“He ordered piece after piece, each time asking another question. He ate a whole pie in that fashion, then got up and left. My friend never saw him again.”
@usergif back to cool event: challenge 5 - growth
↦ remake of this set || typography insp. :)
"I asked chatgpt" "I asked grok" ok well I asked fbi special agent fox mulder and he said that his theory is chatgpt is powered by a historical demon referenced in two (2) twelfth century texts that he actually believes is an alien taking the form of technology in order to assimilate better with the modern world and dana scully was also there and she just put her head in her hands and sighed
x files studies but this time I tired to achieve that VHS feeling. I very vaguely remember watching some episodes as a kid, and I think this is as close as I've ever got to recreating that memory of a small, grainy tv in a dark room
Please enjoy way too many words of my 800th fic to be posted to AO3 based on a weird timeline where "all things" is the first and only time they've slept together (okay it's not that weird but it's weird for me since I believe in the Season of Secret Sex).
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Scully said abruptly.
Mulder leaned back in his chair. “That could cover a multitude of sins.”
She gave him a brief smile. “I suppose what I mean to say is I’ve been thinking about what I said.”
“I’m all ears.” He laced his hands behind his head. “Talk to me, Scully.”
“The choices we’ve made,” she said, and then fell silent. He waited for a moment, but he’d seen that look before. She was lost in the labyrinth of her thoughts. He understood. It was a strange conversation to have under the fluorescent lights of their basement office. They saved most of their emotional communications for the shadows, as if the words they said at midnight couldn’t survive after the sunshine.
“The ones that brought us here,” he prompted.
She seemed to come back to herself. “Yes. I just wanted you to know that I don’t regret my choices, Mulder.”
He discarded three or four witty remarks. There was something about her face that deterred him, some tension between her eyebrows or at the corner of her mouth. He couldn’t explain how or why he understood her; he knew her by heart.
Now she was the one waiting for his response. “That’s comforting to hear,” he said at last. “We’ve been through the wringer, so to speak.”
“I mean, there are small choices I regret,” she said, a spark of humor in her eye. “Getting tuna salad instead of a French dip yesterday. Not buying stock in IBM. But the big things, the choices that brought me to you, the choices that brought us here… I don’t regret those.”
“I’d choose you every time,” he said carefully.
“I know,” she said. She blew out a breath. “God, it seems so silly.”
“What does?”
She gestured vaguely between them. “I choose you. You choose me. It seems, I don’t know, shallow in some way? To put words to it.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.” He shifted in his chair, tipping forward.
She sighed. “Maybe I don’t either.”
He was quiet for a long minute. “It is good to know you don’t regret your choices. I wasn’t sure, the other night. When I, uh, woke up alone.”
“It wasn’t about that, Mulder,” she said, looking away.
“It felt a little regretful,” he pushed.
When she looked back, the blue of her eyes was the ocean and he was drowning. “I wanted so badly to wake up in your arms, Mulder. I was afraid I wanted it more than anything else in my life. It’s all I’ve thought about the last few days. What it was like. What happens next.”
“Oh,” he said. He had the sense that the rest of the world had fallen away. There was only him and Scully, only this room.
“Every time Skinner asks me a question, I’m terrified about what I might say accidentally,” she admitted in a wry voice. “I’m sure he suspects, but I find myself so possessive of our privacy.”
“For all that we’re usually alone, it does seem like we’re lacking in privacy,” he agreed. “Skinner may not be the main offender, but he has been known to hang around the water cooler, if you know what I mean.”
“I’d prefer that Skinner not join us in the bedroom.” She smirked at him a little.
“I wasn’t aware that was an option.” He looked at her, relishing the glint in her eyes. “Scully, I’m glad to hear you don’t wish it hadn’t happened, but I’m not entirely sure what we’re talking about.”
She sighed. “Mulder, I’ve put my life on the line for you and you’ve done the same for me, more times than I can count.”
He nodded slowly. “Our lives. Our jobs. Our reputations. I’d do it again.”
“We’ve been to the ends of the earth together. We’ve seen things that no one else has even dreamed of. We’ve proved our devotion to each other, over and over.”
“I like to think we have.” His body was tingling. Some sort of nervous system overload, she would tell him. Or maybe a heart attack. But there was no interrupting Scully when she got into a groove like this. It took her a while to build up the momentum and he didn’t want to derail her.
“After all that we’ve been through, it feels almost like an afterthought.”
“What does?”
She almost flinched and then seemed to steel herself. “Saying ‘I love you’.”
Everything stopped, including his heart. “Ah,” he said.
She hunched into herself. Scully got small when she was sad. It stung him. “I did expect a slightly different reaction.”
“It’s just that you’re right,” he said, leaning toward her over the desk. “Everything we’ve been through, you’d think it would be deeper than words. But still, hearing ‘I love you’… it shifts things between us.”
“The same thing they put on the chocolate box,” she said softly.
“How about that,” he said in the same quiet voice. They sat gazing at each other. He would have sworn the stale air of the basement smelled like spring, a breath of damp earth and flowers and beginnings. “But you know you didn’t actually say it.”
She ducked her head and grinned. “Of course you’d notice.”
“I’m a GS-12, Scully. They don’t hand that out for nothing.” He waited.
“I think it counts,” she objected.
“If me saying it after the Queen Mary doesn’t count, that doesn’t count,” he said.
“You were concussed!” She frowned at him. “I thought it was the painkillers talking.”
“You knew it wasn’t,” he said indulgently.
“I hoped it wasn’t,” she corrected. “That isn’t the same thing.”
“You make me a whole person,” he said. “My constant. My touchstone.”
“Panic,” she said. “And head trauma again.”
He shook his head. “I meant it.”
“Say it again,” she said.
“I love you,” he said without hesitation. “What did they say in that awful movie? ‘No ifs, ands, or bees’.”
She narrowed her eyes. Her mouth was tight, but it twitched up at the corners. “You didn’t happen to hit your head this morning, did you?”
“Next time stay over and you can monitor my morning routines,” he said. “No, I didn’t. But you’re free to run your hands through my hair to check for goose eggs. Your preferred method of diagnosis, I believe.”
She ducked her head, chuckling a little. “I love you,” she said.
He smiled at her. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“I love you,” she said again, with wonder in her voice. “I love you.” This time, she got choked up at the end, a light in her eyes brighter than he’d ever seen.
“Hey,” he said gently, getting up from the desk and going to her. He knelt by her table and cradled her face in his hands. She cupped her hands over his. “Scully, hey.”
“I love you,” she said, and now there were tears in her eyes.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I love you too.”
She stifled a sob. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s a little overwhelming.”
“Me too,” he said, and eased up to kiss her forehead. “No wonder we kept it under wraps for so long.”
She sighed. He thumbed a tear off her cheek. “God, we’re so stupid.”
“We had our reasons.”
“Mulder, we tried to make a baby together,” she said in an almost plaintive voice. “Who did we think we were fooling?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t say our reasons were valid.”
“I thought it wouldn’t matter, to say those three words,” she said. “After everything we’ve been through. I mean, how many hours in the hospital, holding vigil at each other’s bedsides. How many dinners for two in diners and motel rooms. A hundred times that I said it without saying it.”
“A thousand times.”
“That’s why I left,” she said. Her lips trembled. “I wanted to say it so badly.”
“What were you afraid of?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “That after all this time, it wasn’t good enough, I suppose. Or that the tension between us lately meant it was the wrong choice. Or that it wasn’t what you wanted.”
“Scully, I’ve always wanted you,” he said in a low voice. “I stood on Skyland Mountain and felt my heart rip out of my chest. Nothing that happened between us could ever disappoint me. Especially not what happened the other night.”
She looked into his eyes and nodded. There it was again between them, the understanding that was more than words. He felt the strength of their connection filling him, sustaining him.
“I wouldn’t mind doing it again,” he hazarded. “Maybe even regularly. Indefinitely, if you could fit it into your schedule.”
“I’ll pencil you in,” she said. She tugged at him and he rose, pulling her into his arms as he stood. She fit perfectly against him, the way she always had. He kissed the top of her head.
“Now what?” she said into his chest.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not really sure how this works. Haven’t had great role models. Maybe we make it up as we go along. We’ve made it this far.”
“Indefinitely,” she said, turning her face up to him. “That sounds a little bit like forever.”
“A lot of things sound like forever when you say them,” he told her.
“Don’t start quoting my senior thesis again,” she teased.
“That’s when I knew you had an affinity for extreme possibilities,” he said. “All I had to do was pull back the curtain.”
“That easy, huh?” She smiled at him and he grinned back. “Speaking of easy, can I buy you dinner?”
“Why, Agent Scully, I thought you’d never ask.” He released her and pulled her jacket off the coat rack, holding it while she shrugged into it. “What’s your pleasure?”
She looked up at him with a sly expression. “I thought we could order in. God knows the delivery guy knows the way to my apartment by now.”
“He definitely thinks we’re dating.” Mulder shrugged on his own jacket.
“Well,” Scully said. “He’s right, I suppose.”
He reached for her hand. “Yeah. We’re dating. Indefinitely.”
“Indefinitely,” she agreed, squeezing his hand, and it sounded like forever and ever.
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