Back & Blessed @snezus-christ-risen - Tumblr Blog

May 4, 2024

Fic List

I wanted to consolidate my writing somewhere. I hope to expand this list over time as I write new stories and transplant some of my favorites from my old tumblr and the blue hell site!

Agatha All Along, Agents of SHIELD, Avengers, Brooklyn 99, Game of Thrones, Ghostbusters (the gay one), Encanto, The Umbrella Academy, and The Wolf Among Us

Master list below the cut:

Agatha All Along

Insult to Injury (Agatha, F)

As They Seem (Agatha, F)

Holiday “Drabbles”

Christmas Eve (Rio, F)

Interlude (Rio & Agatha, F)

New Year’s Eve (Pt. 1 / Pt. 2 / Pt. 2.5 / Pt. 3)

Hide and Seek (Rio, F)

The List (Agatha, F)

Agents of SHIELD

Bless You (Bobbi)

Avengers

Salud (Natasha, F)

First (Real Vacation in Years) (Clint, M)

First (Ride on a SHIELD Jet) (Natasha, F)

Broad City

Oneshot (Ilana, F)

Brooklyn 99

Drabble 1 (Jake, M)

Drabble 2 (Almost Jake & Rosa, M/F)

Game of Thrones

Drabble 1 (Jaime, M)

Ghostbusters (2016)

First (Time Patty Loses a Bet) (Holtzmann, F)

Encanto

Stubborn Things (Bruno, M)

Apertivos

Intermezzo

Plato Fuerte

Postres (WIP)

The Umbrella Academy

Random one shot (Klaus, M)

The Wolf Among Us

Fall Festival (Bigby, M)

#my writing #sneezefic #master list

snezus-christ-risen

Jun 8

heleniumx

to know that you're all right [ᴛʜᴇ x-ꜰɪʟᴇꜱ] (f + m)

Fic request fill for Anon, based on their deliciously angsty early S2 fic prompts 🖤 Notes: Takes place somewhere around S2E1 when the X-Files have been shut down and M/ulder and S/cully have been reassigned and separated (her teaching pathology at the Academy, him assigned to surveillance tasks) because of the evidence they uncovered at the end of S1. As part of this coverup/conspiracy, they can only meet in secret. In this fic they're both sick and angst-ing hard over each other everything. Here is a clip of one of their covert meetups as an optional prequel/to set the scene.

PART 1 of 4: composure (f)

Content Warnings: Light mess, an autopsy scene (no graphic descriptions) Word Count: 1.7k

By ten fifteen in the morning, S/cully has been awake for nearly five hours, ill for going on three days, and congested for what feels like the entire length of her adult life.

Standing under the bright, unforgiving lights of the Quantico pathology lab, she closes her eyes for a moment – long enough to gather herself against the throbbing pain behind her eyes – but not long enough to draw unnecessary attention from the room full of new agent trainees standing eagerly before her.

Her voice had begun to fade and rasp an hour ago, each word scraping roughly against a throat made raw by three days of postnasal drip and a cough she’s been swallowing back all morning. Today, she is keeping the pace of her lecture more leisurely than usual, leaving spaces where she would normally add detail and instead allowing the trainees to fill in the steps from the readings. Every few minutes she clears her throat, quietly, and sniffles futilely beneath the cover of a surgical mask.

The mask isn’t strictly necessary for the task at hand. There is no clinically defensible reason for her to remain masked through this particular portion of the autopsy demonstration, and she knows at least several of the students in the cohort must be wondering whether Agent Scully is being unusually cautious, professionally particular, or perhaps merely…spooky.

It is damp and uncomfortable behind the mask and her nose is running steadily enough that Scully feels an unpleasant trickle on her upper lip – but that is the point of wearing it, after all. The mask is a strategic advantage intended to hide the worst of her illness from the room at large. In that regard, it is working well.

It is doing absolutely nothing, however, to mask how desperately she needs to sneeze.

The urge has been there since before the trainees filed into the lab – for nearly four days to be precise – a fine, needling sensation that has settled high in the bridge of her nose and refused to budge. It’s too deep to rub away, too insistent to fully ignore, and ignites in maddening little surges whenever she lets her guard down. Scully has spent the better part of the last hour balancing precariously on the edges of a sneeze, refusing to let her guard down, and knowing she is only delaying the inevitable.

She teaches with one part of her mind, the other part entirely occupied with the delicate art of holding herself together: do not breathe too deeply; do not draw attention to your symptoms, do not, under any circumstances, give a room full of trainees any reason to see that you are sick enough that you should at be home in bed.

“The external examination,” Scully says, and even to her own ears the words sound unmistakably weighted with congestion. She pauses, swallows painfully, and feels the tickle spark with an exquisite cruelty, greedy for the opportunity she refuses to give it. “—should be methodical before it is interpreti’ihh–”

Her breath hitches involuntarily, aborting her sentence, and she turns half an inch away, intending only to pause long enough to recover the words, to steady her breathing and press on, but the sneeze she’s been repressing for well over an hour breaks through so abruptly that she has no time to prepare for it.

“—ihh’dttSCHiiuew!”

Her head snaps forward sharply and she is immediately, overwhelmingly grateful for her foresight to put the mask on in the first place.

Startled by the force of it, Scully pulls in another sharp breath and takes a small step backwards. The second sneeze comes immediately on the heels of the first – harsher, wetter, and entirely impossible to stave off despite her frantic attempts to do precisely that.

“—hah’ETSSCHhih!”

“Bless you,” someone offers – then another voice echoes it, then another, and another – until a kind, well-meaning chorus ripples through the room that Scully immediately appreciates and resents in equal measure.

She inhales shakily, and realizes with a sudden, sinking clarity that she is nowhere near finished.

“Ehhh-excuse me,” she manages to gasp out, setting the instrument in her hand with a firm clink where it meets the metal tray. She takes three measures steps from the table, gloved hands held up and away from her body, and turns away from the trainees, presenting them with the rigid line of her shoulders rather than the crumpling expression on her face.

At the last possible second, Scully tucks her nose against her shoulder – or as close to it as she can – and gives in.

“Hhp’tschhiiuew! Hh-nhh…! ‘xtsshHHiiueh!”

Her nose is running fiercely beneath the mask but she can’t do a thing about it. She can’t touch her face, can’t pinch her nose to suppress the next sneeze, can’t pretend for a second that she isn’t steadily falling apart in front of a room full of her students – because she is.

“...Huh...! hh’nGKTCHhh!”

She instinctively tries to stifle this sneeze and regrets it immediately. Pain splinters through her sinuses with such ferocity that for one wholly unpleasant moment, the lab tilts beneath her feet. Scully hears, from what feels like a great distance, another smattering of 'Bless yous' as she attempts to catch her breath and pull herself together, making a mental note to properly assess herself for a sinus infection later. Her eyes are watering so badly she has to blink several times while the room returns to focus and stops spinning.

“Are you alright, Agent Scully?” someone asks, and she hears in the question not pity exactly, but genuine concern, which is somehow far worse.

“Yes,” Scully says without turning around, though the lie comes out as little more than a congested rasp. She clears her throat and tries again. “Yes. I’m fine, thank you.”

As much as she wants to, she doesn’t even believe it herself.

The next sneeze is already building in slow, cruel waves, leaving her standing rigidly, eyes half-lidded, shoulders trembling with each hitching breath. The entire room is deafeningly silent behind her, as if the trainees have collectively decided that watching their instructor try not to sneeze is simply the next part of the lesson plan.

Scully’s arms ache from the stiff, awkward position she’s still holding them in. She feels the fever working under her skin, which accounts for at least some of the dizziness. She feels the private, burning embarrassment of needing a tissue, and instead having sixteen future agents stand there with their notebooks open and tape recorders on, witnessing Agent Dana Scully reaching the limits of professionalism held up against a relentless cold.

The sneeze, infuriatingly, refuses to arrive. She almost wants to whine in frustration at how unfair the irony is – she’s just spent the last hour trying not to sneeze, the last two minutes trying to stop sneezing, and now the only thing she wants – needs – is to sneeze.

Desperate times, Scully thinks, tilting her head up towards the same overhead lights she's been carefully avoiding all morning, desperate measures.

She winces immediately at the shooting pain that spikes behind her eyes as the light hits them, and forces herself to keep looking. Acute photophobia, she notes with a sense of knowing dread. Almost definitely a sinus infection. Just as she starts contemplating potential pharmaceutical interventions, the reliable tickle in her nose flares up, once again demanding her full attention, and her eyes flutter shut.

“...huhh’tschiew! hh’etTCHshieEW!! Hih-hh…! huhh’ESSCHiiuu!”

The last one bends her forward slightly, her shoulders curling inward with the force of it. Scully feels her cheeks burn and hears another scattered murmur of voices, quieter now, and once again waits for the room to stop spinning.

Absurdly and entirely unexpectedly, she thinks of Mulder. Not where he is now, not even where she is now, but as he would be, had she been standing in front of him and sneezing herself breathless.

She can picture it all with almost ridiculous clarity: the tilt of his head over the edge of a file, the crooked smile, the soft, almost chuckled, “Gesundheit, Scully,” offered only after he was certain she was finished, the playful, “You still with me?”

She is struck then, with a suddenness that surprises her, with the realization of how badly she wants it all.

Not the mortification of it, not the teasing, not even the blessing – though she can almost feel the shape of it in the air where Mulder's voice should be – but the familiar nuisance of him noticing too much and attempting to disguise it as something gentler. She wants the comfort of being observed by someone who sees straight through her but still allows her the dignity of pretending he hasn’t. She wants to be irritated by him in the sanctuary of their basement office instead of standing here in front of a lab full of students, feverish and miserable and trying to shape herself into some semblance of composure.

The thought is gone almost as quickly as it came, tucked back away somewhere between her ringing ears.

Scully waits until she is absolutely sure that the fit is over, then draws herself upright, and takes a few steps to the counter, her back still facing the trainees. Her face is hot, the mask is unbearably damp, and it will surely be noticeable by the time she turns back around. Her gloves come off with a snap and in one swift motion, so does the mask. She pulls it off and uses it to pinch-wipe her nose as she does, then discards it and replaces it with a fresh one.

For a moment, she genuinely considers calling it – ending the lesson early, sending the students on her way, and then taking the rest of the day off – but dismisses the thought just as soon as it arrives.

She has not taken a sick day since she joined the Bureau. Not once in three years. And taking one now – when the X-Files have been closed, when she is under scrutiny and very likely under observation, when every absence or note in her file has the potential to mean something to whoever may be watching – would invite questions.

Agent Scully, reassigned to Quantico: uncharacteristically absent. Agent Scully, formerly attached to Fox Mulder’s life’s work: suddenly unfit for duty. It would be an anomaly. It could have implications not just for her, but for Mulder.

It’s not an option. So what else can she do?

Scully tightens the ties of the mask against the nape of her neck, clears her throat, and picks up where she left off.

“As I was saying,” she says, snapping on a new pair of gloves and turning back around to face the waiting room, “you are to document what is present before you theorize about what it may suggest.”

* * *

heleniumx

PART 2 of 4: unmoored (m)

Content Warnings: References to/descriptions of fever-induced hallucinations Word Count: 1.7k

“HUH’DTZSSCHiuh! ig'uhh–! Huh’RTSSCHhioo! HEH’ttSSCHhiOO!”

By the time the third sneeze in as many seconds tears loose, Mulder feels momentarily, entirely unmoored.

He groans and leans his head against the walls of the elevator, the metal panels blessedly cool against his skin. He turns until his forehead is pressed flush against the wall, and it is, momentarily, the most comfortable he has felt in days.

His eyes flutter shut and it occurs to him, somewhat distantly, that he must have a fever. He has no way of confirming this for sure, and all he knows is that he’s lost track of how long it’s been since he started feeling like hot garbage, and that there seems to be no end to it in sight.

Mulder sighs, or tries to, but the breath never quite makes it past the swollen ache of his throat. It catches, twists, and becomes a harsh, wrenching cough that triggers a wave of dizziness so powerful that he has to slap one hand against the elevator wall to hold himself upright.

As the brief fit mercifully splutters to an end, he considers, briefly, the very real possibility that he might actually, genuinely be cursed.

“You, uh, you good, man?”

Mulder snaps his head up in a daze and turns his head toward the voice. He hadn’t realized there was someone else in the elevator with him. An agent from another department he vaguely recognizes but whose name he hasn’t bothered to learn is peering at him with an expression of mild concern.

“Yeah,” he croaks, turning to press his forehead against the cool wall again. “In the prime of my life. Never been better.”

The other agent sounds more sympathetic than convinced.

“Sounds like that bug got you good.”

Mulder lifts his head off the wall again and with great effort, opens one eye to squint at him. The last time a bug had ‘got him good’ he had woken up in a medical facility in Winthrop, Washington with a still-unconscious Scully one room over and an overwhelming sense of guilt for having promised her "a nice trip to the forest."

He blinks away the visual of her wrapped in white bandages and hooked up to oxygen, and directs a barking cough towards his shoulder.

“...Bug?” he manages to rasp out.

“Virus,” the man clarifies. Some kind of flu bug is my guess. Whatever it is, I just got over it myself. Knocked me flat on my ass for two days. A couple guys in my department were out even longer. Half of Quantico’s down with it, too, apparently.”

“Quantico?” Mulder echoes in a weak voice. Scully’s at Quantico. He hopes she's been spared from this. He'd almost take another insect-induced coma over this.

“You should get some rest,” the other agent continues. “Maybe get a doctor to take a look at you. No offence, but you look like hell, man.”

Mulder lifts a hand in a halfhearted thumbs up as the elevator dings, and the doors slide open.

“...S’kind of you to say,” he mumbles as the man steps out.

The doors close and Mulder is alone again, lost in a whirlpool of his own thoughts. It doesn’t take long until again they drift back to Scully.

Scully, who would be horrified by his current state. Scully, who has been finding reasons – cautious, defensible, well-coded reasons – to check in since they've been forced apart, but who he now realizes he has not seen or heard from in nearly a week.

Mulder wonders whether they have crossed paths in the last few days and he’s simply been too sick to notice. Whether she made a point to pass him in a hallway while he was lost in the fog of his illness; moving from one room to another on autopilot and somehow missing the one moment; the one thing; the one person that might have made any one of his miserable days remotely bearable.

He wonders how long is too long to feel this sick. Scully would know. Scully would know immediately. She would take one look at him, diagnose him on the spot, and probably scold him for coming in to work like this. She would tell him to go home, and would probably stand there, arms crossed and insistent, until he did.

Temporarily distracted by the comforting familiarity of her stubborn stance at his side, Mulder is caught entirely off guard by the next sneeze.

“HUH’RRtSCHhhghh!”

It scrapes his throat raw, and the moan of pain he utters in its wake is entirely involuntary. He grimaces, wincing as the threat of another sneeze looms menacingly. Breath hitching in doomed anticipation, and holding no desire re-experience the sensation of razor blades being dragged through his throat, Mulder crushes his fist firmly against his nose and tries to stifle it.

This, as it turns out, is a catastrophic mistake.

“HUH’nGXTSHuuh–ughh…!”

The pressure redirects somewhere high and deep in his sinuses, detonating with a sharp, splitting pain. He grabs his forehead and gasps, his breath snagging and shuddering as a third sneeze barrels through.

“HUHR’ghhHTSCHhioo!”

This one hurts his throat and his head. He can’t fucking win.

For one absurd, ridiculous second, he wonders how Scully makes it look so easy. The practiced pinch of two fingers, the controlled little bob of her head, the fastidious recovery. Perhaps it's a technical skill he's failed to appreciate until this very moment.

If she were here, she would roll her eyes if he asked. Then she’d hand him a tissue, and tell him, once again, to go home, Mulder.

The elevator doors open again and Mulder stumbles out into the hallway. By the time he makes it down across the bullpen and to his desk, he’s thoroughly exhausted. He collapses into his desk chair and begins flipping through the stack of memos in a feverish daze.

Squinting at the words as they blur and wobble on the pages before him, he presses his fingers firmly against his throbbing forehead in an attempt to relieve the pressure there.

It makes no noticeable difference.

Mulder coughs harshly, dragged up from the damp, rattling weight that has settled somewhere deep in his chest. By the time it passes, he’s hunched over his desk with both elbows planted hard against the surface, cradling his forehead with both hands.

Closing his eyes, Mulder tries to breathe through the ache it leaves behind.

The next thing he knows, Scully is leaning over him. Some part of him knows immediately that she isn’t real – at least not this version of her – the edges of her are too bright and shimmering with an unnatural light when he looks up at her. She’s wearing the same outfit as when he last saw her in the hallway last, her eyes impossibly blue and full of concern. She leans forward and runs her fingers through his hair, then presses the back of one small, cool hand against his forehead.

“You should take something for that cough, Mulder,” she says.

He wants to answer her. He wants to say something disarming, something that will smooth away that worried crease between her eyes, because he hates when he’s the one who puts it there. He wants to tell her that he’s fine, really and wonders if this Scully is as skeptical as real-life Scully and if either of them would believe him. He wants to tell her that everything has been wrong since they took her away from him.

Her hand settles over his, and Mulder jerks awake at the phantom touch, coughing violently.

The sounds of the busy bullpen around him are muffled and distant. For several seconds he can do nothing but fold over his desk, spluttering and hacking until his eyes stream and his nose runs – then tickles. And tickles. The sensation is so overwhelming he shivers violently, and drags in a rough, shuddering breath.

He fumbles blindly in his pocket for his handkerchief, managing to unfold it and lift it to his face just in time…

“Huh…ihh’dh…! —EHht’dhh…!?”

…for the sneeze to retreat, leaving him suspended awkwardly with his hands trembling, eyes half-shuttered, and his nose burning.

Definitely cursed.

He exhales a ragged, defeated sound, blows his nose with no attempt at grace, and shoves the handkerchief back into his pocket, still breathing heavily, as if he just has done something considerably more strenuous than failing to sneeze.

Breathless and clammy, Mulder scrubs both hands over his face and tries to steady his breathing. He swallows, and winces at the burning ache in his throat, scraped raw from two days of coughing and what he’s now beginning to suspect is not nearly enough to drink. He can’t remember the last time he ate, either, though nothing, not even water seems appetizing at the moment.

He closes his eyes again, hoping Scully will reappear and tell him what to do, but all he sees is a dizzying display of static. He searches for her in it, but she is nowhere to be found.

He should go home. The idea is tempting, the thought of driving himself there less so. He should take something for the cough, at least, he knows that much. Probably something for the fever, too.

The edges of his vision feel aflame as he rises from his chair with great effort. There’s a row of vending machines outside the lunch room on the fifth floor that he knows for a fact has the cherry cough drops he's been sustaining himself with for the last few days, but he knows the drugstore across the street is his best bet if he’s going to stock up on something stronger.

More importantly, there’s a payphone just outside the storefront that can’t be traced back to him. There is a carefully-coded call he has to make, and only one person who will be able to decipher it. If she picks up, he’ll hang up, and she’ll know not to answer the next call. He’ll call back and stay on the line, wait for the tone, then tap the receiver exactly as many times as the hour he wants to meet. He’ll tap seven times, slowly and clearly.

Meet me at seven.

He’ll hang up slowly, set the handset back onto the cradle, and count down the hours until then.

#ooooh hoo hoo hoo 😈#read later

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Back & Blessed