Sarah. The X-Files, Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny. Check the TAGS: 'my precious artwork' & 'stick figure episode guide' for some fun. Redbubble shop: redbubble.com/people/sdavisson10
Please grace us a valentine fic revival time? I hope 2017 Mulder and Scully are still in love in this day :)
I couldn’t resist a little Vistor/Resident follow-up :)
He brings her lunch at work - a double order of sweet potatoes from Teaism and a sandwich for himself - and they eat together in her office, splitting a cupcake at the end of their meal. She produces it from her desk drawer with a smile. It’s apple spice cake, and it tastes like his grandmother’s recipe. He licks his fingers clean and watches her dab crumbs off her face without removing her lipstick.
“You know Valentine was a martyr,” he says.
“I’m Catholic,” she reminds him. She smiles wryly.
“Not everybody’s versed in the mythology,” he counters.
“Mulder,” she says, “first of all, I’ve spent long enough around you and studying ritualistic killers to have made a moderately exhaustive study of religious icons of any number of faiths.”
“Second of all?”
“Second of all, everybody knows that Valentine was a martyr,” she tells him.
“Who’s your saint?” he asks.
She smiles again. “Catherine.”
“Of course,” he says. “Who better than a princess who could out-argue anyone and who devoted herself to a higher cause?”
“Of course,” she says simply. “My saint’s day always got folded into Thanksgiving.”
“We’ve never celebrated Valentine’s Day in the office,” he says.
“Is this leading up to some convoluted proposal?” she asks. “Because you don’t usually devote lunch to hagiography.”
He reaches into his pocket. “You know how to suck all the romance out of a room, Scully,” he says, setting a small box on the desk between them.
She looks at the box and back at him. “Mulder.”
He nudges it toward her. “Just open it.”
She reaches out and takes it, opening it gingerly, her eyes locked on his. Gold gleams gently against the dark velvet inside the box.
“It doesn’t have to be a wedding ring,” he says, as she reaches in and takes it out, rolling it between her fingertips. “I had my mother’s jewelry melted down. I wanted to make something new.”
“We already made something new,” she says, her eyes luminous as she looks at him.
“This is it, Scully,” he says, taking her hand. “For me. This is it. You’re it. I just wanted to mark the occasion.”
She hands him the ring and he slips it onto her finger. It doesn’t look like an engagement ring or a wedding band, exactly, but it looks right on her hand. He cradles her fingers with his and it’s a perfect moment, as magical as he might have expected from a wedding. They gaze at each other and he knows that this time, they’ll manage to make a life together that doesn’t draw the darkness to them.
“Don’t forget we have dinner reservations after therapy,” she says, and it sounds like a lifelong vow.
“I’ll be there,” he promises.
He goes back to work, feeling the absence of the box in his pocket after carrying it for weeks back and forth between his desk and hers. It’s a Tuesday, like and unlike any other, and he will never be the same. He passes a window and realizes that his reflection is smiling.
Back at his desk, he takes out another box and opens it to look at his father’s wedding ring. He weighs it in his palm for a moment. His father, misguided, a man with poor instincts and worse friends. His father, who wasn’t there when he needed him. But his father was a patriot too, and loved his children.
He hesitates a second more and then slips on the ring. It fits him, and he thinks of genetics, the link between his father’s hands and his own. He opens his desk drawer again, takes out the photograph of William, and tucks the corner into the frame of the photograph of himself and Scully. He’ll get another frame for it tomorrow, but no member of his family will stay in the darkness. They are all made whole on this day of martyrs. They are done with sacrifice.
2400 words; M for sexual situations; a glimpse into what was happening in That Scene for all Unnatural truthers and @luckydouglas' dog (also on AO3)
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Fox Mulder taps his bat on home plate and ponders the mechanisms of baseball. In the arena of Major League physics, he is as capable as Scully. He comprehends the workings of ball and socket joints, the way potential energy is converted into muscular action, the loft of the ball and the weight of the bat. In a game of baseball, that highest calling, man is a simple machine built to apply leverage: in this case, via a smoothly turned piece of ash.
He understands all of this. He also knows there is an alchemy beyond the equations of velocity and momentum. An X factor beyond X and Y, something unquantifiable. A pitching machine isn’t baseball. Baseball is summer sun in your eyes and the smell of hot dogs and cut grass. Baseball is chalk and dirt and sweat and the crack of a home run. Baseball is a battle of wit and will between the mound and the plate, improbable hits and impossible catches. The perfect consistency of the pitching machine’s springs and gears has nothing to do with the true game, the intersection of strain and time and hope and sweet anticipation.
Baseball, he thinks, might be love.
At least when it comes to theoretical physics he’s learned something about the application of pressure. He put his thumb on the scale tonight, left Scully a message. After all those hours with Arthur Dales (the elder? The younger? Where did the sister fall in the order? Did the goldfish have a suffix?), there was nothing else he could do. Even a horse’s ass is right twice a day.
The pitching machine spits a ball toward the plate. He swings and connects. The ball winks into the outfield.
In the end, it hadn’t mattered whether Josh Exley had been an alien. He’d been made an alien by his supposed countrymen. He’d died, not for the cause or the game, but as a result of the hatred in the hearts of other men. They hadn’t known or cared that he might have been from some other world. They wanted him out of theirs. They’d taken his life, but they couldn’t kill him. Not really. As Scully reminds Mulder often, energy can’t be destroyed, only transformed. Josh Exley’s legacy lives, and it shines like a home run arcing into the night sky.
Josh Exley died loved. He died loving. And that’s something, one glint of gold in the shitheap of America’s shame.
Mulder shoulders the bat and squares his hips, ready for the next opportunity.
Scully isn’t sure why she even got in the car, but she pulls into the parking lot at the batting cages and leaves her car next to Mulder’s. She can see him under the lights, his hair finally grown out enough not to halo around his head. He’s in his jock mode, she can tell. Something about the way he holds himself. Of course, the bat is a clue.
It feels like they’ve been annoying each other all year. There are moments of perfect synchronicity, and that makes the irritation of the disconnect all the worse. She thought they were building toward something after Dallas, despite Diana surfacing from Mulder’s past like a bubble of swamp gas. He told her loved her after they pulled him out of the flotsam by the Queen Anne. He agreed to participate in her effort to have a child. Even when she’s been at her most frustrated, in the suburbs and in Kroner and hunting some wild dog, they’ve managed to present a united front, to communicate on wavelengths it seems only they can hear.
He couldn’t even pretend to take their undercover assignment seriously. Being married to her was such a joke to him, even after everything he’d said in the hallway outside his apartment. She slows her steps, remembering. She knows Mulder, understands him the way she understands the weather. He flirts with her from a breath away, but if she so much as leans in his direction, he flees, showing some other side of himself like leaves turning before a storm.
Maybe tonight will be different. Maybe tonight will be better. Maybe this tension between them will ease. It isn’t that they don’t enjoy their time together, but somewhere along the way their light hearts assumed some burden that weighs on them. They can find that sense of playfulness again. She wants to believe, her faith in their connection persisting despite all odds. Mulder’s lucky that she’s Catholic, accustomed to suffering and penance, sin and solace, exaltation and comfort all rolled into one experience.
She approaches him, shielded by her wit.
He looks her up and down, disarms her with a glance. “Get over here, Scully.”
She gets.
He folds her into his arms, teases her, jostles her with his thighs as his arms brace hers. He adjusts her body, his fingers sliding over her hip. “We’re not going to think,” he murmurs in her ear. There’s a rumble in his voice that thrills through her on some molecular level. She understands what he’s saying. Their instincts draw them together; it’s overthinking that has snarled knots in the ties that bind them. They swing, and connect, and she hears herself giggling. Their hands overlap on the bat, caressing each time they adjust between pitches.
They play baseball. Each hit is a triumph. She feels joy alight within her, connecting all their best memories into constellations.
These are the moments that make everything worth it. She comprehends with perfect clarity the way she feels, the way he feels, the way they’ve traveled this fraught path hand-in-hand even when they couldn’t feel the desperate clutch of each other’s fingers. Neither of them has ever let go, not really. Neither of them could. She sees their world turning, understands that their seasons are aligned. The days have felt short the past few years, but they’ll get longer again, the darkness pushed back by sweet sunlight.
She’s ready.
After, they linger in the parking lot. Her car next to his car, nuzzled together like a yoked pair. He puts his hand on the hood. They’ve been here long enough that their engines have cooled, the heat released into the dark. Scully leans against the front of her car, her arms crossed and her chin up like a dare. She glances at him, an invitation, and he stands in front of her.
He knows she can see he’s more than half-hard. Of course he is, after all that casual frottage, the way she squirmed against him with taunting intentionality. There’s no point in trying to conceal the bulge in his jeans. He’s always wanted her and she’s always known it. What’s more important is the thump of his heart, and she can feel that too. He can see it in the flicker of her widening eyes.
They’ve hurt each other lately, teeth bared as they defend their private pain. Too much has passed between them for sorries to matter. He thinks she knows that some part of this was an apology for forgetting how much of their sorrow is communal. He’s weary of wallowing in his own grief. Tonight he’s offered her something old, something new, something borrowed. They’ve had enough of blue.
She turns her face up to him, and he cups it in his hands. Even in the stark illumination of the floodlights, she looks like some Baroque masterwork, glowing from within. Her lashes cast a shadow on her cheeks for a moment as she gathers herself. He can feel the way anticipation jolts through her, the same way it sparks inside him.
The moment approaches like a perfect pitch, dropping straight into his metaphorical strike zone. Mulder faces it, steps up to the plate, and lets it fly.
Her lips are already parted when he kisses her. She draws him in, pushes into him, teasing and taking with tongue and lips. It’s the same as their endless arguments, the same as the way they wrestled playfully for position holding the bat, but so much more. The nascent desire layered into him like Eddie Van Blundht’s extra muscle puckers his skin into goosebumps, tightens each nerve until his body sings like a strummed guitar. Scully’s hands are on his biceps, his forearms, his waist, his hips. Her thumb slips under the hem of his jersey and strokes in a hypnotic rhythm. Mulder’s brain squeals like frets, the urgency adding dimension to his yearning for her.
“Take me home,” she says at last, her hair mussed and her lips swollen.
Mulder nods, pulling her off her own car and ushering her into his. Leverage and momentum, he thinks, inertia and acceleration. She takes his hand and rests it on her thigh as he drives, her fingertips tracing the topography of his wrist and knuckles until he thinks he might come at a stoplight. He strokes the inside seam of her trousers and she sighs like a crowd watching a home run disappear over the fence, like her dreams are coming true.
Finally, she thinks. Finally, finally, the beat of her heart galloping to the rhythm of it. Inside his building, she presses him into the wall of the elevator, her palm sliding down his belly to his crotch. Even through the denim, she can feel the hot length of his cock. She needs him inside her, or she’ll scream.
She can’t remember not wanting him. It began with a handshake, or in a graveyard, or with the heat of his hands at the nape of her neck, a slow-burn chemical reaction building toward conflagration. She hasn’t fucked anyone else in years, except the once, hasn’t fantasized about other bodies pressed into hers in longer than she can recall. Only Mulder, conjured by her half-guilty fingers, her desire weighed against his. He’s never fulfilled the promise of his lingering glances until now, never really kissed her, never really touched her.
In his apartment, he shucks off her nice new suede coat and hangs it up, a moment of gentlemanly restraint before he pins her to his leather couch, her hands fisted in his jersey to pull him closer. More, she urges him, more and more and more: his weight pressing her into the cushions, his mouth hot over hers, his cock an immovable object as she arches up with irresistible force.
Mulder gives her everything she asks for as if he’s never hesitated. They fumble each other’s clothes off. She sprawls under him, spreads herself wide for him. He slicks his cock up and down her folds, taunting her, watching her with smoldering eyes as she rakes her nails over his abs and drags him closer. She doesn’t care about a condom. She’s trying to get pregnant anyway, and failing, and she doesn’t want to think about it and she doesn’t want to wait. Mulder just nods and feeds his cock into her, one thick inch at a time. She gasps and squirms, her back arching as she stretches to accommodate him.
Just to feel him inside her is a delicious contradiction of lust and relief. So much of their relationship is anchored in this strange equilibrium, she thinks: science and mysticism, belief and disbelief, yearning and restraint. She pulls him close, kisses him, shifts her hips to take him deeper. Fuck equilibrium, she thinks, and fuck restraint. She wants all of him, wants to give him all of herself. Tonight she’s learned to swing for the fences.
They fuck like they’ve done it before. They fuck like the last six or seven years were all foreplay, like every hello was an illicit caress. He rocks into her until she can’t feel anything but him. She wraps her legs around him, clutching him deeper. She touches him everywhere. Her thumb is in his mouth. His thumb is on her clit. When her orgasm hits, she feels like she’s turning inside out. Their shared pleasure is some new dimension beyond her previous experience and she slips into it sideways, anchored by the way he pounds into her, the urgency of his body.
When he comes, she feels his pleasure as if it’s her own. He spills heat into her, his moan almost a sob. She sees stars. Her nails leave half-moon prints on his skin, evidence of their coupling, of their coupledom. When she kisses him, she tastes salt and doesn’t know if it’s sweat or tears. Either way, it’s the flavor of fulfillment.
Hips. Hands. Mouths. Skin. Scully’s cunt ripples around his cock and he wants to make her come again and again. Her hands slide up and down his arms, leaving behind shimmers of sensation. His skin prickles all over with the memory of goosebumps, too relaxed to rise. He eases onto his side and holds her close. He hasn’t pulled out yet, even though he’s getting softer and softer; he can’t bear to lose that most intimate connection. He dapples her face with little kisses as she smiles.
“I think I love baseball,” she says, because they only approach these topics on the oblique, like meeting each other’s eyes in the mirror.
His heart jolts. “I kind of hoped you would. America’s pastime and all.”
She rests her hand on his chest, her palm over his heart. “I’m given to believe there are multiple rounds.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Nine innings is pretty standard. Sometimes more. Kind of a commitment, honestly. Especially if it’s a doubleheader. But you know me. I’m here to play ball.” His cock finally slides out of her, which undermines the point, but she’s still smiling.
“That sounds ambitious,” she says fondly.
“Yeah,” he says. “Scully, this is Opening Day to me. The beginning of it all. A new season.”
“Okay,” she says, and it’s as profound an affirmation as “I do”.
“Okay,” he agrees.
She hums under her breath, a half-tune he recognizes after a moment as “Take Me Out To The Ball Game”. He laughs and kisses her tenderly, hoping she can taste the way he adores her. This hasn’t fixed everything, the mistakes they’ve made and the ways they’ve put distance between them, but he thinks it’s a start. Even the best hitters don’t bat a thousand. It’s about coming back after a strike, the promise to give each other another swing at things.
“Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack?” she asks.
“All you can eat,” he promises.
I just finished reading Quis Si and it’s really good. It’s the best stories I’ve read recently, so I wonder do you have other fic recs
That's great! That's such a great story. I do have other fic recs, but not knowing exactly what you liked about it, I'll stick with the AU as a jumping off point and tell you some of my favorite AUs:
The Mountain Man by aka "Jake" - historical AU set in 1860s Montana; Great romance, great setting, really nice character details
Blinded by White Light by DashaK - post-colonization AU that's one of my favorites which is wild considering I'm not really into post-col (and am about to even recommend another); can't go wrong with a slow-burn amnesia fic :D
Machines of Freedom by Amal Nahurriyeh - not really post-col, but sort of...pre-col and I would say technically AU, but also canon compliant to a point; a lot of mythology in this one and makes you wish CC and co would have taken notes for a third movie or the revival
Paracelsus by Prufrock's Love (in four parts: One, Two, Three, Four) - post-Civil War epic saga; probably the fic I've read the most and I'll say that it's very faulty, but I still forgive its faults because it's just too good of a read. And if you like Pru's writing, I also really like A Moment in the Sun.
Au Cafe Pequod by @sunflowerseedsandscience - WWII AU; lovely lovely lovely love story
All That is Dark and Bright by Malibusunset - an Emily AU where Emily lives and Scully's attempts to adopt her are successful because Mulder makes her an offer; marriage of convenience story. And Malibu's Terra Firma stories are also great.
A Winter's Tale by Anjou - another sort of Emily AU (finding the existence of other Emilys); slow burn mytharc with a lot of angst but the MSR is chef's kiss.
The Boy on the Beach - by @cecilysass - time travel AU! So good and so heartbreaking.
Proof of Life by @slippinmickeys - a series of snapshots into a hostage situation AU; gripping and intense
Skin by Annie Sewell-Jennings - gruesome AU centered around a serial killer in Charleston (Mulder and Scully meet during the investigation); I think this is the only true case-fic I have amongst the recs and it is so compelling. Like think Silence of the Lambs, but with Mulder and Scully and romance and serial killers.
That's it for now - a lot of my links I have bookmarked are SO old that they weren't working anymore so there's some I left off because I'd have to go digging around to find access. I haven't read anything new in a very long time...actually I haven't really read anything in a very long time. If anyone knows of any of the above authors being on tumblr, please tag them as I only knew of a handful.
snowghoul
kaledo-art
theartofmadeline
prguitarman
janainaart
gummygunk
romaincrisis
tangentwithtanner
titsay
