of the conversation. She tried to center herself, thought about the work. 

“I didn’t find any evidence of magnolia in the stomach contents of Daly Carmichael,” she said. “As a whole, the plant isn’t generally toxic, with the exception of a compound exclusive to magnolias called magnocurarine. And if Daly had had that compound in his system, it would have killed him. I would have found evidence of paralysis, organ congestion, conjunctival petechiae, cyanosis. Bulging of the eyes and tongue, foaming at the mouth.”

While she spoke, Aeon made faces at her, eventually bulging out his eyes and waving a too-big tongue, then making exaggerated gagging noises while a green-tinged foam came out of his mouth. When she stopped speaking, the foam disappeared instantly and his eyes and tongue receded to normal. 

“Come on, Dr. Scully, it was just getting fun,” he whined. 

“You put this in his mouth,” she said quite seriously. “And when I removed it, you introduced magnolia into his system. After he died. There were significant traces of limonene, β-eudesmol, β-elemene and magnocurarine in his bloodwork. There’s no way they could have been in his body when he was alive. It had to have been introduced post-mortem. Liver temperature readings had him dying just before he was found. You’re the only one who had unfettered access to him.”

Aeon’s posture changed, and he too, became a little more serious. 

“You’re of the Seelie Court, aren’t you?” Scully asked, coming to the moment of truth. “You used it to bind some kind of charm. You’re trying to…what? Escort him to heaven?” 

Aeon scoffed. “The human idea of heaven is far closer to where he was traveling from. And no, I wasn’t escorting him. I was ensuring that he made it back where he belonged. And that no one took his place.”

“You don’t deny you’re of the Seelie Court, then?”

“A court of light, a court of dark. Summer Court, Winter court, none of it matters,” Aeon said dismissively, waving a hand in front of himself. 

Scully was concerned she’d made a grave miscalculation. Mulder was the one with the preternatural instincts, had her intuition led her astray?

“I don’t deny it,” he finally said, jumping off the autopsy table with an air of vague annoyance. For a moment, she let herself feel the slightest relief. “But you shouldn’t have come back here,” he went on. “I tried to tell you.”

***

Mulder flew by the motel where they’d stayed, putting himself in Scully’s place. If she’d gotten information on Daly Carmichael that called her back into town, she’d go one of three places. It just so happened that the morgue was the first of places he passed, and her car was out front. The Sheriff’s deputies would be in the process of assembling, and Mulder debated whether or not he should wait for their backup. 

Scully at gunpoint, Scully taped to a chair, Scully in danger.

His car screamed into the parking lot. He unholstered his weapon and threw open the door. 

***

“What do you mean?” Scully asked. 

“You’re in danger. He’s seen you. And not just with his eyes.”

Scully swallowed thickly. “The…the Unseelie courtier?” 

“The Unseelie courtier?” Aeon mocked. “You’re as stupid as Daly Carmichael. How many warnings have I sent? To you and your partner. You should have stayed away. This place,” Aeon gestured around. “The barriers here are thin.”

“The barriers to where?” Scully asked, getting angry. He talked in riddles and circles. Mulder had the vocabulary to deal with the otherworldly. She? Could barely keep up. 

“To my realm, Dana Katherine. To our realm.”

Scully considered his words for a moment. Aeon approached her, giving her a look like a schoolmarm, like he expected her to keep up. 

“The hollows,” she said. “That’s where the barrier is thin?”

Aeon spoke with grudging respect. “There’s one way in and one way out.”

The Carmichael Estate. The Beach. They were never in any danger at the beach—it was the exit. She swallowed thickly, thinking how close she’d come to the hollow at Daly’s old manse. One way in.

“She’s starting to get it,” Aeon said. 

“Our dreams,” Scully said. “You were warning us?”

“He’ll make you pretty promises but use you until you’re a husk. I told you,” he said, grabbing onto the tops of her shoulders to look deeply into her eyes. “To stay away!” 

The flicker of light in Aeon’s eyes was a green flame licking up into the night. Scully felt like she was falling. 

With a sound like a shot, the autopsy bay door came flying open and crashed into the wall. Mulder came through an instant later, crouched at tactical ready, his weapon in his hand. 

“Scully!” he shouted. 

When she pulled her eyes away from Aeon to see what the commotion at the door was, she started to come back to herself. And she realized how it all looked. 

She opened her mouth to shout at him, but Mulder was already worked into a lather. 

He took two steps into the room, pointed his gun at Aeon and shouted:

“Ælfred!” 

Aeon, with a look of the utmost distaste, turned to Scully. 

“Now you’ve done it,” he said. 

***

When Mulder stepped into the room, the only thing he could see were the Unseelie courtier’s hands on Scully and the vacant, distant look in her eyes. And all he could think was that he needed to get the being away from her, and the only way he could think to do it was to call the creature to him using his true name. 

A moment later, Deputy Avery came stumbling in through the door behind Mulder, his own service pistol raised, and Mulder had the distant thought: Oh, good. Backup. 

“Deputy,” Mulder said, moving around so that he had a clear shot at Aeon without Scully being in the way. “We need to take this man into custody.”

“I’m on you, Agent Mulder!” said the deputy gamely, crossing to Aeon’s other side. 

Aeon, in a ripple of chartreuse annoyance, rolled his eyes. 

“Mulder,” Scully said, eyeing Deputy Avery warily.

“Scully, step away from him.”

“Mulder,” Scully said with more intensity.

“Scully,” Mulder started. Before he could say anything else, Deputy Avery stepped forward. 

“Don’t worry Agent Mulder, I’ve got him!” he shouted with youthful gusto and then fired his weapon at Aeon Greene. 

On Aeon’s chest, bright red blossoms erupted against the dark material of his cloak. Blossoms, Mulder thought, watching with detached fascination. Actual blossoms. Roses, zinnia, a puffy and deep red peony. Aeon watched them fall to the concrete floor of the morgue where they shriveled into desiccated petals. 

A high-pitched hysterical laugh filled the room, but when Mulder glanced up to Aeon’s face, he wasn’t moving. Mulder turned to find Avery hunched over as if in pain. And then he straightened, his expression bright with delighted whimsy. 

“Oh my god,” the Deputy said to Mulder, still chuckling. “You should see your face.”

He then put his service pistol to the side of his head and pulled the trigger. 

But instead of blood and brain matter spurting forth, the bright green shoots of a vine came flying out of the side of Avery’s head and flew towards Mulder, where they wrapped around his midsection and his legs, squeezing so tightly that Mulder dropped his weapon. 

“There,” Avery said, and pulled the end of the vine away from his head. He dropped it to the floor, where it slithered the rest of the way to Mulder, creeping up his body until it wrapped around his head and neck, softly, like a lover’s caress. “That’s better,” finished the deputy.  

[slippinmickeys]

The Unseelie Court (13/16)

The Adrian County morgue parking lot was a rectangle of crumbling asphalt with enough room for six cars, though there was only one other in it at present. Scully sat in the driver’s seat, wondering if this move had been the right one. 

She had called Mulder’s apartment from her mother’s, though he hadn’t answered, which had been, she’d decided, for the best. She’d left him an abridged message, letting him know that she’d be a few hours later than she expected, but that she’d have information from the Daly Carmichael case to share with him when she got there. 

At least, she hoped she would. She looked down at her open laptop at the bloodwork results from the state crime lab. There was still nothing that pointed to cause of death, but there were a few unusual chemicals found in Daly Carmichael’s blood that didn’t add up. And she had decided to come down to Adrian County on her own to address the problem. A fact that she knew Mulder would be less than pleased with.

It wasn’t just that Skinner had told her to keep him out of Adrian County—at least, it wasn’t all that. Mulder wasn’t the most gifted tactician, not when enthusiasm or worry informed his choices. And anyway, the enemy Mulder thought they were dealing with wasn’t who Mulder thought he was. For the sake of everyone’s safety and career, it was best if Scully handled this particular confrontation on her own. As sure as Mulder had been about cases in the past when he’d turned out to be right, Scully was certain about at least one thing about this one: she would be—at least relatively—safe. 

She closed her laptop, slid it into her bag, and headed for the morgue. 

***

Mulder walked through the door of his apartment, balancing several full bags of groceries. He didn’t have a lot of meals in his culinary arsenal, but he’d honed a decently respectable chicken marsala for a college girlfriend, and was hoping he could still pull it off. He’d promised Scully that he’d make the weekend worth her while, and that would extend to more than just bedsport. If he wanted to keep Scully happy long term, he would need to do more than he’d done in other relationships. He at least had to try. 

Setting everything down on his kitchen countertop, he looked at his watch. 1:22 pm. 

He’d expected Scully to call to let him know she was on her way for the last hour or so, but he had yet to hear from her, and the one time he’d called her cell phone just to check in, from the vegetable aisle of the grocery store (did she like asparagus? He couldn’t remember), her phone had been turned off. 

He put away the refrigerated groceries and, before tackling the rest, he pulled his cell phone out, unable to wait any longer to hear her voice. 

Margaret Scully answered the phone with a polite, “Hello?”

“Mrs. Scully?” Mulder said, knowing that while this wasn’t going to be one of those uncomfortable calls when he had to share bad news, it was still going to be awkward because of the conversation she and Scully had had the night before. “It’s Fox Mulder.”

“Hello, Fox,” she said, and there was an expectant, knowing lilt to her tone. 

“I’m sorry to bother you at home,” he went on, “but can I please speak to Dana?”

“Oh,” Mrs. Scully said. “Dana left almost two hours ago. I think she called and left you a message. Did you not get it?”

Mulder felt a jolt of relief. “No,” he said. “She must have called my home phone. I’ve been out all morning.” Mulder did some mental math. If she’d left almost two hours before, she should have already arrived. 

“I’ll check my messages,” he said. “But in the meantime, do you happen to know if she was making any pit stops on her way back to DC?”

“She wasn’t terribly specific with me,” Mrs. Scully said. “You know how she can be. But she did mention having to stop by the office and then make a drive of several hours. I got the sense it was for work. She had gotten what seemed like an important email just before she left.”

“Did she say anything else? Which case it was? A name maybe?”

“Just what I overheard when she left you a message. David Carmichael?”

A sense of unease washed over him, and he thought of his dream the night before. In it, Scully, still wearing the tiara and naked as a jaybird, had walked up to the willow tree, laughed shrilly, then touched the carving of the broken crown. She’d disappeared instantly, and Mulder had known she wasn’t coming back.

“Thank you, Mrs. Scully, I’ve got to go,” he said and hung up before she’d said goodbye. 

He made his way quickly to his desk, and sure enough, his answering machine light was on. He pressed the button. 

“Hey Mulder, it’s me. Listen, I’m going to be later than I expected. At least by a few hours. My phone is off, but I’ll check in when I get a chance. I’m–I expect to have an update on the Daly Carmichael case when I get there. I’ll talk to you in a bit.” 

With an escalating sense of disquiet, Mulder grabbed his sidearm and his keys. Scully had gone to Adrian County, he was absolutely certain. And owing to her pit stop at the office and geography, she only had about an hour’s head start. With any luck, he could catch her before she got there. Before Aeon Greene, the Unseelie courtier, got to her. 

***

Scully stepped into the morgue building, her shoes clacking against the tile floor. As she approached the autopsy bay, a man about ten years her senior stuck his head out the door. 

“Thought I heard somebody,” he said kindly. “Can I help you? You probably don’t want to come in here.”

Scully flashed him her badge. “I’m looking for Aeon Greene,” she said.

The guy looked confused. “Who?”

Scully returned his look of confusion. “Let’s start over. Who are you?” 

“Dr. Rosen,” the man said, pulling off a pair of nitrile gloves and coming all the way out into the hallway. “The coroner.”

“Ah,” Scully said, reaching out a hand. “We didn’t get a chance to meet. I’m Special Agent Scully, the forensic pathologist who did the autopsy on Daly Carmichael.”

“Oh, the cold case. Yeah. Open and shut, huh? What can I do for you again?”

“I’m looking for Aeon Greene. Your autopsy technician?”

“My what?”

“Your diener,” she explained, hoping the man wasn’t as dense as he seemed.

He looked at her a moment and then busted out laughing. “In this ass-backwater hamlet? God, if only. I’m sorry, Agent. It’s just me here. Has been for the last six years.”

Scully stared at him for a moment and then from behind her, heard: 

“Agent Scully?”

She turned to see Aeon Greene standing in the middle of the hallway behind her. He wasn’t in scrubs and a lab coat, but rather dressed head to toe in a long black garment that appeared, when the light hit it right, to be a diaphanous and shimmering green. 

When she turned to glance back at Dr. Rosen, he was staring at her expectantly, perhaps somewhat dumbly, as though frozen in place. 

“Dr. Rosen, you’re going back on vacation,” said Aeon, and without a word, Dr. Rosen turned on his heel and made directly for the building doors, walking out without looking back. 

Scully turned back to Aeon. “Neat trick,” she said. 

“I have more,” Aeon said with a sinister smile. 

“So it would seem,” she said. She thought back to all of Mulder’s various warnings and folkloric edicts. She would need to carefully select her words. 

Aeon cocked his head to the side. “What can I do for you, Dana Katherine?”

***

Mulder took the corner too fast and nearly spun out. Reluctantly, he eased up on the gas. US-220 wasn’t nearly as slick as it had been when they’d first taken the highway into Adrian, but he would do Scully no good if he crashed and ended up in a ditch, or worse. Once the road straightened out, he reached again for his phone. 

“It’s Agent Mulder,” he said into the receiver. “Anything?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Deputy Avery. Mulder could hear the low murmur of voices from the department bullpen. He’d called the Adrian County emergency switchboard. When dispatch couldn’t connect Mulder with the Sheriff, he’d asked for Deputy Avery. Mulder had explained that his partner was headed to Adrian County and that he hoped she’d stop by the Sheriff’s Department when she got into town. That she had information on the Daly Carmichael case.

“She’s not here, Agent Mulder. And I put out a BOLO on her vehicle, but we got nothing so far.”

“I’m afraid she might be in trouble,” Mulder said. 

“Trouble? What kind of trouble?” Avery asked, concerned.

“To be honest,” Mulder said, shifting the phone to pinch between his shoulder and his ear. “I’m not sure. But I…I want backup. Lots of it. Can you muster a team?”

“Absolutely sir!” said the deputy excitedly. If the mass of policemen hovering around the scene when Daly Carmichael had been found was any indication, this sleepy hamlet didn’t see a lot of police action. The Feds calling them in on a posse comitatus was likely the highlight of their collective year. “Where do you want us?”

Mulder tried to think of everywhere she might go. “I want a team at the beach where we found Carmichael,” Mulder explained, goosing the gas as he tore over the hill that led into the little town. “I want another at the Carmichael Estate. And I want a third at the morgue.”

“You got it.”

“Deputy? Tell your boys to exercise extreme caution.” 

“What is it we’re being cautious about, agent?”

Mulder shook his head. “I wish I knew.”

[slippinmickeys]

The Unseelie Court (12/16)

As the clock drifted closer to 5:00 pm, the air in their office became a little thinner, a little less fraught. They had both come down from the excitement in Skinner’s office and had finally settled into a comfortable silence. One that Mulder eventually mustered the courage to break. 

“Do you want to come over tonight?” he asked, feeling somewhat sheepish. He could think of nothing better than spending a Friday evening with Scully, of waking up late, whiling away the day in bed for the whole of the weekend. 

Scully smiled at him. “I wish I could,” she said. “But I promised my mom I’d head up to Baltimore tonight. She committed to bringing the baked goods to St. Agatha’s on Sunday and I promised I’d help her bake.” 

Mulder’s heart fell and it must have shown in his face. 

“I might be able to get out of services if I tell her I have to work,” she said. “Maybe I can get back into town tomorrow afternoon.”

That would still give them an uninterrupted 24 hours. 

“I’ll make it worth your while.” 

“I’ll remember you said that.” 

***

“Do you remember Teddy Abernathy?” Her mother asked in a delicate tone that meant that she was meddling and was more than aware she was doing it. “He’ll be at church on Sunday, and I thought I might reintroduce you.”

They sat at Margaret Scully’s small kitchen table, having eaten a casserole and a simple green salad. Nevertheless, her mother had set out her good china, and a vase of cut hydrangeas overwhelmed one end of the table, the flowers having turned from pink to green in the light of the late summer sun. 

“Is he the one with male pattern baldness or the one with the weird underbite?” Scully asked cheekily, standing up to collect the two delicate plates and trundle them to the frothy sink. 

Maggie scoffed. “He’s the ophthalmologist with a summer home in Rhode Island,” she said tartly, reaching for her glass of chablis. “He’s also a very nice man.”

‘Nice,’ was usually Mom code for ‘devout.’ 

Scully began scooping the leftover casserole into tupperware so that it could cool. It wasn’t the first time her mother had tried to play matchmaker, but it was the first time she’d done so while Scully was in a relationship with Mulder. 

“Mom, I appreciate you looking out for me,” she said from the sink. “But I’m not in the market right now.” A spoon she was holding slipped from her hand and disappeared into the suds. 

It felt odd to be on her own after several consecutive days and nights spent in Mulder’s company. Coming to Baltimore had been a rapid depressurization from the immersion, and she found herself suffering a kind of nitrogen narcosis, fumbling her way through a conversation she didn’t want to be having, her fine motor coordination on the fritz.

“You work too much,” her mother went on. “It doesn’t have to be anything serious, but there’s no harm in seeing what’s out there. If you want a family—”

“Mom—” she said, the word coming out more sharply than she'd meant it to. 

Maggie pulled back, miffed, and Scully sighed and walked back to the table, sliding back into her chair with an eye to making amends. 

“I know you’re just trying to help,” she said, reaching out and giving her mother’s hand a brief squeeze. 

“I shouldn’t have mentioned your having a family, Dana,” Maggie said, accepting the olive branch. “That wasn’t fair of me.” Scully pressed her lips together, remembering her mother’s reaction to Emily. “It’s just–I want you to be happy. I want you to have a full life. Dating someone can—”

“I am dating someone.” She wasn’t sure why she said it. Maybe to just get her mother to stop, maybe because it was nice to actually say out loud. 

Her mother’s face changed from one of concern and sympathy to pleased curiosity. Scully instantly knew she should have kept her mouth shut. 

“How did you meet?” 

There was no getting out of it, now. 

“Work,” she said, standing up once again and busying herself, grabbing the last of the dinner dishes to take them over to the sink. 

“Dare I hope it’s a charming prosecutor with his sights set on the gubernatorial office?” her mother joked. 

“It is not,” she said, knowing she was committed now to having this conversation. 

“Is it—” her mother started, and then stopped. “Oh. Dana.”

Scully turned to her mother, confirming her suspicions with a look. 

Margaret Scully took a deep breath and then set her glass of wine onto the table with calm precision. 

“How long?” she asked. 

“Not very,” Scully answered, leaning back against the countertop. 

“And does he make you happy?”

Scully didn’t have to think very long before answering. “Yes,” she said, her head dipping down to look at the floor.

“He loves you,” her mother said, a statement. 

Scully nodded, unable to meet her mother’s eye. 

A moment later, Margaret was standing in front of her, had reached out and had her hand on Scully’s cheek, lifting her head so that she could look her in the eye. 

“Loving a man like that…” her mother started, then sighed. “I knew a lot of Navy wives. A lot of Navy pilots. They were all good men, but some of them…some of them flew too close to the sun.” She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her daughter’s forehead. “Be careful.”

***

Discomfited, Scully retired early. She wanted some time to herself, and she was also expecting the blood test results on Daly Carmichael from the state crime lab. She fired up her laptop, but nothing had yet come in. Maybe tomorrow. 

Her mother’s guest room was an amalgamation of furniture from each of her children’s past. The wardrobe in the corner had been Charlie’s, the dresser, Bill’s. She lay back in the brass queen bed trying not to think about all the nights her sister had slept in it. 

Without really thinking about it, she grabbed her phone and called Mulder. He picked up after the first ring. 

“Hey,” he said, his voice warm as soft flannel. “You make it up there okay?”

“Yes,” she said. “The beltway was a nightmare, but I got here in time for dinner.”

Her mother’s house had a quiet, homey atmosphere, insulated from the greater world. It gave an air of being muffled and warm, where the loudest thing was the ticking of a mantle clock and the oven light gave a reassuring yellow glow even at midnight. It was a place that always smelled like paraffin wax candles and roast chicken, a place that felt like a hug the moment you stepped into it.

“How’s your mom?” Mulder asked politely. 

“Good,” Scully said, settling back to listen to the pleasant drone of Mulder’s voice. “She wants to set me up with an ophthalmologist.”

“Maybe that’s not a bad idea,” he said. “Your last firearms qualification score was 98. Not your usual 100. Might be time to upgrade those specs.”

“You’re a riot,” she deadpanned. 

Downstairs she could hear her mother turn on the dishwasher and moments later pad up the stairs and past Scully’s door. 

“Let me guess,” Mulder went on. “Upstanding churchgoer? Drives a Benz?”

“Catholic as the Pope,” Scully confirmed. “Not sure about the Benz, but he’s got a summer house in Rhode Island.”

“So do I,” Mulder breezed. “If that’s the sum total of necessary qualifications to date a Scully woman, I could—”

“I told her about us,” Scully interrupted him. 

“You…did?” he seemed genuinely taken aback. 

“It was either that or agree to an Italian dinner in Inner Harbor with a balding eye doctor.”

Scully imagined sitting across the table from a quiet-spoken and affable Teddy Abernathy. He’d make polite conversation and cover the bill, but he wouldn’t request a table so they could both see the door. He wouldn’t call her with a random bit of esoterica in the middle of the night, wouldn’t lift a string of barbed wire so she could scoot under, wouldn’t wordlessly hand over a Red Vine the very moment her blood sugar dipped below 70.

“You’re going to make your own decisions, but personally I would have taken the free branzino for a week or two before breaking the bad news to my mom. Prescription sunglasses ain’t cheap. And it’s not like you’d have had to put out. Good Catholics save themselves for marriage, you know.”

“Someone should have told me that a few weeks ago. Now I’m never getting into heaven.”

Mulder chuckled drowsily in her ear. 

“How’d she take it?” he asked kindly. 

Scully sighed, didn’t want to tell him that her mom had been a little reticent. “She’s worried Bill’s going to take a swing at you at Thanksgiving.”

“All I’m hearing is that it went well enough that I’m invited to Thanksgiving.”

“That’s your takeaway?”

“I’m an optimist.”

Scully smiled into the receiver and yawned. “Listen,” she said. “Mom and I are going to get started here early. I got out of Sunday mass. I was hoping to get on the road around noon.”

“You want to come directly here?” His voice was tender and rumbly. 

“I was told it would be worth my while,” she said suggestively.

There was nothing but hissing silence for a moment. She could picture him on his couch with his phone to his ear, the front of his jeans getting tight with pressure. 

“Shit, Scully.” 

She smiled. “I’ll call you before I leave, give you an ETA.”

“Okay,” he said, all his clever quips used up. 

“Goodnight, Mulder.”

She pressed the button before he had a chance to respond, smiling to herself. It was fun to be on the giving end of teasing for once. 

Looking one last time at the display on her phone, she frowned. It was nearly out of battery. And she’d left the charging cord she normally traveled with at the motel in Adrian County. Sighing, she turned off the phone in an effort to preserve whatever battery life remained. It would be an analog weekend until she got to Mulder’s.

***

Scully was frosting the final cupcake as her mother slid the last two pies into the oven. 

“You were always the most efficient of my children,” her mother said. “But that would have impressed even an admiral.”

Scully smiled and set the finished cupcake on the paper shopping bag her mother was using to receive them. It was 11:45 am. 

“Are you sure you can’t stay for the afternoon and help me carry all these into mass tomorrow?” her mother asked hopefully. 

“I need to get back,” Scully said, and her mother smiled knowingly. 

“How about I box up a half dozen of these and you can take them to Fox,” she said, nodding toward the cupcakes. 

“Mom—”

“I want to!” her mother said, all enthusiasm. 

She’d been downright chipper about Scully’s new relationship all morning long, no doubt trying to make up for her lack of enthusiasm the night before. 

“Let me grab one of the Christmas tins. I think they’re in the basement.”

Maggie was down the stairs before Scully could argue, and she heard her banging around and opening various boxes. 

Scully’s overnight bag and laptop case were packed and next to the door waiting for her. She’d slept terribly the night before, her rest beset by nightmares from the fairy grove. Not only had Mulder been branded in her dreams by the Unseelie courtier’s symbol, this time he had been chained to the tree, his two different colored eyes boring into hers. “Stay away!” he’d warned her when she tried to get close to free him. She’d startled awake and considered calling him, only to remember that she barely had any charge on her phone. 

Another bang echoed up from the basement.

“Mom, can I give you a hand?” she called down the stairs.

“No, I know right where it is!” came Maggie’s muffled voice. 

If the sounds drifting up the stairs were any indication, that probably wasn’t the case. Scully sighed. Then, eyeing her luggage, she grabbed her laptop and set it up on her mother’s kitchen table, figuring she had at least enough time to check her email to see if the Carmichael bloodwork labs had come back. Mulder would want her to walk him through them, even if they showed nothing. 

Sure enough, there was a new email waiting for her from the state crime lab. She opened the attachment and scanned the results, her brow creasing more and more as she read each line. 

“Found it!” Her mother said from the top of the stairs, startling her. She was holding a small Christmas cookie tin. When she looked at Scully’s face, her smile faded. 

“Dana?” she said. 

“Mom,” Scully said. “I need to use your phone.”

[slippinmickeys]

The Unseelie Court (11/16)

Mulder perused his office bookshelf, pulling down several books and stacking them on his desktop. The morning sun shone in through the skylight, dusty beams cutting through the air at a slant.

Scully had stayed the night at his apartment but had left early in the morning to shower and dress at home. To his great surprise and elation, when he suggested that he could clear out a few drawers and some closet space for her to keep things at his place, she thought it was a good idea and offered to do the same for him at her own home. 

It was with this same ebullient mood that Mulder cross-referenced the information he’d found online the night before with folkloric texts both new and old. 

When Scully walked in with two cups of coffee and a smile, the first thing he did was thank his lucky stars, and the second thing he did was swing his first edition Brynswyn Folkloric Compendium around so she could see it. 

“Here,” he said, pointing to the spot on the page where he wanted her attention. He took a sip of the coffee she’d brought and nodded his thanks. 

“What am I looking at?” she asked. She was leaning forward over the desk, bewitching as anything in his books.

“The information I found last night on the Unseelie courtier coincides with several passages from both Brynswyn and an Eirennach translation of Fair Folk mythos curated by the University of Pennsylvania.”

Scully looked at him blankly. 

“Both are considered to be among the top authorities of hibernian folklore.”

“Okay,” she said. “So you’re thinking what? This courtier is the person responsible for the disappearance of Daly Carmichael?”

“And everything else that’s happened since. I think the fairy hollows are his—and the mechanism by which Daly Carmichael traveled between realms. And I also think he’s responsible for swapping out the evidence, or making it look like it was swapped, as well as wiping the memories of everyone involved.”

“Everyone but us.”

“And Aeon Greene.”

“That’s what I don’t get, Mulder. Why are you and I immune? Why Aeon?”

“Because you and I came into contact with the Seelie Court leaf in Daly’s mouth. The only explanation I can think of is that it’s imbued with Seelie Court magic that counters everything this courtier is trying to do.”

“And Aeon?”

Mulder licked his lips, took a breath.

“I think Aeon is that courtier.”

Scully sat with that for a moment. She wasn’t convinced, but she was willing to hear Mulder out. 

“And this shows us his name?” she finally said, pulling the book closer to her. “His ‘true’ name?”

“Here,” Mulder said, pointing again to a spot on the page. 

Ælfred, she read. 

“Don’t say it,” Mulder warned. 

“You said you found him because of the symbol?”

Mulder turned the page, and there, in a black and white picture taken of a carving in a weathered rock, was a crown broken in two. 

With a renewed feeling of unease, Scully looked up from the page. 

“Mulder,” she said. “In my dream. This was the symbol that was branded on your chest.”

Mulder leaned back, reaching up to unconsciously rub his sternum. He opened his mouth to speak when the office phone rang. 

After taking a shaky breath, Scully reached out and answered. She hung up after about fifteen seconds. 

“That was Skinner,” she said. “He wants to see us in his office. Right now.”

***

Scully was quiet as they rode the elevator up to Skinner’s floor, and Mulder wondered if perhaps the bravado she showed last night when she announced that they should just tell their superior that they were in a relationship was waning. 

It wasn’t unusual to be called to the floor when they’d (he’d) done something wrong, and Mulder would take his licks as they came, but despite the fact that they were breaking FBI regulations, this didn’t feel fair. He could handle censure or probation, but what he couldn’t handle, and he didn’t think Scully could either, was the thought of being separated. And he wasn’t about to break things off with Scully just so they could stay partners. Or maybe he would. Fuck, he didn’t know. 

He was considering what their options were when they stepped into the Assistant Director’s waiting room. 

Arlene looked up from her computer, and gave them a small, kind smile. “You can go right in,” she said. 

Mulder filed in behind Scully and they took their usual seats. Before Skinner could launch into a disciplinary oratory and before Mulder had a chance to even ask if that’s why’d been called into the Assistant Director’s office, Scully spoke. 

“Sir,” she said confidently, “if this is about what Arlene overheard when she came down to our office yesterday—”

Mulder’s heart went to his throat. Christ, she just dove right in. Mulder had always admired her moxie, but this was another level. What Skinner said next was even more surprising.

“I don’t care,” Skinner said with a dour look on his face. 

“Sir?”

“Your after hours relationship,” he went on, sighing as if he couldn’t believe he had to deal with shit like this. “As long as it’s consensual and doesn’t interfere with your work, I don’t care, and I will not mention it. Nor will my assistant. As long as you’re discreet, you won’t have a problem. Some regulations are enforced more than others.”

Mulder and Scully shared a brief look.  

“Your conviction levels may be low, but your solve rate is unparalleled. We couldn’t recreate your kind of investigative chemistry in a lab. My only warning to you is if this goes south, you’re staying together for the kids, am I understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Scully said. 

Skinner gave Mulder a withering look. 

Mulder cleared his throat. “Yes, sir,” he repeated. 

“That’s done, then,” Skinner said. “But that’s not why I called you in here. Your unauthorized trip to Adrian County has the auditors' panties in a twist. Running your own investigations should be done on the weekends, agents. What possessed you to requisition a car from the motor pool and use a Bureau credit card for hotels and meals is beyond me. That’s when I get calls. I don’t like getting calls.”

“Sir,” Mulder started. But Scully interrupted. 

“Sir,” she said with the same pluck and confidence she’d shown minutes before. “We had authorization for that trip and investigation. Mulder spoke to you at 7:15am the day we left for Adrian County. I was in the bed next to him when the Adrian County Sheriff called asking for our assistance and when he spoke to you on the phone. We had verbal authorization from you and a signed 302. The nature of the case we were investigating is such that pursuant to our findings, a force I can’t explain has managed to erase not only the memories of nearly everyone involved in it, yours included, but also the paper trail that proves what I’m telling you is the truth. We had permission. There is an X-File in Adrian County.”

He stared at them for a long moment. “A force?” he then asked, his tone indicating that he didn’t actually want to hear the answer. 

“Magic,” Scully said. “Of some kind.”

Skinner took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“I suppose magic is the only explanation as to why I’m hearing this shit coming from your mouth and not his,” Skinner said with a despairing sigh. 

Scully merely sat there looking at him, silent and solemn. Skinner looked like he needed to chug a bottle of Pepto Bismol. Finally, he put his glasses back on.

“Do you have any proof whatsoever? Anything concrete? Any physical evidence?”

Mulder sat forward. “In my office, downstairs,” he said. “We have a magnolia leaf with an etching carved into it that was pulled out of a dead man’s mouth.”

“And I’m to understand that the dead man is purported to be a victim and what triggered this investigation initially?”

“Yes, sir,” said Mulder. 

“Do you believe the leaf was used to choke or poison him?” Skinner asked hopefully. 

“No, sir,” Scully said. “The leaf is of a variety that is only toxic to humans in high doses. I found no evidence of that. In fact, I could find no cause of death at all, which is odd in and of itself. But the relevant piece from the evidence seems to be the etching itself.”

“The nature of which is?”

“Thaumaturgy,” Scully said, finally sounding somewhat reticent. 

Skinner said something under his breath and ran a hand over his face. 

“Okay,” he said after a long moment. “Send me a field report detailing every single thing you have on this case. I will run it up the chain of command. If, and this is a big if, I can convince the Deputy or the Director that this case is worthy of inquiry, I will re-sign the 302 and you can continue with your investigation. In the meantime, stay out of it and keep your noses clean.” Skinner looked at Scully over his glasses. “That goes double for him. Keep him out of Adrian County.”

“Yes, sir,” Scully replied humbly, flitting her eyes briefly toward Mulder.

Then they stood and began making their way to the door. 

“Mulder, a moment?” Skinner said. 

Mulder traded a look with his partner and stepped back into the Assistant Director’s office. 

“You’re punching above your weight. With her.” 

“Don’t I know it, sir.”

Skinner leveled a long look at him. 

“Don’t fuck this up.”

***

They worked through lunch and spent most of the afternoon writing up a field report for Skinner. 

At one point, Scully leaned back and sighed. “Do we name Aeon Greene as a suspect?” she asked. “And do we include our dreams, do you think?” 

Mulder considered this. “I think we leave him out of it for now until we get more concrete proof. As for our dreams…I don’t know if that would help or hurt at this point,” he said. “Maybe we leave them out, too.”

Scully nodded and looked at Mulder seriously. “We never got a chance to talk about the symbol,” she said. “In our dreams. It worries me.”

“I uh,” Mulder said, knowing she wouldn’t like this bit of trivia either. “Every time I’ve woken up from one of those dreams,” he said, “the skin of my chest burns.”

“Physically?” she asked. 

Mulder nodded. “But it only appears on me in your dreams, not mine,” he said. “Though I do experience pain.”

“Could be psychosomatic,” she said hopefully. 

Mulder crossed his fingers on both hands and held them up. 

“Yeah,” Scully said, deflating a bit. She sighed. “I guess what I want to know is…what do the dreams mean, anyway? Do your books mention anything? Are they a portent? A warning? Is someone using them to try to communicate with us? Is it our subconscious trying to solve the case?”

“Firstly, I’ve never loved you more than I do right now. Secondly, I will reiterate once again that while we’re pretty…connected…I don’t think our subconscious is collective. I don’t see how we would have the same dream. And my body reacting physically to your dreams seems…” He shrugged. “As to your other questions, I’ll study the texts more. But in all kinds of folklore, dreams can do anything you mentioned: serve as a portent, serve as a warning. In Nordic folklore, dreams can be used by the dead to communicate with the living. The short answer is: I don’t know.”

“How do we want to move forward?” she went on after a few moments of silence. “Skinner doesn’t want us investigating.”

“We nail horseshoes above our doors,” he said, leaning down to unlock his desk drawer. “Carry around cold iron, and maybe travel with this,” he went on, holding up the evidence bag with the magnolia leaf in two fingers.

Scully looked at the bag, a puzzled look crossing her face. “Why the leaf, I wonder,” she said. “Why magnolia?”

“Magnolia represents different things in different cultures,” Mulder said, setting the leaf on his desktop. “In Chinese folklore it’s a signal of strength. In the US south, it symbolizes luck and stability. In ancient times it was associated with rituals of fertility and spiritual cleansing and was used to bind charms. The dead would carry it to help cross the River Styx. I don’t know. Maybe the Seelie Court just liked it because it was thick and hearty and wouldn’t disintegrate in Daly Carmichael’s mouth.”

Scully looked at him with a fond expression. “Mulder, you’re a wonder,” she said. “And a font of the most useless knowledge known to man.”

Mulder smiled at her. “It won’t be useless when it’s saving our ass from hinkypunks and brownies,” he said. “And Aeon Greene.”

She tilted her head at him in a nod of touché.  

“And if you ever want to kill at bar trivia,” he went on with a cocky wink. “I’m your boy.”

[slippinmickeys]

The Unseelie Court (10/16)

Mulder sighed and rubbed his tired eyes, leaning his elbows against the desktop when he felt Scully’s warm arms snake over his shoulders and wrap around his chest. He smiled, clasping a hand to her and holding it tight.  He hadn’t heard her get up. 

“You’re still at it?” she asked, her sleepy breath in his ear. 

“I was researching this symbol I saw in the fairy hollow when I went into it that last time,” he said. “It’s obscure, but I think it’s representative of an Unseelie courtier. It’s not one of the more well known symbols like the hawk or a throne, but it’s—”

He stopped talking when he felt her mouth crimp over his earlobe, her tongue darting out to give it a dainty lick.

“I think,” she said into the cup of his ear. “You can do this tomorrow.”

He thought, an arrow of want darting through him, she was probably right. 

“Is this-”

“Me trying to seduce you? Yes,” she said, running a hand down the front of his shirt. “I told you you’d know.”

He let her pepper little kisses from his ear to his neck before he hefted himself up with an impatient grunt, kicking the chair out of his way and grabbing her, pulling her to him, handsy and adolescent. The glow of the fish tank flared in his periphery like astigmatism. 

She laughed into his mouth when he lowered it to kiss her, her neck tilted back awkwardly. “Easy, caveman,” she said. 

Mulder pulled back to look at her. “You want to see caveman?” he asked. 

Before she could formulate a response, he bent his knees and grabbed her bodily under the ass, hauling her up and heaving her over his shoulder, heading for the bedroom. The shriek she let out sent a primitive spiral of desire coursing through him, and he felt like a caveman all of a sudden, aggressive and rugged, run-through with a prehistoric want. 

When he got to the base of the bed, he tossed her down. She opened her mouth to say something, but the only thing that came out was a rough breath when her body hit the mattress. He watched as her nostrils flared and the skin around her eyes pulled back and he suddenly understood something about Scully on a fundamental, and most importantly, carnal level. He didn’t feel playful anymore. 

She was looking up at him through her lashes, panting a little, and he reached down and undid his belt, pulling it roughly out of the loops on his pants so that it made a slapping sound as it hit each one. 

A shadow crossed her face. Okay. Good data, he thought. He hadn’t planned on using it on her, but he’d wanted to see what she’d do. 

He dropped the belt to the floor. “Take off your clothes,” he instructed, and he reached back to grab his shirt behind his neck and pulled it up and over his head. When his eyes fell back to Scully, she had already shed her suit jacket and was working on the little buttons on the front of her blouse. A primordial rush of feeling roared through him, from his toes to the top of his head, a sound and a feeling, both at the same time; the drugs hitting your system, the symphony hitting your ears. 

He shucked off the rest of his clothing and stood in front of her naked, his eyes boring into hers whenever she looked up from what she was doing. Her mouth was open and she ran a slick tongue once over her lower lip. The ache in his cock was intolerable and so he reached down and stroked the soft heat of himself a few times while she tossed her shirt and bra to his dusty floor. 

“I need to stand up to get my skirt off,” she said, and he strode towards her and flipped her over on all fours, ass up, pushing the pencil skirt up around her waist. 

“I don’t think you do,” he said. She turned her head so that he could see her profile, the cap of her russet hair falling to backdrop her face like a curtain. She was breathing hard and wore a slutty, lascivious little smile. At the base of her back, a viper consumed itself, its orange eye looking straight ahead. 

A euphoric wash of possessiveness rolled over him. 

She still wore panties and hose, so he reached forward with both hands and tore a hole into the crotch of her pantyhose. She gave a sharp inhale of surprise, and, he thought, excitement. Grinning, he leaned forward, nudged her panties to the side with his cock and slid into her with a sharp snap of his hips. 

Scully made an “ungh” sound and he reached forward and pressed one hand into her back between the wings of her shoulder blades and pushed, hard. Jesus, he could feel a soft rush of liquid around himself, the bright wet heat of her making his eyes cross. 

He gave a few tentative slow, hard thrusts, pinning her to the mattress with his hand, and then grabbed handfuls of both her hips, hinging her up a little higher on the bed to begin ramming into her like a piston, the sound of their skin slapping echoing off the hard planes of the walls. He thought he might combust from the sliding friction, from the rough knowing of her, that they could make sweet and gentle love, but that she was capable of craving this. 

Outside, an ambulance raced by, briefly casting the ceiling in an undulating pink glow, its siren an echoing, diminishing wail. 

He slid out of her for a moment only so that he could pull back and flip her over roughly, her limbs cartwheeling through the air. Before her back even settled onto the mattress, he took himself in hand and slid back into her hard, the soft mass of her breasts sliding up to her neck like a wave sloshing into a breakwall. 

Ah, he thought, snapping his hips a few more times experimentally, now he could see her eyes. They were glazed with lust, with excitement, her mascara smudged lewdly on her lower lid. He grabbed her by the tops of both shoulders and slammed into her, an overwhelming hunger blossoming from his sacrum. Christ, Mulder had never been so turned on in his life. Scully threw her head back, trying to meet his thrusts with her own, sloppy and unchecked. Her mouth was open wide, her eyes slammed closed and from her mouth came a keening whine. He plowed into her again and again, climbing, climbing. 

When she broke, he broke with her, sucking in air and grabbing her hand and panting in her ear that he loved her. He loved her. 

***

She sauntered confidently back to the bed from the bathroom, her panties and hose gone. Mulder momentarily considered his refractory period and then lifted the blankets so she could slide in next to him. 

“Mm, thanks,” she sighed. He had never felt so content, so settled, like he’d been a needle on a turntable and had finally found the right groove.

Loving her had rewired his brain somehow. He’d gone from chasing unattainable and leggy brunettes to thinking solely about a single redhead that could barely reach his chin in heels; a physics nerd, a bookish overachiever. A dowdy-dressed colleague who had matured into a stylish beauty so stunning it sometimes stole his breath.

He leaned down to kiss her hairline as she laid her head onto his chest, throwing a smooth leg over his hip. 

“So the symbol you think belongs to an Unseelie courtier,” she led, and he drowsily started drawing figure-eights on the vellum skin of her back. 

Smiling, he settled comfortably back into the pillow. 

“As I was saying,” he said with a sleepy grin, “the common symbols of the Unseelie court are a hawk or a throne. This one appears to be Unseelie, but not of the court as a whole. Only from one particular courtier, whose name is mentioned in several texts.”

“What’s the name?” 

“I can show you in the office tomorrow, but I’m not going to say it.”

Scully lifted her head from his chest for a moment to look at him. 

“In fairy folklore, names have power,” he explained. “And I’m a little concerned that this being, this fae, may know ours.” 

“What kind of power?” 

“According to practices in folklore, referred to as ‘the Law of Names,’ knowledge of a true name allows one to affect another person or being magically. Human knowledge of a true name allows the person who utters it the power to call the magical being to them. And I don’t necessarily want a fae popping up in my bedroom after midnight.”

Scully yawned drowsily. “What’s the symbol?” she asked. 

Mulder pressed a long kiss to her hairline. “I’ll show you that tomorrow, too.” With that, he closed his eyes and drifted into a content sleep. 

Outside his window, a leaf blew into the glass and hovered for a moment and then was gone. 

[slippinmickeys]

The Unseelie Court (9/16)

Scully sat in her car with the key still in the ignition, though she’d cut the engine when she pulled into her parking spot. Anxiety sat low in her gut like a weighted ball of putty. She felt other things too, including a listlessness that was hard to overcome. 

She’d left the office at the end of the day after a long afternoon of silence with occasional bursts of Mulder asking if she was okay, if she wanted to talk. With a request for space thrown over her shoulder, she’d hustled out of the office without meeting his eye and was now sitting in the small garage of her building dreading facing the emptiness and quiet of her apartment where she’d have nothing but time and space to think. 

As she reached for the car door handle, her phone rang. 

Expecting Mulder, she looked at the display with surprise and apprehension. It was a call from Adrian County. She clicked on with a truncated, if professional greeting. 

“Agent Scully, hi. This is Deputy Avery down in Adrian County.”

“What can I do for you, Deputy?” She tipped herself out of her car and slung her bag over her shoulder, tilting the phone to her ear as she approached the elevator and pressed the call button. 

“I wanted to let you know,” Avery said. “We’re closing the Daly Carmichael case.”

“That’s surprising,” she said. There was a crackle of static as she stepped through the elevator doors. 

“With no definitive cause of death, there’s not really any evidence of a crime.”

“I know basic labs didn’t show anything, but I’m still waiting on the full toxicology blood work from Richmond.”

“I mentioned that. I also brought up some of the more…” he paused, searching for the right words. “Well, the weird shit you and I saw at the Carmichael Estate. Despite all that, the Sheriff is shutting the investigation down. I don’t think I’m the only one involved that thinks that’s the wrong call, but it isn’t mine to make. Anyway. I wanted to let you know.”

The beige of the hallway outside her apartment went gray and back to beige with the flickering of an overhead light. 

“I appreciate that, Deputy.” Any other day, she might have put up a fight. 

“And listen,” she could hear the rustle of clothing through the line as the deputy likely moved his phone to his other ear. “If you’re ever back in Adrian County…or even if you’re not…call me. I’d like to pick your brain and…I don’t know, maybe take you out some time.”

So, not all the way gay then, Scully thought vaguely, pulling out her key ring. It wasn’t the first time she’d been asked out by a local after a field investigation. 

“I’m afraid my life doesn’t seem to be conducive to relationships at present, Deputy Avery,” she said, thinking of Mulder. 

“Ah,” Avery said, and she could hear his grin through the phone line, “can’t blame a guy for trying.” 

Scully hung up and opened her door, stepped through into the empty silence. 

***

Mulder lay drowsily on the couch still dressed in his work clothes, unable to face the prospect of spending a night in sheets that still smelled like Scully without her in them. Though he had removed his jacket and tie, he didn’t have the energy to do much more than kick off his shoes when he got home. 

He was determined to respect the boundaries she’d hastily set when she left the office, though he half-hoped his phone would ring. He was still considering what to order for dinner when a wave of exhaustion swept over him. Rather than fight it, he let his eyelids meet, drifting off to sleep being a better option than sitting around worrying about Scully worrying.

Almost immediately, he found himself in the glade again—the fairy hollow from the beach—fully aware that he was dreaming. In front of him was the willow tree with the broken crown slashed into its bark, but there was someone on the other side of the tree—a presence he could feel but couldn’t see. At his feet were a small pile of coins, wild faces on front and back. 

He took a step to walk around the tree, but then so did the person on the other side. And then he caught a whiff of her scent.

“Scully?” he called out.

Another step, and this time he caught a glimpse of her before she took another step around the tree, away from him. 

“Scully, wait.” 

One more step and suddenly from his other side, she was there, directly before him. She wore not a stitch of clothing, though on her head sat a crooked tiara. Her eyes, when she raised them to meet his, were two different colors. 

He woke up with a start, a burning pain on his chest once again that he wondered vaguely about until he heard the knocking on his door. The sensation had faded by the time he had tripped over to it and fully roused to consciousness. 

Scully stood in the hallway, still in her own work clothes, looking vaguely nauseous.

“Hey,” he said, his eyes flitting briefly down to hers, ensuring himself they were both still Sargasso blue. 

“Can we talk?” she said, and he nodded, lifting his arm so she could walk under it. 

A talk. The dream had filled him with unease, but now he was downright edgy. He’d been girding his loins for this moment from the first time she’d invited him to her bed, but it didn’t mean he had to like it. It didn’t mean he was going to make it easy.

She took a few steps into the room, but didn’t attempt to sit or get comfortable, instead choosing to hover, eyeing him like she didn’t want him to get too close. Like if he got close, she couldn’t do what she was about to do. 

He’d already had an argument with her in his head about how they were grown ups and how it wasn’t like they’d tripped and fallen into each other. They’d chosen to start sleeping together, soberly, perhaps not without reservations, but without pretense. He was fully prepared to tell her that he wanted this, wanted more than this if she did, but that he’d take whatever his pathetic heart could get. 

So it was something of a surprise when she walked forward and pressed herself into him, her arms wrapping around him and holding him tight. After only a moment, his arms came around her, too. 

“Is this…are we…talking?” 

“No,” she said, her voice muffled from where she was pressed into him. “I thought I needed you to talk me out of this…feeling I have right now, but I think I just need you to hold me.”

He squeezed her more tightly and rubbed his hand over the soft material of her blouse, his fingers skimming over her piano key ribs. “I can do that.”

After a minute, she pulled back to look in his eyes. “Thank you,” she said, and shook her head like she was fighting off a sneeze. “God, this day has been…”

She stepped away from him, a restless energy radiating off of her. Finally she looked at him, really looked at him. 

“Mulder, you look like you have indigestion.” 

“This day has been weird for me too,” he said defensively, thinking of his search for information on Aeon Greene, the whole thing with Skinner’s assistant, his dream. “And honestly, I thought you were about to break up with me.” 

“I didn’t realize we were going steady.”

“You know what I mean. Stop being prickly.”

“I’m sorry,” she said graciously. “Today with Arlene was…Jesus Christ, so embarrassing. I wanted to sink through the floor the whole afternoon. But I realized tonight after a not-great dream that I’m so sick of being… I know what people say. About us. But after years of living and projecting virtuous hauteur, who actually gives a damn if they’re right? I half think we should just declare our relationship to Skinner and let him sort it out. It’s not like you’re my superior.”

“You had a dream?” he said, a tumbleweed of intrigue cartwheeling through his mind.

“I just told you I want to come out to our boss and you’re asking about my dream?”

“I am, yeah.”

“I fell asleep on the couch,” she shrugged, misunderstanding what he was asking.

“Tell me about what happened in it,” he said, remembering his own dream; the tree, the tiara. Eyes that were hers but weren’t.

“I was in the grove,” she said. “The one from the Carmichael Estate, I think. You were there too, but you were hiding from me.” A chill ran up Mulder’s spine. “When you finally showed yourself to me, you had this symbol burned into your chest, like a…like a brand,” she went on. “And your eyes. They were heterochromatic, like our victim’s. It was…unsettling.”

“If you think that was unsettling…” Mulder said, fixing her with a look. “I had the same dream.”

“What?” 

“Tonight. Just now. I had fallen asleep on the couch.”

Scully took a few more steps into his apartment. 

“There were a few minor differences, but…same dream.” Mulder rubbed his hand over his chest where he’d felt the burning sensation. 

“It’s not unusual to have dreams of a similar nature when you spend a lot of time with someone,” she started, “especially when we were just—”

She was trying rationalize the supernatural. Of course she was.

“Scully, I swear to God—”

She stopped talking and gave him a long look, and then wilted with apprehensive capitulation. 

“But fairies? Really?” She was practically whining, but he was so elated not to have to fight her, he gave an inch.

“Some kind of hibernian or Celtic-based magic at the very least.”

She slouched and shuffled over to his couch, suddenly exhausted. He was tempted to join her, maybe rub her feet, offer up a massage that could lead to something more, but he was suddenly wired. The symbol on the tree, the broken crown, intrigued him. 

He leaned down and pressed a chaste kiss to her cheek. She looked depleted. Emotionally done in. 

“I’m going to hop on the computer for a while,” he said, reaching up and grabbing the Aztec blanket, laying it over her lap. “Why don’t you, you know, pretend not to sleep.”

“Mulder, they closed the case,” she said, slumping back against the pillows.

He straightened, his energy flagging a little. 

“They what?” 

“Adrian County. They closed the case. Deputy Avery called me this evening.” Her eyes were droopy. 

He considered this for a moment. “Well, we could open a new one. Make it federal.”

Scully looked skeptical, but didn’t put up a fight, and he smiled at her one more time then slid into his desk chair and fired up his computer.