#txf fictober

[lotsoforangesoutside]

Say Anything

msr | post Fight the Future | words: 710 | fictober Day 1

She’s studying the frostbite on her hands. The redness still looks bad; she can’t let her brother see her like this.

Scully isn’t ready to leave the bathroom right now.

She tries to speak earlier and is shocked at the sound of her voice, a raspy, airy sound. She frowns to think about how damaged her vocal cords are. Good thing she couldn’t carry a tune before the incident anyway.

It’s kind of funny to call it an incident. After all, that is what the FBI calls it. She was kidnapped and taken to Antarctica, but the government is ready to deny everything.

What else is new, she thinks almost bitterly.

“Scully?” Mulder’s voice comes from the living room. “Are you alright? You’ve been in there for a while.”

She signs and opens the door. She can’t answer him, so he’ll be standing by the doorframe of her bathroom in about five seconds.

“Hey.” Yep, five seconds.

Scully waves at him while grinning her everything-is-dandy smile, and he returns with a toothy grin. If she didn’t know better, she would think that Mulder was drugged. He’s looking too happy to be dealing with the aftermath of this incident.

“Want to eat?” Mulder asks, and she remembers that she hasn’t told him her brother is in town and is desperately wanting to pay her a visit.

Bill doesn’t know about her trip to Ice World. Bill doesn’t know Mulder’s staying with her until she’s better. Bill doesn’t know a lot of things.

And the last thing she wants to do now is to deal with Bill. She can’t tell him to shut up, she can’t explain to him all the mistaken notions he has about Mulder. Bill will just talk and talk and talk and drive her up the wall.

“Your mother called while you were in the shower.” Mulder looks like he suddenly recalls this fact out of nowhere. “Apparently Bill is in town and is dying to see you, just dying to see you.”

She swats him lightly on his arms.

“Bill wants to come over at 2.” Mulder licks his lips quickly. “Mrs. Scully already promised me a pie to make it up to me. I think I need to rush home and put on my cups. One look at you and he’s gonna bust my balls.”

She knows that Mulder is finding a reason to leave. Stay, she mouths. She writes on the fogged-up mirror, too.

“I don’t know, Scully. You’ll have to convince me pretty hard about it. He hates me. He wouldn’t be happy that I’m here with you, and after this afternoon, he’ll probably be dragging you to your mother’s. I think he’ll be pissed to find that his baby sister was kidnapped—my fault, frostbitten—my fault, lost her voice—my fault, and that the culprit is now staying with her?”

She quickly writes no on the mirror, but he remains unmoved.

Scully realizes that he does fear dealing with Bill. She looks at him, wondering what she can say to change his mind.

“Given that you can’t talk right now, and this mirror is not very big...” He flashes her a smug, wise-ass smirk. “I’ll be sure to bring home some chocolate cake for you. Your brother and I just don’t mix well.”

Scully reaches to grab his elbow. Mulder, she mouths. She knows her voice isn’t ready to come out right now, but she isn’t going to give up without trying. The mirror has cleared up almost entirely; the stay written on it has disappeared.

She tugs his sleeve and points at the middle of her chest.

“You,” Mulder knows she wants to say something. They’ve come up with some pidgin sign language in the past week.

Then, she points at her knee and points at him.

“knee. Your knees.”

Scully shakes her head and repeats the gesture again. Her chest, her knee, his chest.

“You. Knee. Me.” Mulder says.

I need you, she mouths with a weak smile.

Mulder frowns, but she knows that he is pretending because of the way his lips curve. “Scully, you owe me a big one.”

I’d like to own you, too. She thinks.

[poeticsandaliens]

Fictober Snippet - “Cemetery”

Rating: G. This is a surprisingly sexless little passage.

Pairing: MSR

I decided to write a *very* brief snippet for Fictober. Take it where you will in the timeline; I take it as somewhere before the beginning of Season 11 but it’s ambiguous. I just wanted to write a brief quiet moment between them.

It’s the time of year for existential crises; might as well indulge. I just needed to flex my writing muscles and create something rough and small. If you’re curious, this tree does (or used to) exist, before it was struck by lightning over ten years ago. I know this tree. I’ve seen it.

Scully perches on the cemetery bench, legs tucked beneath her. She sips her coffee cup, then licks the gathering dew off the rim. Mulder’s oversized sweater hangs over her like a woolen sheet.

“You said you had something to show me?” she arches her eyebrow at Mulder. He is wearing a grin and two bulging pockets, overstuffed with fried pumpkin seeds. He puckers his lips and tastes the air, as if he could kiss a ghost.

In early October, Mulder proclaimed that the ghosts of Civil War soldiers rose from their graves to prowl the grounds of the Leesburg Cemetery each night until Hallow’s Eve. Come with me, he insisted. It’ll be a nice walk.

She wanted to tell him her bones felt old enough that morning, thank you very much, but he looked at her with honey-eyes, smiled wickedly, and for a moment he looked exactly like he had twenty-five years ago. He was already dressed for work, reading glasses perched on his nose, left over from the morning paper. She couldn’t say no.

Now, she cracks her neck side to side as she gets up from the bench, hugging her coat closer to her body. Wind chases them between tombstones and barren trees, rustling what’s left of the foliage. Mulder points toward the far corner of the cemetery, and she tucks her body into his, feeding off his warmth, his infectious youth.

Perhaps a cemetery should remind them both that they have an expiration date. Yet there’s something forgiving about the maze of granite slabs; they lay bodies to rest so they don’t have to wither in the open like leaves and insects, hatching and mating and birthing and dying. The exoskeletons of cicadas rot on display; the maple leaves dessicate, clinging to life on city sidewalks. Autumn creatures die like trench soldiers; at least humans are out of sight as they reintegrate with the earth.

She walks with a shuffle, kicking leaves into the tombstones. Some of the stones have little divots just in front of them, where two boots have stood and observed and mourned, and have left their prints in the grass. Those graves are often the most lavish. At a few stones, the grass has shriveled and browned in the tracks, beaten down in the same spot every day.

Mulder tugs her hand. “C’mere, Scully. Check this out.”

She stomps after him in her woolen boots, stumbling to keep up. He leads her to the thickest tree in the graveyard—a knotted ginkgo still clinging to its canopy. A wrought-iron gate plunges through its middle, staking it like a vampire, but Scully realizes as she beholds the massive tree that the gate is not a stake at all. No, the chipped gate, lined with rust and fleur de li, was standing long before this tree took root. The ginkgo sprouted beneath it one spring and thickened, consuming the crooked fence as it grew. It usurped the cemetery border and rained its seeds upon nearby stones.

In this part of the graveyard, the tombstones have bloomed. Mosses and lichens coat their surface, obscuring the names. She thinks she catches a birthdate in 1847. It doesn’t surprise her. As they decomposed these bodies fed the tree through bones and hollow bellies, and they were the first to be undone as it grew through their spines. That the man made gate predates this cycle spooks her more than a ghost ever could. She squeezes Mulder’s hand.

She wonders why he wanted to take her here. She wonders if it has anything to do with ghosts, or if he’s thinking of his impending birthday. Fifty-six, still warm, still kicking.

“Sometimes I wonder if places like this are a bridge to the other side,” Mulder says beside her.

She cocks her head. “The other side of what?”

He shrugs. Death, he means. “Another realm, with ghosts and monsters and completely different laws of time and space. This seems like the kind of place where the fabric between worlds thins.”

“You’ve been watching too many reruns of The Twilight Zone.” She watches with him in the evenings, crunching on ziploc bags full of fried pumpkins seeds. Halloween is their prime time, the one month where they can enjoy the spooky and strange without life-or-death consequences. The vampires politely restrict themselves to television.

“Scully?” Mulder wraps his arm around her waist and pulls her close. A ginkgo leaf falls on her shoulder.

“Yes?” She arches an eyebrow. His eyes are glassy, fractured like fine pottery. Anyone else might call him a mourner, but Scully knows this look. He is not sad, only thinking. She waits for him to gather his thoughts.

Scully runs her thumb along his knuckle. The skin is dry and flaky. Sallow, moss-aged men who fought three wars casually rot beneath her feet. They built this fence. Then the tree ate them. Now, their cells pulse inside its trunk, where it grows, thick and bald and knotty in mid-October.

Mulder hefts a little sigh. “I want to be buried here.”

She promises him, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

[lotsoforangesoutside]

Game Changer

msr | s6 | words: 605 | fictober Day 7 | #6

“So Scully,” he gives his best boy scout grin, “Does this mean Clyde Bruckman was right?”

Scully swats at his hand playfully, “Didn’t we already have this conversation? I’m not immoral. I will die one day. Clyde was just trying to make me feel better.”

“But he’s even right about his own death,” Mulder adds. “There’s a saying that soothsayers can’t predict their own future correctly, but Clyde’s got to be the real thing.”

“Mulder,” she calls his name softly, almost like the whine she uses with him on weekend mornings. “Fellig wasn’t immoral either; he did die.”

“What if he just took your place? And now you’ll take on after him, and live hundreds and hundreds of years, looking exactly the way you do right now.” Mulder wets his lips. “You’ll be 35 for the rest of your life. A very good age to be; they say that’s the peak of, you know.”

“Mulder!” She chides him but cannot keep her face serious. “Don’t make me laugh now, it hurts when I laugh.”

“Oops.”

Mulder brings her hand to his lips for a chaste kiss. He feels more at ease that they’re in a hospital in New York, so the chances of running into people they know are slim. However, maybe Kersh or Skinner will stop by, and they shouldn’t risk it by being too open about the new level of their relationship. The last thing Kersh needs is more ammunition to use against them.

On the other hand, the nurses and the doctors all know that they’re more than partners; the way he marched into her room and the ruckus he raised on the first day had established that loud and clear. Nurse Betty thinks he’s the regular Romeo, but Dr. Patel eyes him as if he were a nuisance that would hinder his patient’s recovery process.

No strenuous activity, Mr. Mulder. None until she is fully healed. You must promise me that. The good doctor’s words still ring in his ear.

“You know,” Mulder begins, “I actually don’t hope you’ll be immortal unless I’m immortal.”

“Of course.”

“And I worry that if you indeed become immortal, you become living proof of Bruckman’s prophecy...”

Mulder does not finish his sentence but frowns somewhat solemnly.

“What is it?” She urges him to keep talking with a light tug on his hand.

“Do you remember what he said about how I’d die?”

“Vaguely.” She lies.

“Autoerotic asphyxiation,” he makes a face.

“Right. So if you avoid doing that...” Scully does not finish her suggestion.

Suddenly, Mulder’s eyes grow wide and excited. “I think I’ve got it.”

She looks at him quizzically.

“I found a loophole in this. If you are always with me, I’ll never ever have to engage in that for the rest of my life, so I won’t die, and I’ll get to live forever with you.”

He says as he bats his eyelashes at her.

“You mean to say if we stay away from kinky sex for the rest of our lives, I’ll get to keep you with me for as long as I live?” Scully decides to throw a bone to the puppy because she’s heard Dr. Patel’s warning, too.

“I don’t want to get too technical, but I think it’s me staying away from solo kinky sex, with your help, of course.”

With my help, she repeats his words soundlessly, and he nods excitedly with a foolish grin.

“If you do your part, I’ll be sure to do mine.” She flashes her best girl scout grin at him, and Mulder thinks the future looks so much brighter.

Portal to Series on Ao3 |

[lotsoforangesoutside]

All My Life

msr | Emily AU | words: 710 | fictober Day 3

“Mulder, I’ve waited for this,” she looks up at him with smiling eyes, “for all my life.”

“And what’s that?” He asks.

“Going camping with you and Mommy.” Emily answers.

Mulder tries hard to suppress his laughter. “Banana, you’re five years old. You’ve only known me and Mommy for what, less than 2 years? How can you have waited for this all your life?”

“Mmm,” the child tilts her head slightly to the left and ponders for a second or two. “It feels like all my life.”

“So are you really, really excited to be here?” Mulder looks at her endearingly, “Excited for tonight? Do you know what’s gonna happen later?”

“Yes!” She cracks a toothy grin. “Mommy says after we get enough stick for the fire, we’ll be making dinner, and when it’s nighttime, the Indian Guy is going to tell us stories about the stars.”

“Not the Indian Guy, baby,” Mulder bends down to pick up another stick. He thinks they have gathered enough for now. “It’s the Indian Guide.” He places emphasis on the word so that his child can hear the difference.

“Do you know who’s this mystery Indian Guide?” He teases.

“It’s you!” Emily exclaims exuberantly.

“Yep, and the Indian Guide says that we’ve got enough sticks for now. Let’s head back.”

“O-kay.”

The walk back to their campsite is long, as Emily gets distracted several times by the wildflowers and the trees. She’s hoping to see an animal or at least animal tracks, but they haven’t gone very deep into the forest.

“Foxi,” Mulder calls lightheartedly, “why have you been waiting to go camping with Mommy and me? What do you know about camping?”

Samantha hated the notion of camping, he thinks. She dreaded the bugs and was scared about not being able to shower.

“We’ll build a fire and roast hot dogs and marshmallows. We can eat saucy beans from a can with a spoon, with no bowls. Nom nom nom.” Emily playfully makes her piggy sounds.

“Nom nom nom.” Mulder copies her, and the child’s giggles soar amongst the trees. “And?”

“And…no bedtime.” She smiles. “And I’ll sleep between you and Mommy in the tent.”

“Got cha.” Mulder nods. “And look, there’s Mommy. Hey, Scully! We’re here.”

He wants to wave at her, but his arms are full with sticks and twigs.

“How was the walk?” She gathers the twigs from her daughter’s arms and puts them in the fire ring she’s built. “You two were gone longer than I thought. Let me get the fire going so we can make dinner.”

As Scully works to start the fire, Mulder goes and picks Emily up in his arms. The man and the child watch Scully with an almost sacred reverence.

“What’s Mommy doing?” Emily whispers. She doesn’t want to bother her mommy with her question.

“Mommy’s building a fire.” He whispers back.

“How come you’re not building the fire?” The child questions.

“Because I don’t like fire.” Mulder admits to an awe-stricken Emily. “I think it’s a little scary, so I’ll sit a little far away from it, and I’ll take your mommy to all my camping trips so she can build fires for us.”

“Oh.” Emily reaches out her chubby hand and touches his hair ever so softly. “That’s okay. It’s okay to be afraid.”

She says as her other hand pats his back.

“Fire is very dangerous, so I want you to be extra careful around it too, Baby Banana. I don’t want you to be a burnt banana.”

“Burnt banana,” she giggles. “Sure, Mulder, I’ll be 200% careful.”

“Good girl.” He sees that Scully has successfully got the fire going. “Good job, Mommy.” He praised; if he wasn’t holding Emily, Mulder would have clapped.

“Alright, now which one of you will help me with cooking, and which one of you will go fill up some water in the bucket?”

“Me!” Emily raises her hand and wiggles to indicate that she wants to get down.

Mulder watches a smiling Scully walking to the picnic table, followed by a smiling mini-Scully. He grins, realizing that this is his first camping trip with his family.

I’ve waited for this all my life, too, Mulder thinks as he heads toward the water fountain.

[lotsoforangesoutside]

Just as Sweet

msr | s1 | words: 780 | fictober Day 4

The first time he used that line, he was 17 years old. It was with Debbie, the twin sister of his friend Joe.

I made my parents call me Mulder; I want to be called Mulder.

The girl with long hair and doe-like eyes laughed and laughed and laughed. “Fox,” she said, still laughing, “you don’t have to be so weird. Your mother calls you Fox, I’m sure. Don’t go around making things up.”

Mulder liked Debbie. She was pretty and normal, nice and typical. Mulder didn’t have many friends who were girls. Debbie’s right, in a sense, that girls tend to think he’s weird and moody.

“You know, Fox,” she said, with confidence he rarely saw in girls her age, “you should just suck it up. My name is Debbie, but I don’t go around telling people to call me Weigel no matter how much I despise being named Debbie.”

“Your name is not Fox.” Mulder retorted.

“Yeah, and you need to grow up.” Debbie scoffed, “Deal with it, Fox. Hey Joe, what do you call him?”

The girl pointed at him while speaking to her brother.

“Fox,” Joe said.

Fine, I give up, Mulder thought. “We still going to the game later?”

Joe nodded, and Mulder wondered why his friends couldn’t accept his simple request.

He never thought of that line again, until six years later, when he met Phoebe Green.

Fox Mulder, but I go by Mulder, he requested when they exchanged numbers. I even made my parents call me Mulder.

“But how can I do that, Fox?” She flashed him a sweet smile. “I don’t even eat with a guy who’s just on a last-name basis with me.

“Well, I don’t care for my first name.” Mulder said politely. “Really, I prefer Mulder.”

“Oh, pish posh.” Phoebe put her hand on his arm. “Why can’t I call you Fox? I like it. Fox. Fox. It’s cute.”

He knew she was flirting with him, so he tried to grin a little. “All my friends call me Mulder, too.” He insisted.

“Yes, but we’re not just going to be friends, are we?” She smiled so confidently at him.

“Well, I—“

Her hand came to cover his mouth, and he could barely think.

“You Americans are so amusing.”

Fine, I give up. Mulder looked at his new friend, who clearly liked him a lot, who’s attractive and intelligent, and he tried to convince himself that it didn’t matter what names people called him.

It was the last and final time he had to use that line. It was in the middle of a stakeout, him waiting for a mutant to make the next move. His partner had just brought him his dinner and made a comment that he smelled bad. She worried about him not having slept for days. She wanted to stay so he could go home and sleep. But he didn’t want to give them any excuses to close down the X-Files.

It’s not just the X-Files that he’d be losing; he would also lose the partner and friend he’d discovered in her.

He never wanted Scully to get in trouble for him, even though she had. It was bad enough that she got assigned to the basement. Mulder didn’t want her to...

To what? He wondered.

Mulder could only admit to himself that he was not ready to admit anything else when it came to Scully.

“Fox.”

The sound of his first name caught him off guard, and he couldn’t help but chuckle at it. He suddenly recalled that unsuccessful line he’d used in his youth. “I even made my parents call me Mulder. So... Mulder.”

“Mulder, I wouldn’t put myself on the line for anybody but you.” Scully went on saying what she wanted to say; be it Fox or Mulder, she was speaking to him. Him, just him. Not anybody but him.

It was not what he had expected from her; he smelled. He hadn’t slept; maybe he had hallucinated it. But no, Scully, his partner, had really said it; she told him that she would stand by him and put herself on the line for him...and no one else.

“If there’s an iced tea in that bag, could be love.”

He didn’t need no iced tea in that bag, he knew what it was.

Mulder watched her digging in the bag as if she had no idea what she had ordered for him.

“Must be fate, Mulder. Root beer.”

Moments later, as he finally decided to take her advice and accept her kindness, he exited the car and began to head home. Mulder wondered what would have happened if there was an iced tea in the bag.

Portal to Series on Ao3 |

[lotsoforangesoutside]

The Boy and the Dog

msr | s3 | words: 520 | fictober Day 2

“Mulder, you have no proof!”

Scully suddenly recalls when she was 16, she had bangs that summer and would blow on them as she exhaled all her frustration, thinking people around her just don’t get her.

She kind of wants to do that now, but she doesn’t really have bangs. “He didn’t give you a dirty look when you came in as if he detests you.”

“Oh, come on!” Mulder cries. “I don’t need to have proof for it; I know it in my gut. I shouldn’t need to have to prove to you that your dog doesn’t like me. It’s not an intuition; I know it. He thinks I’m here to keep you away from him. Queequeg doesn’t like me.”

“How do you know? You’ve never played with him.”

Mulder has on a scornful expression and is eyeing the pup that’s sleeping on the other end of the couch. “I can’t believe you let him on the couch.”

“He’s clean.” She declares. The dog is a little on the skinny side, and he doesn’t seem to know his new name yet, but Scully isn’t worried. Queequeg likes to chase after the birds and the squirrels at the dog park and demands all her attention when she’s home. He always greets her excitedly, provides good company while she watches TV, and never bothers her while she eats.

He kind of reminds her of Mulder, except for the eating part. Queequeg is a picky eater, but all in all, he’s a good dog to have.

“You know how a dog smiles?” Mulder states. “He never smiles at me. Never.”

“He’s shy,” Scully insists.

“He doesn’t give me his paw even when I have a biscuit in my hand.”

“He’s kind of rusty in the tricks department.” She explains.

“He also doesn’t come over when I call him.” Mulder comments bitterly.

“He doesn’t come when I call him either, Mulder.” She admits with a smile. “He doesn’t really know you.”

Mulder crosses his arms in front of his chest like an irritated little boy, and she wonders how he and her dog got off on the wrong footing. She glances at him sitting on one side of the couch, trying to be as far from Queequeg as possible, and ponders what her mother would do if her children were not speaking to one another.

“Mulder, you know,” Scully begins, trying to use her calming voice like Missy had taught her. “If you want Queequeg to like you, I think you’ll need to like him a lot more. You know, if you don’t like him off the bat, of course you won’t like him later. You haven’t been trying to make friends with him. If you try so hard to not like something, chances are it’ll stay that way.”

“Well,” he breathes, “that tactic certainly didn’t work with you; in fact, the end result was quite the opposite, so I doubt it’s gonna work with Furball Scully.”

She feels like she has something to say, but she just decides to smile and grabs his knee for a light squeeze.

Portal to Series on Ao3 |

[the-only-lonely-wanderer]

GUYS!!! What is Fictober?? I’m somewhat new to the scene and am curious!!