Collector's Edition: Never Again and the
Endless Line
Got some Never Again angst for the phile populace. Step right up and take a whirl!
Loose chronological order below~
Beshter's Seasons: Fourth
Scully watched Mulder whip around the doorway to the office, bag in hand, partly envious of his time off, partly irritated. He wouldn't be taking it if he didn't have to, she knew that, and it was disgusting that he was forced to it. Mulder had no concept of "vacation." She wasn't much better. What was she doing instead of vacationing? Checking up on Moose and Squirrel? Is this what her life had devolved into, back and forth, up and down, her life in a standstill chasing one false lead after another, and all the moments of life passing her by. Her fingers slipped into her coat pocket, pulling out the delicate rose petals she found the night before. They looked even more ephemeral in the wan, florescent light of the dim office. She felt as dry and desiccated as they were, fragile and empty.
Part of Beshter's fill-in series: post-Kaddish Scully begins to examine her life, its choices, and consequences... and (momentarily) runs away from the endless line.
Stephanie Davies's Insufferable Sting
It was as she was pulling up behind her brother's Volvo that she felt it: a cold tickle on her upper lip. And her fingers came away bloody.
Pre-Never Again Scully's questions about her desk and that endless line began at her brother's birthday party.
Anne Haynes’s (Gossamer) Ishmael
What smacks me in the face is that, no matter how much I tried to distance myself from him and his influence in my life, no matter the uncharacteristic lengths to which I went in my quest for rebellion, I am less free of him than I was before we parted.
Never Again Scully is consumed by her partner.
@scenes-in-between/@scullywolf's (Ao3) Never Again
Telling Mulder would make it real. And she wasn’t ready for that, not yet.
Post-Leonard Betts Scully's fear drives her to Philadelphia.
Chibiness87's Transient
Following a suspect into a tattoo parlour dressed as she is may appear a little unwise, but she is intrigued despite herself. The design of the ouroboros calls to her; a direct contrast to what she claimed in the office the previous day about life. Here the snake is constantly reborn, life continues on forevermore, a constant loop.
A symbol of infinity.
Of permanence.
She likes it immediately.
Never Again Scully wonders if she has cancer.
Clementinewoolysocks369's The Problem - Chapter 1
Maybe she just wants to take a normal risk for once. Maybe she just wants to reassure herself she’s alive. It’s a side effect of being one of the few people her age who has had the privilege of seeing her own gravestone. “Dana Scully. Loving daughter and friend.” Her life summed up in a few words.
Post-Leonard Betts Scully feels disconnected from life.
@bakedbakermom/lonegunga1's Ouroboros (Ao3)
It was the first place Mulder ever really touched her, on that first case in his dark Oregon motel room with rain sheeting down outside, as Scully stood trembling in the candlelight and the tiny flame flickered in the warm cloud of his breath. She had trusted him enough, even then, to bare her body, and he in turn trusted her enough to bare his soul.
It is still the place he touches her the most, the place she has come to think of as “his.”
Never-Ever--Again
This is a moment of truth. Another, and so soon after the last. My life is crowded with them these days. I stand outside our office, ready to enter for the first time since returning from Philadelphia.
All the delicious heat I'd felt when I was close to Ed Jerse was, it seems, a mere precursor to his nearly incinerating me, then toasting his own arm.
Never Again Scully ruminates on her avenging anger.
After
For the tenth time, she wondered what they were doing here. It wasn't as if blood was allegedly pouring from human flesh, and she doubted that Skinner had assigned the case. Where was the *crime*? Had Mulder brought her to Philadelphia to watch her squirm? Had he chosen this bogus- looking religious case purely to poke fun at her faith? Was he really that cruel, and were they that far gone? She tried to shake off the depression this thought spread over her like a pall.
Pre-Never Again Mulder and Scully fell into bed, never talked about it, and are now grappling with her Philadelphia weekend-- in resentful silence, on a case.
@syntax6's (Gossamer, FFN, omniscribe) 20 - Chapter 4
Snow is falling again when he picks her up from the hospital. Tiny little flakes drift from the silent sky, illuminated briefly by the yellow street lamps before settling softly on the cold white world around them. Scully shivers insider her coat as she waits for him to open the locked car. Snow catches on her black shoulders and dull, burnished hair, and he barely recognizes her. The red seems muted to him now in the wake of all those pictures - her body and Jerse's, catalogued as evidence.
Never Again Scully, injured, asks for help.
defnotmeyo's It's My
And it’s the with who that driving you particularly crazy, right? Because you kind of think that maybe if Ed Jerse wasn’t completely off his rocker, he might be a little bit better than you. He was certainly more stable, outwardly, despite the failed marriage. He was certainly suaver, getting her to open up to him. He was certainly at least as good looking as you, a little more ripped, a little bulkier.
That goads you, doesn’t it?
Never Again Mulder can't finish his sentence.
@mldrgrl's (Ao3) Seeing Red
“Get out, Mulder,” she mumbles, trying not to move her lips too much. Blood seeps into her mouth anyway and she grimaces at the coppery tang on her tongue.
“Keep your head back,” he answers, as though he didn’t hear her. He turns the faucet on and turns to the paper towel dispenser.
“I said get out!” she says again, and the force of her voice causes the blood on her lips to splatter on the sink and mirror.
Mulder freezes with a paper towel fluttering in his hand.
Post-Never Again Scully has a nosebleed (in front of her partner.)
@thursdayinspace's (Ao3) fic: five times Mulder doesn't ask Scully out on a date (and one time he does) (Ao3)
She’s right to be mad at him. He deserves it. He’s mad at himself. He doesn’t know if he’s ever been angrier.
Amongst other opportunities thoroughly fumbled, Mulder misses a glaring one during Never Again.
@incidental-ao3/incidental's
Febuwhump 2023: The Truth is Out There (And the Fic is In Here) - Chapter 8
But eventually, the yawn came, unbidden, and he reached for the remote.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said hurriedly. He had already flipped it off.
“Nah, you need your beauty sleep,” he joked. He turned his lamp off, but she hesitated.
“Uh, Mulder, can I… can I confide something in you?” she asked, setting her book aside. He propped himself up on his elbow, brow crinkled.
Post-Never Again Scully is plagued by night terrors.
Nothing Else Matters
“You… are all that I care about, Scully. All. Nothing else matters without you.”
“Oh,” was all she could manage to say in response. It was disarming, how quickly the energy between them had changed.
AU-- Post-Never Again Mulder and Scully yell out their anger (and finally, finally communicate.)
Diana Alexander's The Vain Shadow of the Past
He walked over to Scully's desk, and she looked up at him as he spoke softly. "I'm sorry, Scully."
Post-Never Again Mulder reflects on their complicated relationship.
@frogsmulder/Brynstein's Love Me Tender
The shadow of Phoebe Green was his ghost. He had collected others since, they always seemed to follow him, stitched to his heel. But Phoebe had been his first. In every sense of the word. When they had been together she had completely and utterly shattered him. In a way that was both exhilarating and terrifying, but now it was just terrifying. Or so he tried to tell himself.
Post-Never Again Scully realizes Mulder is afraid.
@jessahmewren's (Ao3) Mulder & Scully, #15
Scully watched he scenery slide by in green/blue flashes. They’d been driving for ages. Her tattoo itched, but she couldn’t discreetly scratch it without Mulder noticing, and it was still a sore spot for him.
Ed Jerse was a sore spot for him.
Post-Never Again Scully is ready for a fight.
@suitablyaggrieved/ScullyLovesQueequeg's #4 Come Here, Let Me Fix It For You
“Thank you,” She said that lowly, as if forbidden, and that’s when Mulder noticed it. Her cross was not on her neck.
“Scully, what happened to your necklace?” He asked.
“It broke. After all these years, and you wearing it some, it finally broke."
Post-Never Again Mulder does his best to fix things (literally.)
@just-a-donut-who-reads/just_a_donut_who_reads's Unnamed
Pacing done, she stands on her toes, arms above her head, stretching her shoulders and mid-section and twists at the waist, allowing the tension to seep out of her body. The action makes her cropped sweatshirt ride up, and from the corner of her eye, she can see Mulder's eyes following its hemline. Suddenly, he looks away, and his hands tighten almost imperceptibly on the cushion he's holding. Scully lowers her arms and turns to him.
"What?" She asks, examining her abdomen. He shakes his head but she continues, lifting up the back of the sweatshirt and twisting to look at her back.
Oh.
Post-Never Again Mulder glimpses his partner's tattoo.
@scullysexual/PostApocolypticAlien's
30 Ways To Say "I Love You" (1/30)/How It Was Before. - Chapter 1
You return from the little café down the road and venture over to her area.
“It was two sugars, right?” you ask.
Startled, she glances up at you and the coffee cup in your hand.
Post-Never Again Mulder apologizes.
A Ghost Inbetween
It's a tiny dab of red. You could of easily missed it, would of if you were anyone but yourself yet, either way, you wouldn't miss anything when it relates to her, especially recently. Recently something had been very off with her if the last case was anything to go by.
Post-Never Again Mulder sees blood on Scully's shirt.
Michelle Kiefer's The Bar Scene - Race the Wind
When she raised her eyes, Mulder's smug look had been replaced with concern and perhaps a little guilt.
Post-Never Again Scully and Mulder aggravate each other on their next case.
@aloysiavirgata's Snow Carefully Everywhere Descending (LJ)
Mulder eyes her sidelong; her height requires her to shimmy to the edge of the tall stool and hop down in an undignified fashion. He watches her stride through the room - linoleum the color of old computers, of old bones - and resents the pairs of eyes that follow her dark, trim figure. They have no idea about her, he thinks. They can’t possibly begin to imagine her, the complexity of the brain cloistered behind that bruised and lovely face. They cannot fathom the things her sea-deep eyes have watched unfold.
Post-Never Again Mulder and Scully, prickly still, begin to slowly
open up.
@h0ldthiscat's (Ao3) 7 (things you said while we were driving)
She shoves the sunshade back up and clears her throat. “Can we go?”
He notices for the first time that her eyes are wet, that her chin is quivering despite her best attempts to control it. Remorse and guilt wash over him as he remembers an offhand comment from earlier in the week that explains her makeup, her nicer-than-usual suit, the set of her jaw."
Post-Never Again Mulder realizes Scully feels used.
AUs
@seepunkrun/Punk/runpunkrun's (site, Gossamer) Across a Desk (Ao3)
She waited to see what he would do. It occurred to her that he wasn't going to say anything on his own. She had to decide if it would be worth it to flush him out of his hole.
Foxhole.
Something in her appreciated how much that remark could hurt him. She held that power inside of her: She could hurt Mulder.
AU-- Post-Never Again Scully's tattoo can talk.
@writingwell/RocketMan's (site) I Hurt
"Scully, did you hear me?"
I shake my head no. I hurt, I hurt, I hurt, I hurt
"Scully, would you like to have dinner with me tonight?" he asks.
AU-- Post-Never Again Scully, still saddened from the Tunguska-Terma fiasco, is shocked by Mulder's question.
Brandon D. Ray's (Gossamer, xffics) No Place Like Home (Gossamer)
"Tell you what, Scully," her partner said as the chuckles finally died down. "You ever decide you DO want a tattoo, give me a holler and we'll go get one together, okay? We need to spend more time social time together relaxing, anyway -- the stress is getting to both of us."
AU-- Never Again was all a dream.
@swinging-stars-from-satellites/bravest_person_in_Wonderland's even more of exactly the same (Ao3)
It might hurt too much to acknowledge that she walked away from her best friend of four years over a stupid fight, a pointless desk and the point of a needle dripping ink into her skin. A part of her misses him, the part that wakes up panicking and praying she won't find blood on her pillowcase, but another part is still angry.
He has no claim on her. She has no claim on him. That makes her sad.
AU-- Post-Never Again Scully leaves without a goodbye... and calls again after her diagnosis.
BONUS
@kateyes224's Mulder’s real panic face.
Whatever you do, do not think about how Mulder had answered Scully’s phone call early that morning with one of his usual pithy Mulderisms, eager to regain a tenuous balance with her after she had reduced him to ashes and unfinished sentences in the wake of the Ed Jerse case. Don’t think about how Mulder’s face fell as the words “Can you meet me at the oncology ward?” slowly floated into his ears, his smile fading, as it took his brain several long moments to play catch-up before the words actually made sense.
Post-Never Again Mulder is given bad news.
Meredith's Backhand
Her life was his as much as his was hers. And she was waiting to tell him until after she was dead.
Two and a half days of nonstop searching and five hours in a variety of uncomfortable chairs had brought him to his knees. He had been moving so fast for so long that the reality of the situation hadn't sunk in; his brain had been processing the facts nonstop since Scully's call back in D.C., but his heart hadn't been able to keep up.
Memento Mori Mulder understands Scully's Philadelphia excursion.
@cecilysass's We’re Not Here To Get Involved in Personal Problems - Chapter 6
“Blood-related sexual activity!” Scully finds herself getting belatedly frightened and angry. “Mulder, did HIV/AIDS cross your mind?”
“I guess I probably forgot to review the pamphlets that night. Hey, maybe you can tell me for the future, Dr. Scully, how safe are kinky contaminated tattoo needles?”
Scully notes by the bright quality in his eyes that he is a little angry, too, and she questions if Mulder’s fear monster theory is right after all.
Post-X-Cops Mulder and Scully walk the neighborhood, eat mangoes, and delicately discuss past trysts.
@leiascully's tattoo
He grazed the snake on her back with one fingertip. She could hear the question in his quiet.
Hearts now open to each other, Mulder and Scully discuss her tattoo.
Arthur sort of falls for Sadie in a heart beat. Unfortunately. Because she sees him out, standing the watch. He doesn't stand the watch the same. Not the way the other guys stand it. While Dutch is in his tent, John with his girl, and the boys are hanging on the perimeter of camp with guns... Arthur is a hunter. She falls for him outside a Lemoyne Raiders camp. A spunky retriever runs up and Arthur settles him "Good boah." Then he takes the men in the camp to task. Sadie thinks. What if?
Flor!! I’m ngl I low key (maybe a little high key) ship Sadie and Arthur and fuckin hell yeah without a doubt watching that big ol brooding cowboy switch from gentle softy playing with a doggo to fuckinnn intimidating outlaw man in a heartbeat would have most of us like ‘.... bruh’
but have yall read how arthur talks about Sadie in his journal?? and how often he draws her? the boy had it bad
http://observeroftheuniverse.tumblr.com/post/176890888037/music-asks-your-favorite-album-opener-a-song16. Your favorite childhood songI remember I was really into Shania Twain’s ‘Man, I Feel like a Woman’ when I was a kid. That was probably my favorite song for a while.Music asks!
This week's author was introduced to The X-Files with a little "unrest" and her writing style and sense of humor will leave you with unrest when you realize you've reached the end of her written library. Meet @defnotmeyo in this week’s author profile.
You’re right. It’s not a big deal for GA or DD to...
I think there is a very real disconnect right now where it’s very easy to shit on DD. And those who actually do still like the guy are quick to defend him. So… ah, it’s hard to explain. I’ll be honest I’m more a DD fan than a GA fan just on sphere of work alone. And so, to me, and I’m trying to convey this without offending people, it’s like open season on him lately. And so, even I can get a little defensive, and I tend to be neutral.
I can understand that. I do feel like David’s taken some shit lately, and I think some of it’s deserved and some of it isn’t. I don’t like it when the fandom piles on him either (or on Gillian).
From my perspective, as someone who considers herself to be an equal fan of both of them, I feel like I spend a lot of time and energy trying to be fair to them and not favor one of them undeservedly over the other or apply different standards to them (largely as a result of however many years of turf wars and DD versus GA fandom bullshit, and having been yelled at for stepping out of line). I feel like I’m kind of obsessive and anal about that, sometimes to the point where I think I’m being ridiculous about it. So when I do let my guard down and I say something shirty about one of them without thinking through the implications of it for 20 minutes first, and that person’s defenders leap in to chastise me, it does frustrate me probably more than it should, just because I feel like I work so hard to stay objective about both of them and not be unfair to either one -- and because this has been going on for so LONG and sometimes I feel like I’ve been defending and stanning for these assholes forever and yet the day I slip up and say one negative thing about somebody it’s like I just arrived on the fandom boat this morning and I can’t be trusted.
So I know that’s overly defensive of me, but it’s a little bit of a thing with me so I don’t always react the best to it.
Then, too, sometimes I just want to lovingly roast David because that’s what I do, and sometimes I feel like I goof on him in a sarcastic way that *I* feel it should be plainly obvious is coated in heart eyes, and yet someone takes offense to it and gets all sad and mournful and hurt about how mean I am, and that annoys me too because I feel like I’m being come down on for the way I show my affection for him just because it’s jokey instead of straightforwardly worshipful (like...someone who films him yammering about baseball while he’s in the makeup chair and then turns the camera on herself to show that she is making a face of “this is what I have to put up with with this guy”). Like I go “look at this dingus with his preppy anchor belt” and immediately someone is like I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU CALLED HIM A DINGUS, HE IS A BEAUTIFUL FEMINIST I CAN’T BELIEVE U WOULD BODY SHAME HIM 😭 and I just want to quit the internet. This wasn’t that, but sometimes it feels like it all goes together.
Anyway, I can’t wait to read that guy’s new book and I really do hope he manages to get BFD made into a movie, because I loved it. And BOY, am I feeling Mulder this season, to put it mildly.
Have you guys heard about the newest adventure race craze? It’s called the Tough Mulder. Obstacles include:
Running through cornfields shouting “SCULLAAAAAY!” as you try to avoid helicopter searchlights
Programming speed dial on a several generations-old cell phone before a soda machine detonates
Riding a rising UFO bareback for a minimum of 8 seconds
Lying in a coffin for an undetermined amount of time
Choosing a terrible tie and tying it properly
Following your boo down a massive hole in the forest
Building a tower of dead bodies
Jumping on to a moving train
Impregnating an infertile woman
Outrunning a horse
Driving a stake through a vampire
Finding your sister’s clone
Commandeering a Sno-Cat® across the Antarctic
...and more!
Credit to race organizers @crossedbeams, @dangerscully, @defnotmeyo, @kateyes224, @damselindistressmya for the above (and way more, but I limited it to just the ones that made me pee myself.)
Collector's Edition: Fox Mulder, Partner and Protector (Part II)
A continuation of Part I here.
Also, I recommend Three, Four, and Five of a Kind and amorfati3215 (Recovered-ish with Various Links): noticed a couple fics there that I didn't want to repeat needlessly~
@ghostbustermelanieking/skuls’s
x files fic: 3:55
“I want to save you.”
“Save me from what?” Dana demands, crossing her arms. Her briefcase slides down her arm, but she ignores it. “No one knows the future.”
“I do,” he says. He’s haunted, like her father’s Navy buddies, victims she has interviewed on the jobs, the eyes you see in a longtime medical patient or someone who has been at a traumatic job for a very long time. And he’s looking at her like she’s everything, something she’s only ever seen between her father and her mother. It makes her both uncomfortable and comfortable at the same time; it sends some strange sensation down her spine. She isn’t scared of him... but at the same time, she is.
AU-- Pre-Pilot Mulder tries to warn Scully away from the basement.
First time he held her ❤❤
He kneels beside her on the floor and works at the knots around her wrists, he shouts for paramedics, and she’s so overwhelmed, still so afraid, that all she can ask is how he found her. She still can’t quite believe it. Her eyes are on Pfaster, like he might break free, like she might have to fight him off again.
Mulder’s hands are warm on her wrists as he unknots the cord, gentle, and he speaks so softly it makes her want to sob or scream. “Sure you don’t want to sit down, Scully, and let somebody take a look at you?” he murmurs.
Irresistible Scully clings to her partner.
Can you do a drabble for Irresistible please?
He still has a hard time thinking of her as a potential victim on these cases. He’d only done it once, the second time they’d dealt with Tooms. They were supposed to stop the bad guys, not fall prey to them. Scully was so untouchable that it still startled him, even now after Duane Barry. He hated thinking about anyone hurting her. But now he can’t stop imagining her in every case they’d ever solved. Scully with a handprint carved into the skin above her liver, Scully handcuffed to a radiator, shot by Barnett, Scully bound and gagged in the trunk of a car (gone, gone like Samantha), Scully with her hair and fingernails missing…
He shudders. He has to stop this.
Post-Irresistible Mulder and Scully talk in the dark.
Msr + 31? (I'm in the mood for pain apparently lololol)
His hand comes down on her shoulder again, softly. “I didn’t mean to…”
“I’m fine,” she hisses, but the tears keep coming. The fight is leaching out of her and all that is left is weariness.
Unruhe Mulder is there when Scully begins to fall apart.
mondays on an endless loop
“I'll shoot you, too!” Bernard shouts, nearly hysterical. People are crying around him, behind him, he thinks someone screamed. “Don't think I won't! I ain't afraid to shoot you!”
On the floor, Scully says, “Mulder, do—” but she breaks off, coughing wetly. She's got a hand to her chest, awkwardly trying to put pressure on the wound, and she's silently pleading with him not to do anything stupid, her eyes desperate.
Tears are stinging the backs of his eyes; he swallows harshly and says, “Don't try to talk, Scully.”
AU-- Monday Scully and Mulder and the days that they suffer.
christmas 2000 /// emily au second installment in this series of christmas ficlets. (Ao3)
One minute, she's standing by a festoon of Christmas decorations in the hallway (the FBI has Christmas decorations?) and arguing the authenticity of Mulder's toxic slime theory, and the next, her vision is spotted and her legs are weak, the room spinning as she falls and darkness falling like a curtain.
Mulder catches her clumsily before she hits the floor. When she comes to, his hand is on her cheek, thumb moving over her cheekbone, and his eyes are filled with worry. “Scully,” he says frantically.
AU-- Pre-Requiem Scully and Mulder navigate parenthood with Emily (and a surprise baby.)
oregon forest
She remembers it in chunks, but mostly, she doesn’t remember it at all. She remembers Mulder’s voice whispering—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry… She remembers screaming his name. She remembers the lights. She is just so cold.
She remembers Mulder is there, for some of it. That he’s there. That seems to be all that matters, in this giant mess: that they’re together.
AU-- Requiem Mulder and Scully are abducted together.
cold desert nights (Ao3)
Scully was still groaning when they came in the room, either in pain or in an attempt to talk through the gag, but she quietens as soon as she sees him. Her eyes widen. Something like fear flickers over her face.
Does she not recognize him? Head pounding, heart thudding, Mulder unknots the gag and pulls it away, whispering, “Scully, it’s me. It’s me. It’s okay, we’re going to get you out of here.”
AU-- S8 Mulder is returned during the events of Roadrunners.
AU where it’s Mulder who drives Scully to Georgia rather than Monica
He scoops up his gun and aims it, shouting the threats he'd been biting back before. The baby cries behind him. But the people don't get any closer, don't take the baby; they leave, filing out of the building one by one.
AU-- Essence Mulder goes with Scully.
AU where most of the events of the struggles take place in like 2008/around IWTB
He finds Scully unconscious, pale with a spot of blood at the corner of his mouth. He takes her hand and it is cold in his. Her doctor tells him that she’s had a seizure, shows him the monitor of her brain. It’s almost like a one-sided communication, but Mulder has no idea who it could possibly be. He excuses himself to go and sit with her, knotting her fingers with his.
AU-- The Struggles take place around IWTB.
@wtfmulder/@momdadimpoppunk‘s (Ao3)
Only A Little Something? - Chapter 7
“Scully?” She heard his surprised voice over the other concerned agents and ignored the searing pain to shoo them all away. Limping as fast as she could, she met Mulder halfway while he was jogging back to help her. “Hey, take it easy. That looked like a nasty fall.” He cupped her elbow in one hand and her shoulder in the other to get her to stop moving.
“We have no time. We have to talk now,” Scully demanded, dragging herself to her full height to glare up at him.
S1 Scully stumbles while running after Mulder.
drabble; let me tell you bout my best friend
They’ve been at it for three hours and Mulder is getting to the best part, using polaroids instead of his slides to illustrate -- something about colorectal balloon animals in the 1970s -- when he turns to find Scully gently tipping forward and nodding her head. Her eyes flutter shut and she slumps over.
He quickly catches her by grabbing her shoulder with one hand and using the other to cup her cheek. “Scully? Hey.” He taps her face twice. “Scully, are you okay?”
Her eyes snap open and she scrambles back into the couch, her wide eyed stare flitting around the room like a sightless moth. When she comes back to herself, she shoots him an apologetic look.
Post-Sleepless Mulder realizes he needs to care for Scully, too.
What We Do in the Trees
“Ma’am! Are you okay? You’re bleeding!” Suzanne scrambled out of her chair and ran into the kitchen. She came back with a wad of paper towels as Mulder helped Scully sit up straight, hand firm on her back while she pinched her nostrils and fought the urge to double over.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Y’all ain’t mountain folk, I’m guessing,” Suzanne said, gently pulling Scully’s hand from her face. Scully took the towels, cupped them under her nose, and stood up too quickly. She felt a fresh wave of dizziness and the warm tang of chamomile and bile flood her mouth.
“Suzanne, thank you for answering our questions,” Mulder said, guiding Scully towards the front door by her shoulders. “We’ll make sure to contact you if there’s anything else we need.”
Late-cancer arc Mulder and Scully investigate a case of mountain folk superstitions.
What about Scully fainting and Mulder catching her and then joking with her when she wakes up?
She came to in his lap. His hand was warm and heavy in her hair.
Scully faints.
fic; old testament
Suddenly they were pacing down the hallway. Mulder was not quite dragging him, but his feet were so heavy his shoes squeaked on the tile. “Better reception downstairs,” the man explained, but Ritter was hardly listening.
They passed the elevator. “Where are we—”
“I like taking the stairs.” Mulder’s hands were on his back now, shoving him along. The hallway lasted forever, but he wanted it to keep going. The closer they came to the exit door the harder his heart pounded.
This was a gallows walk.
AU-- Tithonus Mulder wrecks vengeance on Agent Ritter.
Prompt: MSR - FLUFF -scully is pregnant, Mulder looks after her.
She knows Mulder, clingy, one-track, obsessive Mulder, always knocking down each lead in his lifelong match of alien invasion dominoes, always foiling the plot, and so if he’s doing everything he’s always done, why should she think anything different?
This is why she doesn’t question his near-constant presence in her apartment. Why it doesn’t seem all that weird he drives to her place every morning to pick her up for work, even when he’s not supposed to be in that day. And they’ve always done the food thing. That’s just common courtesy when you interrupt someone at dinnertime. If he’s a little jumpier than normal, hopping off couches and rearranging pillows for no apparent reason, making them way too many cups of tea, calling her… a lot, for no good reason, it’s all just a throwback to the manic Mulder she knows and grudgingly loves.
Post-Empedocles Scully realizes her partner is taking care of her.
@dreamingofscully’s (Ao3) Stolen Time - Chapter 1
He’s beside her. Duane Barry’s blood spreads around the wound in his head, crimson spray on her pale cheeks and ruining the half-torn sandy coat draping from her body. She crawls backwards, kicking out and pushing Mulder away in desperate reflex.
When her blue eyes soften in recognition, he wraps his arms around her, pulls her tight to his chest and breathes into her neck.
AU-- Duane Barry Mulder saves Scully.
@kateyes224's (Ao3) 27 from the 'things' prompt list (Ao3)
Silence.
She’s allowing him to hang. He feels the noose tighten.
Gulp. “Scully…”
“Mulder, I will not allow you to blame yourself for this.”
He squeezes his eyes shut.
S2 Scully confronts Mulder on his shadowing habit.
@catarinquar's (WBM)
transient luminous events (Ao3)
“Here.” His fingers brush the side of her neck. “Your necklace is tangled.”
“I got it.” She stops him with a hand to his wrist, her heels sinking in the gravel as she takes a step back. Mulder just stands there, palms flat against the sides of his jeans, watching her fumble with the clasp. He just stands there.
She will not be his dead girl walking.
“You know Mulder, this was pretty transparent.”
“What?”
“This case,” she emphasizes, like it’s in quotation marks. “Did Skinner even approve this?”
Mulder closes his eyes.
S2 Mulder and Scully have a talk.
photosensitivity (Ao3)
At this point—because their lives are a divine joke—they’re rudely interrupted. In the low light Scully tastes the warm blood on her upper lip before Mulder can see it. A nosebleed. She cups her palm beneath her nose and lunges for the sink, leaning over it, knuckles white around the counter.
“Oh, Scully,” Mulder sighs. He stands.
“I’m okay. It’s not that bad.”
It’s really not, considering. She pinches the bridge of her nose and takes stock of her body. There’s a dim ache in her head, a low throbbing just between her eyes. Her neck is stiff. Her limbs are sore; her ankles will probably be bruised tomorrow from sitting on the tile, even with socks on. She bruises so easily now, her soft, bad-apple skin. She’ll need a full night of sleep tonight. She should eat something that doesn’t come from a vending machine, but that might be pushing it.
Mulder reaches for the toilet paper, and she holds up her hand to stop him.
“Give it a minute,” she says.
Post-Demons Scully attempts to juggle Mulder's lingering seizures and her own noticeable symptoms.
defnotmeyo's
The Door Kicker
He shifts in front of the door and braces his left leg before hammering his right foot into the door, right by the handle and close to the frame. There’s a satisfying snap as the door bursts open and before Skinner can even move Scully is under Mulder’s right arm, gun drawn, and into the room, slicing the pie and clearing opposite corner. Mulder’s instantly behind her, checking the other side. Symmetry.
Early-seasons Skinner observes Mulder and Scully's dynamic.
Do you think now that Mulder and Scully had sex again that his perspective has changed?
Customer service looks to rue putting him out.
It doesn’t matter.
Because in two seconds, his face is up and to the right, his spit is knocked out on the table next to them, and he is flat on his back.
S11 Mulder is mocked by an IKEA worker.
Unnamed
“Mulder… you… you hurled a raccoon down our stairs.”
Revival Mulder saves Daggoo's life.
Unnamed
How?
How doesn’t matter.
Mulder takes a deep breath, drags his face up. Stands up. Is really… very, very glad he boxed and fought and bench pressed his way through his depression. It’s time to get his kids back.
Both of ‘em.
The house echos when he racks the slide of his gun.
“Let’s go.”
AU-- Mulder is Jackson and Emily's father.
@nnyyssssaa/dksfwm/Nyssa23's Victus
You see him there, sitting on the bed before you. He’s always there. It should startle you that he has found you in this hospital, especially since it’s after visiting hours (like that’s stopped either of you before), but it doesn’t. “Mulder,” you squawk out before another wave hits. Your lungs feel like they’re on fire, and truthfully you think this might be the end. Your tears escape, you’re so tired of crying and appearing weak, but he shushes you and brings your head to his shoulder until your shuddering subsides. He coaxes you into lying back down in the bed, brushing away a strand of hair that has stuck to your face. He replaces the tray with a cup of water and brings the straw to your lips. You drink laboriously, but the contrast of the cool liquid against your burning throat is soothing and reaffirming.
Zero Sum Mulder visits Scully after her treatment.
FridaysAt9's Tea and Ice Cream
The driver behind her honked the horn a few times, and she took her foot off the brake, turning onto her street. She wanted to get home, crawl into bed, and sleep for a week, but as she pulled in front of her building, she realized her night wasn’t going to follow that plan.
With a sigh, Scully got out of her car, walked over to the familiar sedan that was parked a few spots down, and used her knuckle to rap on the slightly open window. Mulder turned to look at her through the car and smiled.
Post-Elegy Mulder brings ice cream and tea.
@lyndsaybones/Lyndsaybones's AU where Scully is shot
instead of Diana
“Mulder, I’m being discharged today. I...I’d like to see you. Maybe you could come by?”
10 days after she called, there she is. And even from half a block away, he can see that she's in trouble.
Thump, thump, thump, his heart, his feet, his head.
“Scully?!” he calls, terrified that she’s about to fall.
She turns and he can see the fear and the relief on her face. He closes the distance between them wraps his arms around her in a clumsy attempt to keep her upright.
AU-- The End Scully is shot.
@gaycrouton/OnlyTheInevitable's
Nurse Mulder
There was no moment of silence as she closed her mouth that time. As soon as her voice cut off, she could hear bounding footsteps from his room followed by the adjoining room door slamming open. "Scully?" he called out nervously.
She felt bad at the worry her shouting must have caused him, so she made her tone sweeter as she gently called out, "I'm in here." What was an attempt to ease his worry sounded like a harsh comedy bit in the tonal difference, and it didn't seem to calm him much as his footsteps were rushing to the bathroom door.
"I'm coming in," he called before bursting through the door. She watched his eyes scan the room, probably looking for her bleeding out body or an intruder before they fell to the sight of her head peeking out from the curtain. He cocked his head and walked towards her slowly, still trying to assess the situation. "Did you fall?" he asked in concern.
Mulder takes care of his injured-then-medicated partner.
Never Quite As It Seems
"Mulder?" she whimpered, her voice sounding pathetic to even her own ears.
His expression of relief quickly morphed into concern as he stepped toward her. "Scully, what's wrong?"
She looked at her hands, surprised when they weren't covered in his blood, before glancing around the room to see if maybe it was someone else's body she'd been hovering over. There was nothing. It was just an average, empty storage space.
The mixture of adrenaline, confusion, and paranoia caused her to shy away from him, falling gracelessly onto her a**. "Y-you-" she stammered.
"It's me. I'm here," he assured, crouching in front of her.
Mulder tries to help Scully after she hallucinates his death.
LuminousPie's
Five Times Mulder Got Injured and One Time Scully Did
“Why did you do it?”
Mulder looked up at the disapproving face of his partner and shrugged. He knew exactly why, he wasn’t sure he was quite willing to admit it to her yet though. She would only reprimand him, say that she could look after herself and Neill wasn’t worth it. Entirely true of course but that didn’t mean that Neill didn’t deserve a fist to his face.
He hissed as she placed an ice pack over his hand. “He deserved it.”
Mulder takes the time to defend Scully's honor, despite his own series of unfortunate injuries.
90 Minutes
He liked to spend his 90 minutes watching Scully fall asleep. 90 minutes was all it took for the human body to go through the stages of a sleep cycle. 90 minutes was all it took for him to know she was at peace. Born of a childhood wonder that had never receded he was fascinated by watching people and Scully was no exception, always had been, especially in sleep. All the sounds she made, the movements, the breathy words. Her routine, everything she did during each stage comforted him. His desire to watch over and protect her as strong now as it was when he’d first met her all those years ago. 90 minutes to put him at peace.
Revival Mulder loves watching his partner sleep.
@nowwhateinstein's (Ao3) Seeking Warmth (Ao3)
Everyone around us on the plane is either reading or sleeping. I glance over at Mulder. He chews thoughtfully at his bottom lip, the way he does when he’s deep in thought. Perhaps he’s thinking about the thing he saw out on the ice: the thing that left a crater five hundred feet deep and a half-mile wide. The thing I didn’t see, much to his chagrin. Or maybe he’s musing on what fate awaits us back in DC. I have an awful premonition that it’s not what either of us hope it will be. I must catch his eye, because he turns his head to look at me.
“You should get some sleep, Scully,” he says, his tone one of concern.
“If anyone needs it, it’s you,” I respond, raising an eyebrow at him. Now that we’re finally homeward bound, I’m beginning to feel more like myself again. “When’s the last time you slept?”
“I caught some shut-eye while you were in sick bay.” He says it with the faintest trace of a smile, as if he, too senses the change in me.
AU-- FTF Mulder keeps his patched-together partner safe.
@o6666666's (Ao3)
headcanon prompt: mulder washes
“Alright,” he says, scanning the kitchen and clapping his hands together. “We got this. We’re gonna be casual, we’re gonna be crafty.”
“Mulder.” She huffs a laugh, then winces. “It’s fine, you don’t have to do this. Let me just call my—“
“Your mother? You wanna wake her up at, eh—“ he checks the microwave clock “—8:30? It’s laaaaate, Scully.”
Post-Tithonus Mulder takes care of his partner.
AU where Diana (or Phoebe returning later on in the series) lies to Scully that the reason she and Mulder broke up was because he wanted to settle down and have kids but Diana/Phoebe didn’t.
It was a rotten pit in her heart, and it grew into her memories. I’ve never seen you as a mother before, Mulder said.
I’ve never seen you as a mother.
“You wanted a baby,” Scully finishes lamely, embarrassed to know a fact so intimate as the cause of Mulder’s separation from Diana when, after all, he hadn’t even wanted her to know they’d been together. She sniffs, wiping her eyes.
“A baby?” Mulder looks stunned. He glances around incredulous, as if there is someone else nearby to confirm he’d heard correctly. “With Diana?”
Post-The Unnatural Mulder is appalled.
What’s my headcanon for if Samantha was found?
He stomps right over there and pries the gun from her fingers. She flinches as soon as he touches her, and with her gun in the back of his pants, he guides her to the sofa. Scully tenses when he puts a hand to her back. She talks to Samantha over his head the whole time:
“Did he cut you?”
“He only hit me…”
“Don’t try to sit up, just stay where you are—”
“I’m okay…”
“Samantha,” he interrupts, “I’m coming, okay?”
“I’m okay…”
He clutches Scully’s hands to his chest, for one moment, after she sits. He puts his forehead on hers. “I will be right back,” he tells her, in a whisper, very seriously. In one more moment, you don’t have to be strong.
She nods at him, unblinking, like she understands.
AU-- Samantha returns early Season 7.
au where Mulder didn't go back to Oregon....
He picks her up like a bride. “We’re going to the ER.”
“What, no, Mulder, you need to—your flight.”
“Ha ha,” he says. “Very funny.”
AU-- Requiem Scully passes out in the FBI garage.
Slow Returns
The moment it clicks for him that she is not totally with it, perhaps hasn’t been for weeks or months, she sees it in his eyes.
She has failed, because she was supposed to stay awake to protect them. She remembers all her previous failures—all day today, and every day, for months. He is mad at her, she thinks. She is scared. He is going to leave her. She hasn’t even told him: I can’t do it. She needs some air. She needs to beg, she realizes. She unlocks the door.
In a second, he yanks it open. His hands on her face. She sighs; it is such a relief to feel him. “Scully?” Feeling all around, fingers to her neck, checking her vital signs, checking the baby. “You okay, Scully?”
AU-- Scully has to be medicated after This Is Not Happening.
soulmate au + time travel
“You have to take care of yourself,” she reminds him.
“I play basketball on the weekends,” he offers. “If I’m home.”
She chuffs. Nuzzles his hand a little more.
“I run.”
“I’m sure you’re very fast.”
“Do you want me to call you a cab?”
“No,” she says, and stands up from her stool. “No thank you.” Tenderly, she smooths a lock of his bangs between her thumb and index finger. “You’re alright?”
It feels suddenly imperative to be truthful. Then even more so to protect her. “I’m alright.”
Pre-Revival Scully travels back in time to see her partner.
Untitled MSIV fix-it fic
“Get her over here,” Mulder says, “there’s a ladder.”
“Alright,” Jackson calls too loudly into her ear, panicked. “It’s alright,” he tells her. Her son’s voice. “Breathe.” This is what her son sounds like.
He swims them to the ladder, which Mulder has descended to the penultimate rung, soaking his jeans to the knees. “Jackson,” Mulder pants, reaching for them when they are close enough. “Give her to me.”
Scully makes a blind grab for Mulder’s neck and then he’s lifting her out of the water with one arm and she’s so cold; her whole body shakes. “Come on,” Mulder tells her, “hold on, Scully,” and she wraps her legs around his middle.
“Jackson, let’s go,” Mulder orders, the sternest she has ever heard him in her life. Their son obeys, ascending first. Then Mulder climbs.
AU-- My Struggle IV Scully jumps in the water after her son.
swimming in the eighth month (Ao3)
There is a pond on their property. (“Adjacent” to their property, she tells him.) He proposes they swim.
“Mulder,” she says at first, “no.”
But he gets her in the end. “Come on, Scully. Jackson’s been swimming in it all summer with the dog. It’s fine.”
“Amoebiasis, Mulder. Cholera.”
He gives her a look.
Post-Finale Mulder takes his partner swimming to relieve her back.
@sigritandtheelves/DarlaBlack’s
In Milford (Ao3)
Five hours have stretched like an eternity between her first phone call to him this morning and the moment that Fox Mulder stomps in to find her sitting at the edge of the hospital bed. He radiates red rage. His energy is wild and uncontained. He shakes like he wants to either grab and hug her or start smashing every object in the room, but he does neither. Instead she watches him force himself still, force himself to find human words rather than animal rage.
“What happened?” He asks.
AU-- En Ami Scully leaves.
Ground
“With my…” he said, trailing off, his face utterly inscrutable.
“I’m sorry to tell you like this. Before you were taken, I didn’t know.” She watched his face, anxious for any sign. She began to pull her hand away, but he held it tight. He lifted his eyes to hers: hooded, lost, vulnerable, but also… hopeful.
“My baby, Scully?”
Another twitch of a smile, her own hope irrupting. “Yeah.”
He did let go of her hand then, but only to touch her further, to pull her arms away so he could gaze at her middle, to pluck at the buttons of her black blazer. “How… how far along?”
AU-- TINH Mulder is returned whole.
(III) Three Iterations of a Birth (and Death) (Ao3)
In the mountains of West Virginia, a place called Willowdale that sounded beautiful and safe, they were Kate and Richard Mulvey for two and a half weeks. They made quiet preparations in a rented vacation cottage, paid for in cash to a widow named Ruth. Maggie took no pseudonym, put her name on nothing, and stayed with them in the second small bedroom. She was a steadying maternal presence bearing folded blankets and cloth diapers, years of accumulated knowledge, and endless gratitude for being asked to come.
Scully had been having little contractions off and on for days until, on a Sunday afternoon in late May, they gripped her hard, forcing her to bend over the kitchen table and bite her lips together. “Mulder,” she whimpered, voice high, and he was beside her in a second.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re ready. We’re ready,” he told them both, willing it to be true.
AU-- Essence-Existence Mulder and Scully slip away for the birth.
Lifeline (Ao3)
He drives a beat-up junker into Georgetown and feels terribly out of place. Mulder has grown scruff into an almost-beard that is streaked with small patches of gray. He wears oil-stained jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, but he enters under the cover of darkness in the hope that no one will notice him. It’s almost three in the morning. He brought practically nothing with him, but his back pocket holds a photo of William, his small pack the phone he used to call her. He’s home now. He sees her apartment and his heart slams in his chest.
She’s a wreck, man. She’s not okay. Keeps talking about giving up the baby to keep him safe. Frohike’s words had been like slow punches to the gut. How bad it had been for him in all these months—he never thought about how bad it could have been for her. For them.
AU-- William Reyes and Frohike contact Mulder before the adoption.
Fever
“In sickness and in health,” he murmurs, and she can’t help it, her eyes well with tears against her will.
“Mulder—“
“It’s okay,” he says, shaking his head. “Let me get your soup.”
He helps her sit, would feed her if she let him, which of course she doesn’t, and stays when she is finished.
“Nice place,” he says when he can’t think of anything else.
She gives him a look.
“What? It’s not so bad.”
She realizes he must have seen the photos on her dresser. “It’s not home,” she says with a thick voice, unsure if it is from swelling or tears.
