I want to read about (or see, for my VPers/artists) a small mercy in your fic. A quick action, a split-second decision, a moment where kindness won when it didn't have to. This includes acts of self-kindness, too - maybe the hardest type of mercy.
Thanks for the tag @alpydk and @scoldingdarjeeling . I found one or two scenes screaming grotesque angsty mercy. This, I found the most fitting one for unexpected kindness, where it didn't had to happen.
Another Villain Love snippet from the "A Necessary Evil" Universe - My Resident Evil FF Universe ☣
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“Don’t worry, Wesker, there’s no going back for you here,” Redfield said with conviction, not to mention the ever-present contempt for his former captain that was always palpable, more intense than subtle.
“And what gives you the confidence to say that?” Wesker’s steely calm struggled to suppress a sly smile. He had fully expected the BSAA to arrive, just as he had expected Redfield and his cronies, who would do everything in their power to bring him down personally. He had planned ahead, step by step. Nothing would happen here that he hadn’t intended. Wesker always had an ace up his sleeve, and he wouldn’t be the one who paid the price here. He was never the one who paid the price. Wesker always found someone else to do his dirty work.
“Your backup won’t be coming. We’ve made sure that your little henchman cannon fodder, whom you’re pretending to be an equal partner, won’t be returning,” Chris said this way too confident for Wesker’s liking.
“I’ve had enough dealing with the parasites that we’ve found something that will finally take her out of circulation,” Leon continued, and both men possessed a certain firmness of absolute truth in their voices that made Wesker pause, as did the absence of the expected cavalry roar.
“You are alone, Wesker, just as you always are and always have been, and you will go down just as alone!”
Would he have to extricate himself from this situation with a bit more effort than he had intended?
…
The BSAA’s unit of armed men didn’t fall to the ground like dead flies, as she and Wesker had planned. It seemed as if they had sent in every unit they had. An army - and the bullets from the machine guns, were beginning to gradually tear apart even her Plagas enhanced body.
How could normal bullets even harm her? That shouldn’t be possible.
Something had gone wrong…a trap? Had the BSAA been waiting for them, and not the other way around?
Meanwhile, Wesker was supposed to be dealing with Chris inside in the data collection area. Was he in the same trouble?
Her body was riddled with more and more injuries. Soon she wouldn't be able to stand.
"Come on!" she screamed fervently, spitting her own blood with every word. Strings of red life liquid ran between her teeth
All she could taste was the metallic tinge as the blood trickled over her lips, filling her mouth.
More bullets slammed into her.
The pain was so overwhelming that she was beginning to lose touch with it. Her body was nothing but a fleshy mass of agony.
Her slender frame was brutally thrown backward with each bullet. There was no reason for it - it was physically impossible for her to remain standing. But her body kept going, as if it hadn't heard the order to retreat, to die.
Pushing forward was the only thing her mind and body would allow. She kept going. Taking one man after another down into the abyss as her blades danced across the throat of every man who came too close.
Each further cut to her sides elicited a cry of pain. It was like salt in a wound. No, acid.
She didn't know what drove her on, what compelled her legs to keep pushing forward.
But the additional machine gun fire brought her to her knees. The bullets struck. They didn't ricochet as they should have.
When her executioner stepped before her, she simply burst into wild laughter. She clutched her stomach, laughing until she was breathless, gasping and squealing. The look in her eyes was pure hellfire, a hellfire that perhaps only Dante had ever witnessed.
And then he pressed the trigger one last time, and she lay still.
It was deathly silent.
…
The soldiers moved away, and Wesker, watching the security camera footage that had shown him the end of the bloody spectacle, saw no further movement. It was over.
…
Albert stepped across the true battlefield of the massacre. The ground was so saturated with blood that his shoes sank in with a squelch, and he could actually feel the wetness. It was a revolting sensation. The ground was deep black where the blood had already soaked in.
Everywhere lay the motionless bodies of the mutated bioweapons, or their offspring, pets, as his ally had called them. They lay around their mistress, their mother. Her body, delicate and still, bloodied among them.
She was dead. He knew this, since nothing, not a breath of air, had stirred while he had observed the scene, and still didn't as he approached.
Wesker stepped across the field, surveyed the area that had become a graveyard, before stopping before the dead body of his business partner.
Her bloodied face was rigid. Her expression…no mask of death or anger. The look of a blazing warrior who had seen the glory and honor in death when her heart stopped. There still seemed to be a glimmer in her eyes, but they were too rigid to be alive.
Without any emotion, and completely cold, he gazed down at her for several silent moments before kneeling and lifting her. Albert slipped his hand under her knees and head and lifted the cold, feather-light figure. She seemed to weigh nothing, absolutely nothing.
And like a rag doll, her lifeless body now just an object, he carried her away from this place and finally placed her on a stretcher in the hidden laboratory of his research facility.
"Is she…dead?" Birkin asked incredulously, looking down at the woman's bloody silhouette
"I don't know. Even though I don't know how they managed to kill her despite the dominant Queen Las Plagas parasite; her heart isn't beating and she isn't breathing."
Albert turned to his lab computer, and after countless security codes, a file opened.
"That...that was never in the Umbrella files."
"No, not like that. I never shared the complete records and successful data from the experiment; they always remained with me," Albert replied. The recipe for success, more successful than T-Phobos or Progenitor.
"If we replicate the virus serum exactly according to this data and administer it to her, then she should get up again."
…
After they injected her with the virus, it took a few moments, and then suddenly a jolt ran through her body. Her head remained rigid on the table, her gaze still dead and empty, and it was a strange sight to see her body trembling and shaking as if receiving electric shocks.
Her back arched, her chest rose, and her face remained so lifeless. Until the veins and arteries turned black, pressing against her skin as if they would burst.
A sharp, high inhalation as her torso jerked upwards, and she sucked in air as if on the verge of suffocating.
Her gaze, still dull, began to scan the room quickly before settling on Wesker.
"Back from the dead?" The cool voice held almost a hint of amusement.
Had she perhaps experienced some epic, hellish ordeal that she wasn't sharing with them? But she didn't seem traumatized. Just empty.
He watched as she repeatedly stared at her hand, moving it slightly. Something she used to do quite often, but always with a grin. Now, she was rigid, as if wondering why she still had flesh and bone.
Albert sat down beside her on the stretcher after checking all her vital signs.
"Why do you keep looking at your hands? I've noticed that for a while now."
“I see the blood on them. Even when they’re clean, I see every single drop of blood that ever congealed on them. Blood of the people whose lives I severed with the hard carbon nails. Blood that trickled down when I stabbed them with a knife, or blood that flowed when blunt force struck their skulls.”
“Are you sorry?”
A brief silence.
“No.”
“Then what do you feel when you look at them if it’s not regret?”
“Before, it was a feeling of satisfying power and strength. But actually… I don’t really feel anything. No superiority, no joy. Just dull nothingness.”
Her voice sounded just as dull and cold. She spoke like that from time to time. But not too often. At first, he’d wondered if it was an act, because she often broke into a grin. Sometimes, though, it stayed that way. And now he saw again that this was real. These words revealed her mind with honesty, without her intending anything, without her wanting to make an impression. She simply answered him honestly. What did she have to lose?
Wesker placed his hand on hers, which rested on the stretcher.
"Do you really never feel anything?"
He watched her face intently behind his sunglasses, noticing every tiny movement. Her gaze was fixed on her hand, his hand, and the hair that fell across her face from her bowed head made it somewhat difficult for him to see the look in her eyes.
But she froze, paused, and… Wesker took her hand in his, while with his other hand he turned her face toward him by her cheek.
Her eyes looked at him in confusion, as if he had said a word she didn't know, as if something was happening that was beyond her comprehension. He liked it when she looked so bewildered and questioning, as if he had caught her off guard.
Wesker pulled her close, and his lips touched hers, gently, so she could pull away if she wanted. But she didn't - once the initial surprise wore off, her lips met his in growing affection.
"I asked you a question before," Wesker insisted firmly after he had separated from her.
How could he ask her that? He asked if she felt anything?
When he placed his hand on hers, a tingling sensation shot from her hand to her stomach, then throughout her entire body. And then he kissed her, and the electric tingling, which no chemical in the world could have intensified, flooded her lips. He kissed her with his rigid expression, his coldness. And she wondered if he ever felt anything. Did he feel the same? Could he perceive the tingling in her body? Or was he just testing her again? Wanting to prove something? Wanting to confuse her, to manipulate her, to deceive her? Did he ever feel anything real?
His hand ran through her hair and firmly pulled the back of her head toward him. Once more their lips met passionately before his tongue entered her mouth, tracing its contours.
They both breathed heavily as he pulled his lips from hers, but his forehead remained against hers, his hand on the back of her head.
"I expect an answer."
"You're cruel..." she breathed, still breathless.
"What?"
"You're cruel for expecting an answer from me when you kiss and touch me like this," she continued. She didn't want to answer Wesker’s question, she didn't want to reveal herself to him. To give him power over her. But her mind went blank when that tingling sensation coursed through her body, and her trembling lips formed words that came from her heart, words her head couldn't control.
"I feel you," she admitted, her lips whispering softly. "Do you feel me?"
Wesker looked at her questioningly, what meant his head tilting slightly behind the sunglasses, but by now she could easily interpret his every move.
“At first, I only felt your body,” her voice rang out instead of his reply, “all that strength and passion. But then I began to feel you. All your anger, all your hatred, your vitality, your goals, your hopes. Until, finally, I felt myself. And then us. That’s why I’m asking if you feel me?”
Yes, she was numb. She was dead. Burned out. But when he touched her hand, when he kissed her…then, in the midst of it all, she felt life again. She felt alive. Nothing and no one else could do that.
“Every time we kiss, I feel you breathe your life into me. Every essence of you, not just your body.”
Large eyes, shining like a child’s, gazed at him. So honest, so incredulous. Endearing.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Wesker smiled.
His ally turned away, her cheeks flushed with offense. Did he see that correctly? Could the Queen of Evil and Madness seriously blush?
He drew her face towards him again, but she defiantly turned it away once more.
"Hey!" Albert grasped her chin reproachfully and firmly, forcing her to look at him. "In the future, if I ask you something, I expect an immediate answer. But I certainly appreciate your obedient reply."
The stern persona slipped away as he put his arm around her, one hand on her narrow back and the other in her hair, almost pulling her close, and kissed her deeply.
That was the second time Albert Wesker had shown mercy that day.
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Can I tag back @optimisticgrey , @anacdoce and @xxnashiraxx ? Don't know if anyone alread did this...I am lacking to overlook my dash lately once more. Sry.
Letters of Marque and Reprisal for for the private armed schooner Lucy, owned by John Lawton, and dated 22 December 1814 issued by president James Madison.
Letter of Marque and Reprisal for the Brig Holkar, 16 October 1812, signed by James Madison.
Letter of Marque and Reprisal for the privateer ship "Abaellino" of Boston Mass. , 10 December 1814, signed by James Madison.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution authorizes Congress to grant the ability to "grant letters of Marque and Reprisal”. These letters of marque and reprisal (LoM&R) have always been issued to and applied to maritime civilian assets, but the seizure of assets have not. LoM&R are a war times system, have no doubt just because Congress doesn’t have the intestinal fortitude to recognize our Citizens are under siege, we are at war with extremist ideologies. (Some will think my opinion is extreme, and I would agree.) Times have changed, we are not facing threats from sea, our Navy, Marines and Coast Guard have ocean combat power unrivaled in the world, our threats are land based now. We have an enemy right here, on our soil moving outside our system of law and standards of living. They are killing our countrymen and facing very little pushback even when caught. It is worse though, our very own countrymen are supporting these enemies of our Nation and of freedom.
The Framers of the Constitution placed the LoM&R M&R clause between the provisions that give Congress the power to declare war and make rules concerning captures on land and water”. Congress has the power, but not the will, to take this very action on the threats Americans face every day. By doing so they can authorize the President of the United States to issue LoM&R and make the proper authorization to allow LoM&R on land, in the U.S. where federal forces cannot effect such things. This is not without president, in Miller v. United States (1870) the Supreme Court ruled that railroad stocks could be taken from Samuel Miller. Samuel Miller was supporting the Confederacy and his assets were taken under the Confiscation Acts of 1861 and 1862.
By issuing LoM&R, Civilians under very specific direction from Congress and the President could make those maneuvers. In effect, they would be working as agents of the Federal government, persons captured would fall under Federal jurisdiction and assets captured would become the property of the LoM&R. The Government CANNOT be everywhere, all the time. But We The People, who are most effected by the crime and loss in our communities are. We The People can be tasked with directly removing the enemy threats in our communities and in our Nation.
I am sick and tired of the United States importing crime and death that is pushed on to our Citizens. I am tired of our governments complaining there is little they can do to stop it. The U.S. Constitution have very explicit power for not only the U.S. Government to cat but allows the citizenry to take an active role in taking back their Nation.
Now, I’m not saying, we turn every citizen onto a privateer, or a bounty hunter. What I am saying is to discourage criminal elements from coning into this country, staying in this country and raping and killing this country desperate actions need to be taken.
People often cry about the government not doing enough, and, people will cry over something like this because the government is being heavy handed. I don’t care. I am tired of seeing Americans killed by the hands of people who should not be here.
For those not familiar with letters of marque and reprisal they were basically a license from the government to:
“Marque”, gave the licensee the authority to cross boundaries into the enemy’s locations.
“Reprisal”, gave the licensee the authority to use force and seize property in retaliation for injuries or losses suffered at the hands of a foreign country OR its citizens.
These private individuals were granted the legal right to attack, seize, or destroy enemy vessels, their cargo, and their crews.
They allowed a nation with a small or nascent navy to quickly increase its naval power by mobilizing private merchant ships and sailors without having to build, fund, or maintain additional warships. In this case it would be private firearms and civilians to do this on land.
The biggest advantage to the Federal government was that it cost them very little to issue these letters. Privateers had to outfit, supply and arm themselves. They made their money back be liquidating the captured ships and goods they captured. Ships that were captured would be brought back to a port as a “prize of war” and an “Admiralty court” would sell the ship keeping a large amount of the proceeds. This very thing could be done on a land based court as well.
The LoM&R gave a license certain protections to the holder, like if they were captured they could not be tried as a pirate, they must be treated under any conventions that covered prisoner of war. In this day and age it would look much more like implied immunity, because it would be carried out in the United States rather than the open seas.
One last thing, the “Declaration of Paris" in 1856 largely ended privateering, the United States never signed that declaration. The last time the United States issued LoM&R was the War of 1812.
None of this will every happen, but it could and would tip the scales for sure. I am currently working on a story based around LoM&R and it just seems to fit the times.
One spicy scene left to write in this fic and then finally done wooooooo!
A little snippet that I’ve probably shared in the past:
“So the entire army is a time bomb, one that could be pointed at anyone deemed an enemy at any time.”
“People, whole planets, political—”
Something cold crawled down Cody’s spine as he considered the possibilities. “The Jedi.”
Obi-Wan froze and raised an eyebrow. “The Jedi? There was nothing about them on the list.”
“You said it was partially corrupted, so the data may be incomplete. And if you’re a Sith Lord and you already have control of… everything, who could possibly threaten your power?”
Obi-Wan considered the idea for several moments before dropping onto the bed with a thud. “The people you put in charge of an army they now trust with every bit of their hearts and souls, one you could have turn on them at any moment.”
“It’s a sound strategy, one unlikely to fail.”
“Your mind for strategy is quite terrifying, my dear.”
“You told me you liked it.”
“I do not know how I feel about you entertaining more sinister ideas than even I possess.”
hi kitty bo bitty just dropping in to say i love u and hope that something nice happened to you today :3 even just something small like feeling breeze on your face or finding a funny tiktok 🙂↕️ and if it hasn't yet: this is me being the nice thing <3 holding u close rn <3
marce i’m holding you so tight rn i love you 🥹 broke house arrest to go touch grass and see the world today it was great <333 manifesting even more joy and happiness and whimsy for you forever mwah 💋
I had a conversation with a guy at the gym this morning in regard to processing animals. I explained to him that I keep a healthy emotional detachment when it comes to them. I respect my animals, I treat them with the utmost care and strive to provide them with the absolute best life possible. With that being said, there’s always an endgame to this.
I am a farmer, I provide food for myself and others. It’s the dirty side of an otherwise whimsical existence. It’s the side most people prefer to be on the other side of. The side we don’t talk about
The X-Files. MSR. Rating: Teen and up. WC:2351. Read on AO3.
Tagging @today-in-fic
So it’s time to fess up. To lay bare the part of himself he’s not so proud of. Here goes: Fox Mulder is skilled at seduction. He always has been. From as far back as middle school, he’s known. He looks at himself in a mirror and sees only the flaws. The ridiculously large lower lip. The small triangular eyes. The undersized chin with not enough room between it and the aforementioned lip. The overly broad and large-scale nose. But for some reason beyond any logic, and put all together, those features have had teenaged girls, and then women, falling at his feet for as long as he can remember. It’s as simple as his attentive gaze aimed in their direction.
And, okay, yes, he’s been blessed with a tall and naturally lean body. And he likes to work it, discover its limits. He pushes his body as stringently as he does his far-out theories. So he’s managed to gain a strong back and lean, muscled arms and legs; a swimmers physique and a coveted six-pack. And all with enough ease that he quit going to the gym years ago. Running, swimming, and pickup basketball games have replaced gym equipment, and he attempts to keep mind and body in synch with yoga too, though he won’t ever admit to that particular discipline, even to the few friends he has. Like his looks, he can’t help what his genetics have given him. It’s all just a result of his unique mishmash of genes, and maybe some dumb luck. But that doesn’t mean he’s not above using what he’s got to further his crusade - in ways both monumental and small.
His glibness, which some might call charm, comes naturally too. He’s an equal opportunity flirt. He always has been. And he’s rarely caught unable to offer a smooth, witty retort or a wry observation. He can’t explain this either. It’s simply who he is. Although it does help that he genuinely loves women. He finds them fascinating and mysterious puzzles, loves attempting to assemble their enigmatic ways into a kind of pattern that might afford him some answers to the great unknown. He loves to converse with the fairer sex, especially the ones who can keep up with his esoteric banter. More than anything else, he loves the opportunity to give them what they want most from him. And a lot of the time that means giving them parts of himself: his body, his mind, even his heart if they’re exceptional enough.
He lost his virginity at fifteen to a girl a few years older and on the cusp of her high school graduation. He was clueless aside from the alleged personal knowledge of his friends, the old, dog-eared copies of Playboy he snatched from his dad’s bottom dresser drawer, and his own determination to do for a woman what was expected of him as a man. Luckily, the girl who popped his cherry had more experience and the confidence necessary to begin to turn his enthusiasm into proper technique. The rest he learned from books and films once he was out of high school, independent for the first time, and housed in a third-floor flat right outside the grounds of Oxford University proper.
And then had come Phoebe.
If he was naturally gifted and confident in his technique, Phoebe was a Jedi Master when it came to seduction. And she punched way, way above his weight. She was both a revelation and a nightmare. She did things with him that he never could’ve imagined, let alone actually engaged in. There were still blocks of time so lost to the haze of drugs, alcohol, and depravity that he’ll never be able to recollect them with any clarity. She had his number almost from the start and didn't hesitate to fuck with his head with as much ease and skill as she fucked him in other ways. And there he was, a psych major. He should’ve known better.
But he loved her. And that’s when he learned that book knowledge could never trump the lessons learned while attempting to dissect Phoebe’s twisted mind. She took his love, his trust, and used it as a weapon against him.
He took those lessons with him to the FBI Academy. They pursued him with such fervor that he couldn’t deny them his as-yet-untested investigative skills and his spooky intuition. He was, soon after, deeply entrenched in the VCS and profiling criminals who sometimes paled in comparison to Phoebe Green’s mind games. He also managed to work his way through a majority of the female staff surrounding him. He’d make it clear from the first encounter that it would never be more than two consenting adults indulging in adult behavior. He wasn’t looking for his one true love. And romancing them, though the various techniques came easily, was not an indication of any desire to make permanent a temporary liaison; something lasting beyond a few rolls in the hay. He knew when to cut any fragile ties that might develop. He didn’t have time to waste on such trivialities. He was going to change the world and it wouldn’t be with his dick. Love and attachment had no place in his life anymore. Not after Phoebe.
But then had come Diana.
Leggy, dark haired, blessed with a steel-trap mind and an incredible set of tits. Yes, she was older than him, but she listened to him, encouraged him, praised him. And eventually she’d joined him in his bed, as well as in his explorations of a small and rarely mentioned off-shoot of FBI investigations classified as X-Files. Unexplained phenomenon. He found himself besotted with them, and with her. She lay next to him through many nights and had soothed him after the nightmares that’d plagued him most of his life. Diana encouraged him to seek out regression hypnosis to find answers to questions he’d been asking since his sister had vanished. She told him she loved him. He’d said, “Marry me,” and she’d said, “I do.”
He should have known better. But he loved her, too. And five months later she was gone. She took his love, his trust, his belief, his newfound quest, and used those things as an excuse to rip them asunder.
What good is innate charm when it comes at such a price? What good is seduction when it only postpones an inevitable loss? What good is love and intimacy when they only wound?
He sat in the half-empty apartment that was now his alone for three straight days. Diana hadn’t taken any of the alcohol, so he worked his way through the half-empty bottles of Chivas Regal and Absolut, sipped at the sickly-sweet brandy she liked before bed, pounded shots of Jose Cuervo. He didn’t bother turning on a light when the sun set. His phone didn’t ring. He didn’t shower and ate straight from containers of Chinese food and the flat boxes of pizza he had delivered. He watched mindless television or sat in silence. He didn’t bother with the marriage bed; his couch was good enough to sleep on and had room for only one. It was fitting because now he was only one. The loneliest number.
By the morning of the fourth day, he had a plan. He knew what he had to do. No more distractions, no more giving in to the weaknesses of the heart. Nothing but seeking the answers to his questions. And those lay within the X-Files - he was more certain of that than ever. He got back on his feet, dusted himself off, and went back to work. He fought harder than he ever had before for those discarded and dusty files. And finally, finally, they officially set him free from the serial killers and the pedophiles and the worst of humanity and sent him down to the basement of the Hoover building. He lived and breathed the work there. He buried himself in years, decades, of unanswered questions, certain that he would be the one to uncover the truth of what had happened to his sister, and to the larger mysteries of existence that everyone else seemed so uninterested in delving into. This was his mission. This was his calling. Nothing else mattered.
Then came Scully.
He opened his copious bag of tricks, both innate and learned through experience, when he found out she was on her way. He read everything he could find on her before she showed up. And when she did, he established a boundary from the get-go, addressing her not as Agent or Dana, but simply as Scully. He dialed up the charm, the casual game of seduction he knew so well, fully intending to use it against this usurper and cause her to trip up, to make a mistake that would force her away in either shame or disgust. He honed the sharp edges of his sarcasm and was prepared to cut her deeply with his casual disregard. He was already skilled at pulling women into his orbit. Combined with what he’d learned from Phoebe and Diana about the fine art of the emotional drawing and quartering of one’s prey, he didn’t think Scully would last a month.
But somehow, somehow, she saw him and who he truly was. Listened to him. Respected him, even if she initially bought into his reputation and thought him spooky and unhinged. She offered him her soft underbelly on the first night of their first case. And despite his determination to treat her as the spy she’d been sent to be, he couldn’t help but show her vulnerability in kind. He told her about Samantha.
And she stayed. She stayed despite his bad behavior and his obviously practiced performance; the means of disarmament that’d always served him so well before. And soon he realized she was just as unhinged as he was, just as passionate. Not in the same ways, of course, because she was firmly rooted in science and the desire to prove his extreme theories wrong. But she was fearless and feisty, infinitely curious, and willing to go beyond what any sensible person might do in order to further his cause. Even as she slowly came to realize he might be right more often than not, that this singular obsession of his took precedence over everything else, she stayed. Scully always stayed.
Seven years on, seven years of heartache and grief and losing more than they’ve gained, she remains by his side. And somewhere along their journey it’s become less about the work and more about the two of them, what they’ve built together. He occasionally worries that maybe he hasn’t always been honest enough with her, that she took his early subterfuge at face value, even after he'd dropped all pretenses. He worries that he may not be the man she thinks he is, and that eventually she'll figure that out and leave him.
He gets up and pulls her from her seat at the empty local pizza place in Nowhere, Nebraska just as the jukebox begins to play the last song he selected after feeding it quarters on the way to their booth.
“Mulder, what are you doing?” she grumbles in mild annoyance. It’s been a long day and they’re both dead on their feet. And now he’s dragged her away from the first slice of sausage and mushroom already on its way to her mouth. Her fingers are slightly greasy as he clasps them in his and gives her a little twirl before pulling her close.
He can do this kind of thing these days, when they’re in the field and not likely to be seen and reported for conduct unbecoming of Special Agents with the FBI. He can get them adjoining rooms, with their respective connecting doors left unlocked for clandestine visits after they’ve showered away the remains of their day. He can fully and unabashedly use all those powers of seduction and charm that he’s honed over the years. And Scully reaps the benefits. They both do. It works every time now. His myriad talents are a necessary evil.
“I’ve got you under my skin,” he tunelessly croons in her ear, murmuring along with Frank on the jukebox. “I’ve got you deep in the heart of me. So deep in my heart you’re really a part of me,” he finishes, gazing down into vivid and grudgingly tolerant azure eyes. He dances her in between tables and across the empty tiled floor as the horn section revs up and kicks in.
“Aren’t you a bit young to be a Sinatra fan, Mulder?” she asks after a minute or so. He catches the corner of a smile she’s trying to suppress.
“They’re called classics for a reason,” he argues. “Old Blue Eyes will never go out of style.” She finally relents a bit of her reserve and lays her cheek on his chest. “Tell me something, Scully.”
“What do you want me to tell you?” she asks, peering up at him with fondness. The tone she's using is one she normally reserves for small children or fat little puppies.
“Did I,” he hesitates, “…did I seduce you? Has everything led to this because of something I did years ago?”
She bursts out with a short, sharp peal of laughter and pats him on the chest with her free hand. “Don’t be an idiot, Mulder. I seduced you.”
He grins down at her and they dance a little more, the lone waitress shooting them a mildly curious look from her perch at the counter housing the cash register.
“I would sacrifice anything, come what might,” Scully begins softly singing, negating any advantage she might’ve had over him for being such a nerd and celebrating Frank Sinatra’s genius. “For the sake of having you near. In spite of the warning voice that comes in the night and repeats. How it yells in my ear, ‘Don't you know, little fool, you never can win?’”
But that’s the thing. They have won. And right now, that’s good enough. Right now, it’s everything.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Notes:
I'm sorry. No idea where this came from, and it's very much stream-of-consciousness. That's becoming a pattern these days. I’d call it just another random brain dump, but instead of getting it out in a tiny chunk, this one took on a life of its own and tortured me beginning to end. I don’t question the muse. She’s driving this train, not me.
