#but most of it is actually Scully and the girl having coffee in a hospital cafeteria at 4am | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aloysiavirgata · 4 years

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In The Gale

Title: In The Gale

Author: Aloysia Virgata

Rating: PG

Category: MSR

Author's Notes: For @perplexistan, who asked and helped me make it better. This is shortly after settling into the Unremarkable House. I tried making sense of their legal status, but it’s simply impossible and I gave up.

Our heroes quote from Melville, Shakespeare, Sagan, Baudrillard, and (Emily) Dickens.

***

Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place And what is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place I rejoice that things are as they are and I renounce the blessed face And renounce the voice Because I cannot hope to turn again Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us And pray that I may forget These matters that with myself I too much discuss Too much explain Because I do not hope to turn again Let these words answer For what is done, not to be done again May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

***

She recites The Raven to herself on the drive in, lists all the state capitals in alphabetical order, and goes through the periodic table. Her body fizzes like a shaken soda, tiny anxious bubbles rising through her blood. They’ve done so much for this, called in so many favors. Mulder put his book on hold for a month, quizzing her with dog-eared notecards.

“Immediate treatment of myocardial infarction,” he’d call, and she’d say “MONA TASS.”

She feels a pang for the simplicity of the other life, the hiding one, where she just had to ring up cigarettes and herbal Viagra at gas stations.

***

She’s the new girl at the cafeteria table, awkward and alone. Mulder had prepared her a lunch like it’s the first day of school, and she stares at it, wishing for an appetite.

From the corner of her eye she sees two colleagues - an MRI tech and an obstetrician, she thinks - talking softly and glancing over. Scully thinks she hears “FBI,” and she looks up and smiles, uncertain.

They blink at her, look away.

***

Ybarra comes around the corner, gliding in his cassock like a disapproving ghost. “Dr. Scully,” he says, in his pinched voice.

She smiles thinly. “Father Ybarra.”

“Nurse Mossing was looking for the chart for Mrs. Sullivan. Imagine my surprise when I found it in Room 314 instead of Room 413. That’s a potential HIPAA violation, Dr. Scully. That’s a federal law.”

Scully curls her hand so that her nails dig into her skin. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Father Ybarra, please forg-”

He holds up his palm. “It won’t happen again,” he says, and glides onward.

Scully closes her eyes and leans against the wall. She breathes through her nose until the ringing in her ears stops.

***

She wants to collapse into his arms and cry when she gets home, but that would be giving in. It would be letting them down.

“How’d it go?” he asks. He’s wearing basketball shorts and a Knicks shirt, a five o’clock shadow.

She smiles brightly. “It was good. Learning curve, but good. I think Father Ybarra might be a tough nut to crack, is all.”

Mulder rubs his cowlicked hair. “Put your feet up, Scully, since you won’t wear sensible shoes.”

She does, and accepts the glass of wine he holds out. “Thanks. I’ll sleep well tonight, anyway. There are miles of hallways.”

He sits next to her on the couch. “I wrote a few pages,” he says. “I deleted a bunch, but I think there was a multi-paragraph net gain.”

“I’m glad you’re able to stop focusing on my stuff now,” she says. “Both back in the saddle.”

“Go team.”

She clinks her glass against his. She drinks her wine too fast.

***

Ybarra had come in during her rounds that morning and startled her into knocking a metal bedpan onto the floor. Scully thinks the reverberations of that sound will follow her to the grave.

She’s now in the chapel, tucked into a back pew. She’s been staring at the small altar, at the stained glass windows flanking the crucifix. The Blessed Virgin smiles beatifically down at her, a wretched sinner.

Scully laces her fingers on the back of the pew in front of her and bows her head against them. “Please,” she whispers. “Please.”

***

Mulder wakes her with tea and eggs. “You haven’t been eating,” he says, brow furrowed.

She rubs her eyes, yawning. “What?”

He sits next to her on the bed, sets the plate and mug on her night table. “You just push your food around your plate, you hardly talk when you get home. What’s going on, Scully?”

She sits up, looking at his worried face. He’s sun-browned and tousled, beautiful, with a mouth that still makes her weak in the knees. “Nothing. It’s just a lot to jump back into.”

“I’m sure it is. And I still want to help you with it.” He pulls the flash cards from his pocket, touches her wrist with his other hand. “Let’s see - causes of upper zone pulmonary fibrosis?”

She looks at the ceiling, back at him. “I don’t need help.”

Mulder blinks, stung.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. You just don’t need to hover over me. You have your own things to work on. Work on your book, patch up your henhouse. ” Her voice sounds snappish to her own ears.

His changeable eyes, now mossy green, darken. He chews his bottom lip, nodding slowly. “I thought you were one of my ‘things.’ Sorry to bother you.” He rises, walks downstairs.

“Mulder,” she whispers.

The tea goes down fine. Scully tries to eat the eggs but feels bile rise in her throat. She flushes them down the toilet instead of leaving them behind, because that is love.

***

She arrives at the nurses’ station on the second floor with three dozen donuts and two cardboard boxes of coffee. She deposits them on the desk. “Good morning, Annabel,” she says.

“Anneliese,” the woman says.

Scully nods, walks away.

***

He slides his hand up her pajama top, tracing circles on her ribs, sliding his fingers around to her breasts. He kisses the back of her neck. “Scully,” he whispers, his breath warm and ticklish in her ear.

She wants to pretend to wake up, to turn towards him and lose herself in his body. She wants to tell him everything, to be held and loved and petted and reassured. She wants him to remind her that she once stared down Congress, that some backwater priest and his prickly staff should be a joke to her. She wants them to laugh together at these silly, petty people.

But she can’t, she can’t disappoint him. He’s been so proud of her.

Scully stays still, breathes evenly until his hands move away and she’s alone again.

***

Her car rattles over the driveway, through shimmering waves of heat that rise from the crisping grass. It is the kind of late July afternoon where the sun is a hazy white ball in the west, and clouds of gnats are a permanent feature of the landscape.

Scully parks, avoiding a puddle in which a peacock is standing. Mulder has recently become enamored of yard fowl. She narrows her eyes at it while opening the car door.

“Good boy, Kevin,” she calls to it, wary.

Scully picks her way over the gravel in her thin heels. The peacock mews an alarm as she approaches, but doesn’t charge. She lets herself inside, shuts the heat and sun and wildlife outside. The house smells of coffee and microwave popcorn.

She walks into Mulder’s office and finds him hunched at his desk, typing. “Hey,” she says, and drops a kiss on his head. There’s a sketch of Baphomet taped to his monitor, her worn flash cards atop a tome about Raëlism.

He turns in his chair. He puts his arms around her hips. “Hey.”

“Kevin behaved himself,” she offers.

“You two will be friends yet, you’ll see.”

She peers at the computer. “You get a lot done today?”

Mulder shrugs. “Eh, a bit. Waiting on a few emails, and I had to run that tubing to drain the sump down into the woods. Ate up most of the afternoon.”

Scully shakes her head in admiration. “I don’t know how you manage all the multitasking.”

“Well, the book helps me avoid the house, and the house helps me avoid the book. It’s a perfect system. That Ybarra guy still riding your ass?”

She chews her lip. “No,” she lies. “I think we’re okay now.”

“Good,” he says. “I’d hate to have to beat up a priest.”

***

Scully gazes at herself in the empty locker room. She looks thin and tired, and her hair is frizzing up, even pulled back like this. All her makeup has sweated off except for smudged crescents of mascara. Her bra is the color of a Band-Aid, her underwear white and sensible. Between the two is the hard white rose of her gunshot scar, like a second navel, an artifact of a second birth. It is numb when she touches it, indifferent. There are no stretch marks from William, a tale missing from the anthology of her skin. She unhooks her bra, lets it slide down to the damp floor. Scully turns to observe her body in profile. The scar is gone this way, the tattoo hidden as well, and she smooths her hands along her ribs. Her breasts seem out of place to her when they are unbound, frivolous somehow. Vestigial.

She looks away.

***

The hospital is labyrinthine, having been constructed of various additions when funds allowed. There are dead ends, pointless staircases, and a mysterious storage closet filled with old televisions. She makes little maps on notepaper.

“So where did you work before this?” an orthopedic surgeon asks her.

A diner in Wyoming.

“I was out West for a while,” she says.

***

A week in, and Mulder has made a cake to celebrate. A bouquet of Kevin’s shed tail feathers ornaments the table.

An offering, Mulder calls it, tickling her chin with one.

A week down, she thinks, and blows out the candle. She wonders when she’ll stop counting the time.

***

Shy, he gives her a chapter to read. It’s good, and she tells him so. It’s very good. She hears his voice in her head when she reads it, his passion. She loves the esoterica tucked into his gyri and sulci.

“Your prose was never this clear in your reports,” she remarks.

“Hey if you can’t blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”

Scully laughs. “You want to read a few medical reports?”

He looks at her, suddenly serious. “Yeah,” he says. “I would. It would be nice to hear about your day for once.”

She wonders if love is the weapon that lets them wound so casually.

***

“You’re late,” Ybarra says softly.

She doesn’t explain that she’d somehow ended up at the TV closet again, that the room numbering system in this hospital had been designed by nihilists, that the nursing student had Dermabonded her glove to a patient’s forehead.

She lowers her eyes like she did at Catholic school. She promises to do better.

***

“What’s going on?” Mulder asks her for what feels like the hundredth time. “Talk to me, Scully.”

She presses her hands to her face for a moment, drops them to her sides. “Nothing,” she says again, frustrating them both. “I’m tired. It’s a hard schedule.”

He places a throw pillow on his lap and pats it. “Come here,” he says. “Please.”

She acquiesces, curling on her side with her back to him. He runs his fingers through her hair, traces the Fibonacci spirals of her ear. She wants to relax, to melt into his touch. She indulges in a Mulderesque conspiracy theory that the hospital microdoses the water with tetanus toxin to keep everyone rigid and tense.

Scully gazes at the windows, at the hard white light of summer streaming in. The curtains are blue with an arabesque pattern, and they looked very chic in the store. She wonders now if they seem desperate in this odd little house. She thinks of Meg March, dressed up in borrowed finery at the Moffats’ ball.

***

Scully clomps up the steps to the porch and kicks her rain boots off next to the umbrella stand. It contains four umbrellas and a gnarled hickory limb that Mulder claims is going to be polished into a fine walking stick one of these days. She goes into the house and is dismayed to find it stale and stifling and dark. Dust motes waft in Brownian motion through shafts of sunlight, undirected by fans or air conditioning.

“Mulder,” she calls, and there is silence.

She twists her hair into a bun as she pads upstairs, old wood satiny under her bare feet. She pushes open the bedroom door, and the air is hot and still.

“Mulder?” She needs his help with her zipper, but there is no reply.

She wrestles herself out of her silk sheath, sticky and irritating, and lets it puddle on the floor. Her bra follows. She feels guilty, as Mulder has turned out to be a surprisingly diligent housekeeper. His office is filled with perilous stacks of home improvement books and arcane journals about lake monsters, the walls papered with clippings and blurry photographs, but he seems able to quarantine his own entropy.

She is trying to do the same.

Scully pulls on soft cotton pajama shorts, a gray tank top imbued with the compressive powers of Lycra. She uses lotion to rub away the mascara beneath her eyes. She goes downstairs and out the back door, shielding her eyes against the piercing sunlight. A mosquito whines at her ear and she pinches it out of the air.

“Still got those reflexes, kid,” Mulder says from somewhere off to her left.

She turns and sees him crouched next to the hulking green block of the transformer. “All the lights are off, and the house feels like a rainforest. I take it you’ve had an eventful day?”

He sighs. “Not really. Well, not the event I was hoping for, which is the power coming back on. There was a pretty heavy thunderstorm around one and that’s when the electricity blew.”

She sits on the bottom step, knees drawn up. She likes to watch him working, a side of him they’re both still learning about. There was never much call for home maintenance at Hegal Place, or living out of cash-only motels. “You call the power company?”

He huffs. “Yeah, they told me they had no reported outages and the power should be fine. I explained that I was trying to report an outage and that it definitely was not fine and she promised someone would be here between tomorrow and eventually.”

Scully smiles. “And that’s why you’re out here toying with death?”

“Not much else to do, really. Can’t write with the power out.” Mulder sits back on his heels and shrugs. “You, uh, have a good day?”

She hadn’t. “Yep. Starting to feel like part of the team.”

“Good. You need to get your career standards as high as your standards for men,” he says, getting to his feet.

“Oh, well, that’s an obviously unattainable bar.”

“Obviously.” He sits next to her on the step. “You wear that to work? You know I think bras are a tool of the patriarchy and you shouldn’t bother, but I’m just surprised Our Lady of Perpetual Shame takes such a liberal view.”

She laughs a little. “I figured as long as I tossed a lab coat over it, I’d look like a real doctor. It worked when I was a kid.”

“Hey, that’s what I did with my badge half the time. Listen, Scully. The house is pretty tropical. You want to bunk up in a hotel until they get the power sorted out?”

Scully thinks about the convenience it would afford. Maids and room service and maybe a pool, depending. But she is tired of hotels, even nice ones. She is tired of polite signs that remind her that the pillows and towels and hairdryers aren’t hers, the tiny toiletries an indicator of her temporary status. She is tired of living out of suitcases and dressers that made her clothes smell strange, tired of running from her own life. She wants to be home.

“Nah,” she says. “We’ll manage.”

Mulder looks surprised, but doesn’t question it. “I’ll call Lowe’s about getting a generator delivered tomorrow. We ought to have one anyway out here.”

She’d always had a vague idea that Mulder had money - it was the only explanation for his complete disinterest in it. But when they’d come back, when they’d talked to his lawyers, she'd been staggered. The Vineyard house alone explained his casual international jaunts. They can have things now, endless things, and there is something frantic in her that wants to spend the money. Bingeing chocolate bunnies after Lent.

Mulder peels his shirt off, wadding it into a limp ball. He tosses it so that it hooks over the doorknob. “Still got it,” he says. He preens.

“Does the NBA realize the tremendous talent they’re missing out on?” she asks. “Do they even know that, at this very moment, a six foot tall middle aged white man is out here flinging his clothing a distance of several feet?”

He snuggles up to her, wrapping his sweaty arms around her shoulders.

“Ugh,” she says, and pushes at him. “Mulder, you’re disgusting and it’s a thousand degrees out here.”

“Hoping that cold, cold heart of yours might cool me off.” She sniffs disdainfully, and he releases her. “Scully, how do you feel about bees?”

“We have a history, bees and I,” she observes, tapping the back of her neck.

Mulder curls his hand over the scar, kneads the muscles there. “Well, these wouldn’t be fancy bees.”

“Hmmm,” she says. “I’m not inherently opposed. Why do you want bees, Mulder?”

He shrugs. “I’m getting older, and I’ve got to consider funeral plans. The last one didn’t really go as expected, so I thought maybe I’d mellify myself this time.”

She nods. “Makes sense. I mean, of course, there’s no actual proof that mellification actually occurred, but that’s never stopped you.”

“I also like honey,” he adds. “And bees are good for the planet.”

“Honey often contains botulism spores,” she remarks. “Botulinum toxin is the most lethal toxin known, and it’s estimated that as little as 40 grams of it would be enough to kill everyone on earth.” She doesn’t say you shouldn’t give it to babies, that she sweetened her smoothies with dates and maple syrup so that -

“Well, nobody better piss off my bee army and me,” he says darkly.

“Everybody eventually pisses you off. Mulder, is that old tent in the shed still? We could sleep in that tonight.”

He shakes his head. “Heavy mildew and dry rot, so I threw it out. We could sleep out here if you want, though. We’ve got that big air mattress.”

“Let’s do that,” she says. “We can put it on the porch. Tell you what - you get stuff together, and I’ll even make dinner.” Scully doesn’t like cooking, but she wants to create order, to complete a finite task. She can be domesticated again, like a lost house cat finally returned to a hearth.

“We having eggs or peanut butter?” he asks, smirky.

“I’d hate to spoil the surprise,” she snips, and goes back into their sauna of a house.

In the kitchen, she stands in front of the open fridge, letting the delicious leftover cold soak into her skin. She’ll deal with the spoiled food later. Eggs had, actually, been her plan but it’s just too hot. The stove doesn’t work, and she doesn’t have the fortitude to turn the grill on. She finds some leftover shrimp pasta that Mulder has made, some vegetables, and assembles it all into a passable salad.

There, she thinks, pleased. I’d pay twelve bucks for that somewhere. She uses her foot to scratch a mosquito bite on her calf.

Her skin is clammy, hair stringy and damp from sweat. Maybe they should just go to a hotel after all. Perhaps she should stop ascribing symbolism to every damn thing and enjoy herself once in a while. But she thinks of packing, of driving, of unpacking and somehow it’s all too much and her eyes start to fill and her sinuses sting.

Scully pinches her wrist until it passes, feeling weak and hating the weakness in herself. It’s the heat, it’s the exhaustion, it’s the heavy mental load. She considers going outside for a dip in the pond, but suspects the water will be unpleasantly warm. Instead, she drags herself back upstairs for a cold shower.

She sits on the edge of the bed, weary, and stares at a framed picture of a sea turtle on the far wall. If she lets her eyes drift out of focus, it looks like it’s swimming. She tips her head back for a better angle, watches it float across her vision. It slips away then, into the black of the deep waters.

***

She startles awake when he touches her shoulder, gasps.

“Jesus,” Mulder says, and sits next to her. “Bad dream?”

Scully sits up, dazed. “What? No, was I asleep?”

“You’ve been out cold for over an hour, but I wanted to make sure you got some food. Water at least, it’s too hot up here.”

She blinks, confused. “I don’t remember,” she says. Peering to her right reveals night outside.

Mulder holds a hand out and she grasps it, letting him pull her to her feet. She wavers and he steadies her, arm about her shoulders.

“I just need some water,” she says, defensive.

He guides her down the stairs and out the front door onto the porch. The air outside is substantially cooler, a light breeze kissing her face. She settles into a chair, stares deep into the felty dark. She still can’t remember falling asleep.

Mulder hands her a water bottle from the little table and she rolls it between her palms, the plastic crinkling. “Hey, I thought you were setting up the air mattress out here,” she says.

“No air flow behind the wall,” he replies. “Drink that up like a good girl and I’ll show you what we’ve got.”

Scully obeys and feels better. The water tastes stale, but it’s cool and wet. “Maybe you should have my job,” she says, looking up. “Caring for live people is so much work.”

“Everybody eventually pisses me off,” he reminds her. “Come on, Doc.”

She follows him down the steps and around the side of the house. Their property is vast and feral, pocked with mole burrows and rabbit nests. The floodlights are out with the power, and the house is nearly swallowed up by the vast night. Scully glances up at the Milky Way, at the waxing moon, and marvels again at the sky they have out here. We are star stuff, she thinks.

“Moonstruck?” Mulder asks.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars.”

“As long as you can tell a hawk from a handsaw,” he says, and tugs her along.

She follows him to the back of the house and then stops, smiling. Mulder has hammered some old two-by-fours into a frame, draped the structure in white bedsheets. Inside, the air mattress is piled with sofa pillows. Outside, camping lanterns, candles, and two strands of solar lights make it into a kind of fairy circle.

“Mulder,” she says, delighted. “This is ridiculous.”

“Indian Guide saves the day,” he says.

“Your architecture badge is definitely more impressive than your fire badge,” she says, walking over to the little tent. He’s brought her salad inside, and there is a cooler packed with ice and water bottles. Cans of bug spray sit at the flap. She crawls inside, suddenly ravenous.

Mulder joins her on the mattress, which bounces in response. “Remember my water bed?”

She laughs, piling food on a plate for each of them. “What a swinging bachelor you were.”

She remembers the water bed fondly, the leather couch and the fish and the postage-stamp bathroom in his apartment. It shouldn’t hurt still, but it does. She knew herself there, her place on the map. She eats her salad, wistful for Chinese food and beer at that battered coffee table.

“Scully,” he says.

“What?”

“Scully.”

“Just middle-aged nostalgia, I suppose,” she murmurs.

He reaches out to take her hand. “You’re scarcely middle aged.”

She smiles, squeezes his fingers. “If you go by life experience, we’re both about two hundred years old.”

“Like those Galapagos tortoises. But you need to tell me what’s going on at work. You won’t disappoint me.”

It can be very disagreeable to live with a profiler.

Scully drops his hand. She bites at the fleshy part of her thumb. This is real, she thinks. This place. It is not down in any map; true places never are. She can only deflect for so long, and her armor is rusting away. “I’m afraid,” she whispers, then chances a look at his face.

His eyes are soft, searching. “Why?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know, I don’t…” Her sinuses sting again and she presses her palms hard into her eyes. “Please.”

Mulder’s hand on her back, in endless, gentle figure eights. He pulls the elastic from her hair and lets it tumble down to her shoulders. He shifts so that her back is to him, his long legs on either side of her body.

“Mulder, what -”

“Shhhh,” he says, and gathers the hair at the crown of her head. “It’s not a real sleepover if you don’t get your hair French braided.”

Scully blinks. “Since when do you know how to braid hair?”

“Little sister, absent parents. Now stop moving and talk.”

She keeps her head very steady, thinking of her own sister’s deft fingers when their mother was too busy for anything but ponytails. Mulder tugs at another little section of hair. Scully thinks she might be okay if she isn’t looking at him, if she can’t read herself in his eyes.

Moth shadows dance across the white sheet wall, drawn to the flickering candles outside. It fascinates her that they never figure out that fire burns. “I don’t know how to do this,” she says, and her voice is thick.

“To talk, or to be still?” he says in his Oxford psychologist voice.

She isn’t sure of what she means either. “Yes,” she says, with a hiccupy laugh. “Both.”

“Me too,” he says, slipping his thumb through the strands behind her ear. “I don’t know how to do this.”

She swallows hard. “I just...I’ve always had something to consume me. I had the FBI, we traveled all the time, and then we were running and I thought it was hard but it was so easy to just survive. There were no decisions. I didn’t care about, I don’t know...plates.”

He pauses in his work. “Plates?”

Scully chews at a hangnail, frustrated. “Just things, the things you buy for a house. Long term things. I did with William and then…” she trails off, her chest tight. “I feel like I’m playing a game sometimes, like improv theater. Fox and Dana Build A Home.”

“Fox and Dana?” he repeats. “Surely not.”

“Well, we’re hardly Mulder and Scully anymore, are we?” Her stomach clenches and that’s it, she sees. That’s the fear.

He finishes the braid and fastens the elastic at the end of it. “Of course we are,” he says. “We are who we are.”

She turns to him then, the whispering anxiety back with a roar. “And who is that, Mulder? I was plain old Dana Scully until I met you. And we had this life, this strange and wonderful and terrible life where I was Scully because I was your partner and now that’s over. It’s all nothing.” She’s crying openly now, quietly, and it feels cleansing.

“You’re still my partner,” he says, and his eyes are shining too.

She wipes her nose with a paper napkin. “Am I? At what? I go to work and see patients but I forgot there’s no closure with the living. People get sick and get better and get sick again. It doesn’t end. And this house, the power is always going to go out and the chickens will always be hungry and -“ she stops, feeling hysterical.

“You don’t have to work,” he says softly. “The settlement from the FBI, my inheritance…”

She shakes her head. “You know I have to work.”

He sighs, rubs her knee. “I know you do. But it doesn’t have to be this. It doesn’t have to drain you.”

He’s right, of course he’s right, but he’s also so terribly wrong that she wonders if he knows her at all. She has to be a doctor for her father, for William. For him. She has to see something through. Scully smooths her hand over the back of her head, feeling the even ridges of the braid. Mulder is so competent with everything he does, so easy with himself. He’ll get his damned bees and become some kind of honey magnate in no time.

“People at the hospital, they ask me what I did before. And I don’t know how to answer. How can I possibly answer that question? I just say I was with the government, but that isn’t really the answer, is it?”

Mulder shrugs. He’s never felt the need to explain himself to people. “It’s true.”

Scully stretches out on her stomach across the mattress, chin on the pillows, watching the moths again. They tumble like acrobats, untethered in the thick air. “There’s this number called Graham’s number, used in Ramsey Theory, which is, well, nevermind. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, it was in the Guinness Book for being the largest specific number used in a proof at the time. And Mulder, this number is so big that writing out all the digits would exceed the bounds of the known universe.”

“Nobody likes a math nerd, Scully.”

She rolls onto her back to glare at him. “Yes they do, they give them Nobel prizes. Anyway. A whole new notation system, Knuth Notation, had to be developed to express these massive numbers. Graham’s Number, Tree(3), et cetera. And I feel like that at times. That there’s this endless amount of vital, inexpressible information inside of me that is so essential but that I have no way to share.”

She blinks a few times, spent by this unburdening.

Mulder stretches out next to her, propped on his side. “You can express it to me,” he says, massaging her temple with his thumb.

Scully closes her eyes. “I feel like a ghost sometimes. How do you do it, Mulder? How do you just keep moving forward without getting lost?”

He sighs. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but you have a tendency to compile people into perfect specimens, then measure yourself against that imaginary standard. It’s the precession of simulacra.”

She looks at him, indignant, then realizes he could be right. “Well,” she says. “It’s possible. But Mulder, is that such a bad thing, to want to hold myself to the highest goals?”

He tugs her onto her side so that she’s facing him, nearly nose to nose. Her lips feel tingly. “Yes,” he says, stroking her hair. “When the goal isn’t attainable. And when it puts everyone else on pedestals where we’re ill equipped to balance. And when it puts you in a constant state of frustration and anxiety. No one is perfect. Not even you.”

“I don’t want to be perfect,” she lies. “And I don’t need you to be either.” That part is true, at least.

He laughs in reply. “Apropos of being Galapagos tortoises, Charles Darwin once said ‘I am very poorly today, and very stupid and hate everybody and everything.’”

“He rode the tortoises,” Scully says, calming. “I can’t defend his methodology.”

“See? You’re better than Charles Darwin.” He kisses her forehead.

“Well,” she says. “Well.”

“Scully, look. You’re not alone here, feeling at sea. I went to the feed store and some guy picked a fight, shoved me pretty hard with his shoulder. And this reflexive part of my brain wanted to grab my badge, stick it in his face, and put him against the wall for assaulting a federal agent. But I ignored it and bought the chicken feed and just headed out. And I felt like, is this who I am now? Some pushover with yard birds and home improvement books?”

“You made a little fast and loose with your authority sometimes,” she says, thinking of Roche. She curves her palm against his cheek, thumbs the fine ridge of his zygomatic bone.

He bumps her nose with his. “You broke into a secret morgue.”

“You made me.” She sniffles, laughs a little. “The good old days.”

“These can be the good days too,” he says. “They can, if we work at it.” He traces her mouth with his finger.

“Okay,” she says. Hope stirs in her, a thing with feathers. “Partners?”

“Partners.”

He kisses her, in their small tent, in their ring of light.

#xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #my fic #iwtb

144 notes · View notes

impulsive-astrophile · 4 years

Text

Fic recs for days

@dnscully ask and ye shall receive...

Recs will be sorted into arbitrary categories (in bold) and below the cut in order to save your dash because there will be a lot of them :) (final count came in at 103, give or take). All fics will have MSR in one form or another unless otherwise noted.

I also have post-episode recs for days but that would have to be an entirely separate post (which I can do if you’d like, just let me know!)

As always, make sure to read the work tags to filter for content you don’t want to read (sorry I’m not including them in this post, but it’s already 3 miles long and tags would make it even longer).

MulderTorture

Shakespirited (multi-chapter)

Summary: When the members of a small Shakespearean company start dying, Mulder and Scully go undercover to investigate. But will they discover what is killing people, or will they be next?

Rating: Teen

Words: 13670

Surface Deep (multi-chapter)

Summary: An out of town case leads Mulder and Scully to resolve some complicated issues...and make a few startling revelations.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 19105

Man's Best Friend (multi-chapter, not tagged MSR)

Summary: Injured and trapped inside a moving freight train car, Mulder depends on Scully and a new four-legged friend to rescue him. This was written many years ago as a tribute to my four-legged best friend, Dynamite a Husky/Shepherd mix. Spoilers for Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose and Quagmire.

Rating: Gen

Words: 17657

It Burns (multi-chapter, also ft. a casefile!)

Summary: It was no surprise that Mulder’s soul was damaged goods. Years of past trauma and delving into the mind of evil over and over has taken its toll. Scully intervenes, the killer is elusive, and pain awaits.Also they're in love ok.

Rating: Mature

Words: 20078

Lost (also ft. a casefile!)

Summary: When three little girls go missing, Mulder's expertise as a profiler is needed but Scully is more worried about how a case like that might affect him.

Rating: Mature

Words: 4967

Greenwater (multi-chapter)

Summary: Mulder set off to meet with an informant - alone. Allison has visions about an FBI agent being in trouble. Can she convince Scully and Skinner to find Mulder?

Rating: Gen

Words: 8442

In Between

Summary: A car accident sends half of the FBI’s most unwanted into a coma. The other half of the whole stands vigil at their partner’s bedside as one singular moment changes both of their lives forever.

Rating: Teen

Words: 7820

amor non reciprocatus. (multi-chapter, also ft. AU)

Summary: hanahaki disease is a fictional disease in which the victim coughs up flower petals when they suffer from unrequited love. it ends when the beloved reciprocates or the victim dies. Mulder and Scully investigate an X File in which the victim is found with flowers sprouting uncontrollably from their lungs and Mulder can't stop coughing. Hanahaki AU MSR. Completed.

Rating: Mature

Words: 19291

Empty Words (multi-chapter)

Summary: “It doesn’t matter, Mulder. They’re all just… empty words. We can understand each other without all of this, just, please.” Mulder and Scully are diligently working a case in downtown Seattle when Mulder is injured. Hospitals, frustration, and an inability to speak test the strength of their new relationship. Featuring art by cryptidneet!

Rating: Mature

Words: 24958

Casefiles

Claws of the Beast

Summary: Mulder and Scully deal with their relationship as they are called to Texas to investigate a series of slayings.

Rating: Teen

Words: 3297

Brumal Harvest

Summary: Mulder and Scully are trapped deep in the wintry Ozarks while something stalks them from the shadows…

Rating: Teen

Words: 2371

Returning the Past (multi-chapter, not necessary to have seen IWTB)

Summary: Set post ITWB, Mulder and Scully are honeymooning in Far North Queensland. Much to Scully’s chagrin, Mulder has delved headlong into a mysterious case of strange lights, Tasmanian tiger sightings and abductions. It’s not long, before they run into trouble…

Rating: Mature

Words: 18772

Succumbing to the Truth (multi-chapter)

Summary: Mulder and Scully are called onto a case where men are being seduced and attacked in their sleep by an unknown force. This force usually disguises itself as the person the victims most desires, so what happens when the case starts to get a little too close for comfort for our agents? MSR Casefic

Rating: Explicit

Words: 33453

Thin Air

Summary: Mulder discovers a case where a person appears to disappear into thin air. Scully, of course, sets out to prove him wrong.

Rating: Teen

Words: 9772

Vice (multi-chapter)

Summary: A weekend assignment gets out of control with Mulder undercover. Things come to a head, dragging Scully into the picture with unexpected consequences. Part 1 PG, Part 2 NSFW

Rating: Mature

Words: 7200

Wood Creek (also ft. MulderTorture)

Summary: Mulder comes down with chickenpox while away on a case. As always there are complications. In this case - cannibals. S6 - one week after 1st Person Shooter (mentioned in the story) - not necessary to have seen the episode

Rating: Mature

Words: 32255

Utu (multi-chapter, novel-length, also ft. MulderTorture)

Summary: Mulder convinces Scully to take a holiday in New Zealand. Can they stay away from cases and keep out of trouble? Don't be silly.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 103466

Manitou (multi-chapter)

Summary: It's perfect weather for frolicking with a serial killer!

Rating: NC17

Words: 30922

The Basket (multi-chapter, also ft. MulderTorture)

Summary: Following the aftermath of the Ed Jerse case in Philadelphia, Mulder and Scully investigate some unexplained deaths in Northern California. It soon becomes a race against time as Mulder becomes more involved in the case than he bargained for becoming the next target.

Rating: Teen

Words: 24043

The Disappearance of Bruce Speta (multi-chapter)

Summary: Mulder and Scully get the chance to investigate "a good old fashioned haunting," but the case ultimately takes Scully somewhere she never intended to go.

Rating: Gen

Words: 16048

Procedures (multi-chapter, also ft. MulderTorture)

Summary: Summary - Shortly after their return from Antarctica, the X Files are on hold while Mulder and Scully are assigned to assist the Seattle FBI Office in catching a bizarre serial murderer before a young runaway becomes his next victim

Rating: Mature

Words: 27335

Achluophobia (multi-chapter)

Summary: Mulder and Scully are called on a personal favor by Maggie Scully, to investigate a seemingly haunted house.

Rating: Mature

Words: 27447

Homesick (multi-chapter)

Summary: Mulder and Scully are investigating a case in the suburbs of Chicago, where several victims have been found completely dehydrated.

Rating: Teen

Words: 10473

Speechless (series, WIP)

Rating: Mature

Words: 24967

Dryad

Summary: Family fic, meet casefile. Casefile, meet family fic

Rating: Explicit

Words: 15396

Not Alone

Summary: Scully warns Mulder that someone is going to kill him...but is her prescience correct about the target?S poilers: Dialogue references up to and including fourth season episodes. Originally posted November, 1996.

Rating: Mature

Words: 14090

Twelve Days (multi-chapter)

Summary: Mulder and Scully investigate a case over Christmas Takes place sometime during Season 5 after "Emily" but before "The End"

Rating: Explicit

Words: 15553

So Sweet You Might Need to See a Dentist

Stargazing

Summary: Mulder takes Scully stargazing in the middle of the night while they're working on a stressful case. Inspired by the conversation Scully has with Skinner in This Is Not Happening (s08e14).

Rating: Gen

Words: 2253

Maybe Not As His Partner

Summary: “Coffee, then? There’s a place at the end of the block there.” “We could get married. County clerk’s office is in the same building.” “Oh, OK, let’s get right on that,” she says mildly.

Rating: Gen

Words: 3906

The Patron Saint of Doomed Stakeouts

Summary: Mulder might have a point about which days of the year defied productive surveillance. It’s February 14th. Of course stakeouts are romantic. They usually are. Sometimes they can be? Okay, not ever— no. Fluff and friendship, season 3.

Rating: Gen

Words: 1861

Level of Concern (multi-chapter)

Summary: What would happen if Dana Scully and Fox Mulder were currently experiencing the 2020 pandemic. That's it. Just fluff and trying to make quarantine seem a little less awful with some MSR.

Rating: Gen

Words: 7243

How to Care For Your Mulder in Quarantine (multi-chapter, WIP)

Summary: Scully and Mulder are quarantining together, and Mulder's starting to lose it. A series of scenes of mostly Mulder losing his mind while being trapped inside for eight weeks. (part 2 to my first quarantine fic, Level of Concern)

Rating: Gen

Words: 3808

If this is what it feels like

Summary: Scully stood resting against the wall while Mulder was pacing up and down the room, rambling without as much as taking a breath. “I love you.” Oh no. She felt her blood run cold. She hadn’t just said that out loud, had she?

Rating: Gen

Words: 760

Two In A Bed

Summary: "and then... there was only one bed" that's it. that's the plot.

Rating: Teen

Words: 1616

Boys

Summary: Scully’s boys go to the store. Mulder comes back with a lot more than was on his list. NOTE: This story pretends that Scully and Mulder got a happy ending.

Rating: Gen

Words: 1378

She's There Waiting For Me

Summary: Then he felt an idea arise from the depths of his heart, and it made it pound violently. Mulder wondered what his medical doctor partner thought of his heart’s current, deniably obvious, condition, but she seemed to pay no mind, probably out of politeness.

Rating: Gen

Words: 1009

And, You Thought You’d Never Stand Out

Summary: Mulder can’t sleep so he calls his person.Pure cotton candy fluff. Without the actual cotton candy. MSR. S7.

Rating: Gen

Words: 918

On the Rise

Summary: Mulder and Scully get their sweet tooth on in the X-Files office at Halloween. In other words, this story is achingly sweet. Plus there's a slide show.

Rating: Not Rated

Words: 1246

Jealous Scully

Afternoon Delight

Summary: Prompt - 'Jealous Scully'

Rating: Explicit

Words: 9666

Sickfics

The Lovers Will Go Down Together

Summary: Mulder is sick, so Scully takes him to her apartment to take care of him. A fluffy sick fic full of friendship with hints of possible romance. Based very, very loosely on the song "HELP" by The Front Bottoms.

Rating: Gen

Words: 3686

House Calls: a Sick!Fic

Summary: Our favorite puppy of an FBI agent isn’t feeling very well. Luckily, his doctor makes house calls.

Rating: Gen

Words: 1076

How to Cure a Bad Patient (not hosted on Ao3)

Summary: Mulder's a horrible patient, Scully's beside herself trying to help him recover and get her work done, but maybe Maggie can help them both.

Rating: Gen

Words: 10938

soup

Summary: Mulder is sick. Scully wants to help.

Rating: Gen

Words: 2790

Fever

Summary: Mulder cares for Scully when she gets sick on a case.

Rating: Not Rated

Words: 3767

Featuring: Kink

The Perfect Partnership

Summary: Smut with a submissive-but-feisty Mulder in handcuffs, a dominant Scully, and their usual banter. Inspired by the following exchange in Season 11, Episode 2: Scully: Why do you operate so well with your hands cuffed behind your back? Mulder: As if you didn't know.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 4768

Kinks featured: D/s, bondage, edging

dana scully stiCkS it uP fOx MulDer'S BUTT

Summary: Mulder gets pegged. That's sort of all there is to it, honestly. Shameless porn with a little bit of banter and tenderness.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 3833

Kinks featured: Light D/s, pegging

The Wait

Summary: Mulder has so many ties. Scully finds a good use for them.

Rating: Mature

Words: 2267

Kinks featured: Bondage, humiliation, praise kink, light D/s

First Name Basis

Summary: What sort of name was Fox anyways? Nobody ever called him Fox. Especially not Scully. Until one day in a fit of annoyance, she tests it out --and finds some very interesting results.

Rating: Mature

Words: 3214

Kinks featured: Light D/s, slapping

yes ma'am

Summary: Mulder might be into something a little bossier than anticipated.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 2006

Kinks featured: Pegging, D/s

The Game Is Afoot

Summary: Mulder and Scully have a game they like to play. It includes handcuffs.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 1786

Kinks featured: Bondage, light BDSM

Little Toys

Summary: handcuffs dude

Rating: Explicit

Words: 2881

Kinks featured: Bondage, dominance

That Includes All The Ass Beatings

Summary: The first time she spanks him, it’s because there’s a mosquito on his ass.

Rating: Teen

Words: 704

Kinks featured: Spanking

Plaything II

Summary: Scully gets hers. Sequel to Plaything.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 2935

Kinks featured: D/s, orgasm delay/denial

Untouched (multi-chapter)

Summary: 18. Coming untouched 61. Multiple orgasms 66. Orgasm delay/denial 24. dom/sub

Scully relaxes after a day of being pissed at Mulder.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 4293

Kinks featured: Light D/s, orgasm delay/denial

A New Side To The Story

Summary: Scully's being a bit obstinate. Mulder realizes she wants him to take her firmly in hand. Around the 4th season somewhere

Rating: Explicit

Words: 5436

Kinks featured: Dominance, spanking, orgasm delay/denial

Playtime

Summary: "Mulder, you have never yet asked me to put anything up your ass." Scully is sure she can fuck Mulder better than Krycek did.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 3239

Kinks featured: Pegging

Obedient

Summary: Porn Battle prompt number 8: Dom Scully, reverse cowgirl, slow sex

Rating: Explicit

Words: 645

Kinks featured: D/s

Set Free

Summary: A dirty little MSR fic with a bottom Mulder. Written in response to a conversation with the lovely, talented @settle-down-frohike Thanks to her for the word smithing advice!

Rating: Explicit

Words: 1111

Kinks featured: Pegging

bruise me

Summary: My girl wanted some MSR smut so that's what she's getting. Definitely PWP.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 334

Kinks featured: Light D/s, breathplay

Scully, Strap Up

Summary: S11, Scully's moved back into the unremarkable house. She pegs the absolute fuck out of Mulder.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 4129

Kinks featured: Pegging

Pure Smut (all explicit, obv)

Fourteen Days and Here He Stays (multi-chapter)

Summary: What happens when Mulder and Scully are quarantined in her apartment for two weeks? Originally, these were posted on Tumblr. Basically they are just quick drabbles that I write and post every day before bed. I'll be adding all of them here as well.

Words: 15828

The bumpy ride

Summary: Scully has to sit on Mulder's lap in the car.

Words: 2548

Tit for Tat (multi-chapter)

Summary: Prompt: Mulder catches Scully masturbating to/about him, or somehow sees that she's really wet. She's embarrassed, he's amazed. (XF porn battle)

Words: 4416

Midnight Snack

Summary: Dialogue Prompt: “You know, there wasn't a single thing to eat in the kitchen until you walked in.” No plot, just porn

Words: 2032

Window Dressing

Summary: Mulder needed to tell her. He had to tell her. But in this moment he felt inexplicably frozen. His feet were lead, his legs heavy, the only perceivable movement in his entire body was the blood starting to pulse through his veins and his eyes frantically absorbing the sight in front of him, unsure which point to land on.

Words: 4450

The Buck Hills Cave Incident (also ft. a casefile!)

Summary: Written for the 50 States of Sex challenge: Virginia. NSFW, obvs. This is based on a real newspaper report in the Bells Cove Coronet about the Buck Hills Cave in Virginia.

Words: 4738

Eavesdropping

Summary: Mulder overhears something

Words: 2453

That's What He Said

Summary: Some not so idle chit chat in the office.

Words: 4232

That's What She Said

Summary: A not so idle car ride.

Words: 3554

Temptation (multi-chapter)

Summary: When a houseguest puts a damper on their extracurricular activities, will Mulder be able to convince Scully to make an exception to her “no sex in the office” rule?

Words: 5236

Wind Sprints and Physics, An Excerpt

Summary: “Do that thing,” Scully said, while she could still talk.There’s a couch and two agents and they get hot and heavy and try but fail to slow down. Smut n’ love, season 6.

Words: 1524

Pre Menstrual Scully (multi-chapter)

Summary: N/A

Words: 6947

Fairies, Skip Hence

Summary: Bubbles floated like dust motes silently through the living room, catching the color from the lights on the Christmas tree and turning the room kaleidoscopic. She sat in front of the fireplace amongst Matthew’s scattered stocking stuffers, looking young and small. She held a small Santa-shaped bottle, blowing bubbles quietly into the room from a wand protruding from Santa’s hat. She looked like a fairy in the festive space, and his heart clutched at the sight of her.

Words: 7917

again, and again, and again

Summary: He slept best like this, she knew – when she was naked and curled against him like the frond of a new fern, tender and spreading from how he had coaxed her open and unfurled and grasping till she glowed with the green ache of being alive. After, her eyelids always grew heavy as the weight of him against her, and he would keep his mouth pressed against her shoulder, her hair, her stomach, a kiss that didn’t linger so much exist timelessly, an anchor in her flesh to keep himself moored to her as a ship to the shore. [in which Dana Scully is learning how to let herself want.]

Words: 6651

Homecoming

Summary: “Sorry,” he panted. His lips were red and swollen, his chest heaving and she knew she looked exactly the same. The emptiness between her thighs throbbed with the need to be filled by him. Only him. “Sorry, you were saying?” “Nothing.” She replied, shaking her head to make sure the message got through the thick fog of lust that surrounded them. Her ears were ringing with it. Everything was hazy, blurry at the edges, expect him standing strong and clear in front of her. “I wasn’t saying anything.” She said whilst launching herself back into him. M & S reunion, season of secret sex style.

Words: 3231

a conference of importance

Summary: prompt: sex in public where other agents might hear them. Set in s7!

Words: 1765

the door was open (just a crack)

Summary: Dana Scully is the voyeur in this one.

Words: 1687

the best that i can

Summary: this one's for her.

Words: 3477

march 6, 2000

Summary: eight years.

Words: 1901

The Darkest Places

Summary: *This is not a new fic.I'm creating a series of works called 'Secret Sex'. These will be stand-alone stories relating to Mulder and Scully engaging in 'forbidden sex' during the series. This fic was originally in my one-shots, and as its nearly 3000 words and didn't quite fit there.

Words: 2992

Misc

I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours (multi-chapter)

Summary: Mulder and Scully wake to find themselves in the wrong apartments, and in the wrong bodies. In a desperate search for answers and a way back to their old selves, can they keep their feelings in check? Or will their minds, and eyes, wander?

Rating: Teen

Words: 7979

How Many Tropes Can One Story Hold?

Summary: You want one bedfic? You want snowed in? You want sick!fic? You want drunken confessions? You want a plot twist? You got it.

Rating: Gen

Words: 6325

give me all that you can give. (ft. UST)

Summary: 'Partner. Spy. Taken. "Now, now, Agent Mulder, there’s no need to take my words out of context in such a way,” her grin is sweet and teasing. His heart pangs rebelliously. “I merely suggested that Skinner might take you more seriously if you came in with a fresh haircut.”'early x-files, somewhere in seasons 1-3. scully gives mulder a haircut in her kitchen and there is an unforgivable amount of UST.

Rating: Teen

Words: 2751

Human Credential

Summary: "People think, well, if *she* can stand him, he must have some humanity within him. Sometimes I think about Scully as Mulder's human credential. It's the only thing that makes him not crazy in many ways." -David Duchovny

Rating: Gen

Words: 2995

Home is Where the Heart is

Summary: Forgetting to pay your rent has consequences. Consequences that Fox Mulder is about to become very familiar with. He just needs to remember that he doesn't have to be a stranger when it comes to his best friend, his Scully. Forgetting to pay the rent wasn't all bad. He did figure out where his home really was.

Rating: Gen

Words: 9538

Four Days of Me and You

Summary: Mulder and Scully spend four days together in quarantine. Oh yeah, there's only one bed.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 4021

Maintaining Social Distance

Summary: A virus threatens everyone’s livelihood, thus forcing a stay in place, self quarantine situation. How will Mulder and Scully handle being apart?

Rating: Teen

Words: 4400

Road to Fresno, The

Summary: Mulder's first birthday after he and Scully became partners.

Rating: Gen

Words: 1196

For Better, For Worse

Summary: Mulder accompanies Scully as a surprise wedding date.

Rating: Mature

Words: 13032

QUEER

Summary: In the face of Scully's everlasting resistance, Mulder starts to question his own sexuality. Don't panic. It all turns out okay in the end.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 11399

Taking Liberties

Summary: One night while on a case, Mulder and Scully find themselves in her motel room, just talking and maybe - just maybe - taking the next step in their relationship.

Rating: Mature

Words: 2635

Nothing Like Doing Nothing (multi-chapter)

Summary: After Scully gets taken by Donald Pfaster, Mulder can't sleep and decides to give Scully some company. This leads the two to begin a tradition of spending the night after particularly hard cases. Can Mulder and Scully keep it purely friendly, or will their secret feelings end up getting the better of them?

Rating: Teen

Words: 7805

If You Had To Choose?

Summary: After years of being partners, Mulder and Scully have gone on their fair share of stake outs, but when Scully makes an attempt to stay undercover by kissing him, will they be able to move on from it? Or will the tension between them finally break?

Rating: Mature

Words: 4384

Letters Lost in the Fire

Summary: early s6, off the x-files, extracurricular investigations" She supposes Mulder is her job in a larger, cosmic sense, but that idea doesn’t bear thinking about for too long.” (originally posted at my livejournal 3/23/08)

Rating: Not Rated

Words: 2571

a cabin in the woods

Summary: Her spine arched and swayed, reminding her of the curving evergreen trees in the whipping wind. She could see her hair cascade down her back like a waterfall in the shadows of the flickering fire, and she let a primal moan rumble through her at the sight. Being stuck in this rustic cabin, clearly left to age among the wilderness had Scully feeling wild herself, and it felt as if their bodies danced to an ancient song among the elements.

Rating: Mature

Words: 6913

A Baby Is Forever (multi-chapter, ft. high school teen pregnancy AU)

Summary: • Prompt request for AU where Mulder gets Scully pregnant in high school and they are ‘forced’ to marry but fall in love.

Rating: Mature

Words: 15421

Oh my god, they were roommates (multi-chapter, ft. roommate AU)

Summary: This whole thing is based on a trope/AU mashup prompt I filled on tumblr: Roommate AU/Erotic dream. AU where Scully and Mulder are roommates and hoo boy is there something brewing in that two bedroom.

Rating: Teen

Words: 7408

The Great Pretender

Summary: Written for @slippinmickeys, whose prompt was “Maggie Scully invites Mulder to the Scully family Christmas gathering but doesn't tell Dana. Lots of UST ensues, and then RST. First time? If you're not comfortable writing smut, totally fine! Just have fun with it, and IMPLY smut. Haha S06/07, UST to RST, smut, fluff” In my rendition, Scully is dating a surgeon with a God complex and a refusal to commit. Suspecting he’s going to flake out on coming to the Scully family Christmas shindig, Maggie invites Mulder. Very, very, very mild Scully/Other (no sex scenes) that goes directly to MSR without passing go or collecting any money. =)

Rating: Explicit

Words: 5616

The Seventh Night

Summary: Mulder spends Christmas with Scully.

Rating: Teen

Words: 3099

The Newlywed Game (multi-chapter)

Summary: While going out for dinner, Scully runs into an ex and Mulder valliantly pretends to be her husband. However, that little lie traps them into having to play the Newlywed Game in front of a bunch of strangers and they have to navigate admitting feelings they haven't even admitted to themselves.

Rating: Teen

Words: 8498

How They Met (multi-chapter)

Summary: This Series is Complete Check out ther beautiful dust jacket: https://gemikanxiii.tumblr.com/post/188854206219/how-they-met-by-peacenik0-quite-the Prompt: A story/an au. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully met at her fbi academy graduation party. They have an instant connection. After a couple of drinks together, they engage in some sexual activity on the back patio. She writes down her number for him. He kisses her under a streetlamp. On his way home, he drops the slip of paper with her number. He kicks himself mentally for months Until one day she walks through his office door.Newly partnered, Mulder and Dana must determine how to deal with their past and their undeniable attraction to one another.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 19689

Spider

Summary: Mulder calls Scully in the middle of the night asking for her help and she fears the worst. MSR.

Rating: Teen

Words: 1753

On The Couch

Summary: Is it a date? Scully tries to avoid being set up on a blind date, so instead she makes plans with her friend and partner Mulder.

Rating: Mature

Words: 4271

#fic recs #fics #The X-Files #x-files #x-files fics #I wasn't kidding when I said I had a lot

133 notes · View notes

tomcriuse · 4 years

Note

headcanons or thoughts on how mulder and scully quietly professed their love or have been professing their love throughout the show? :)

stop i honestly have SO many feelings about quiet love you have no idea what writing this DID to me also it got a little long so sorry abt that

when mulder dated girls in high school and college, he would always try to woo them with expensive dinners and shiny jewelry and things all material that would never last. things so superficial that would eventually fade from time and memory, but were the desires of the old money new england girls.

for so long he went never telling scully how he felt unless it was hidden half-heartedly behind some sarcastic remark or joke that he hoped would conceal the depths of his affection and adoration. before he knew her, he read her thesis. after he met her, he would read it again and again and again. he would pour over the words until they’re burned in his mind and he so he could quote it like his favourite movie or book. his own personal scripture. he did this to understand something that she’s passionate about, as a way of being close to her, almost like someone will keep love letters that were written to them. it’s the rational that is so important to scully and mulder uses her scientific theories to understand everything about her: what motivates her, what keeps her going. he would quote it back to her because he’s completely captivated by her mind and the way it works and understanding something she’s truly passionate about is his way of getting closer to her.

on that same note, whenever someone else talks about something the scully knows, mulder cant help but thinking that scully would know infinitely more about the subject. he thinks that scully is constantly the smartest person in the room. even if she’s not there, he can see her phantom scoffing and rolling her eyes at something that isn’t true, and her cheeks becoming dusted with pink as she gets more passionate and excited, burning like the brightest star that he’s ever seen making the sun dull in comparison.

the gifts that he gives her are memories, not presents. they’re representative of the time they’ve spent together—of their relationship as a whole. when she was in the hospital he brought her a football tape. the tape itself isn’t important, but its that he wants to do something with her, that he wants to spend time with her. maybe it means that he’s not leaving her side while she’s in the hospital; he likes football and it will give him something to do. maybe it’s selfish. maybe he was too worried to find something that he thinks she might actually like. all that matters is that he’s trying. he’s expressing that he values her. that he loves her. when he gives her the apollo medallion, not because she loves the apollo landing or loves space in any capacity that doesn’t have to do with mulder and his genuine passion for it, but because over the last four years he’s dragged her on countless dead-end cases, he’s put her in jeopardy, he’s taken her for granted at times. but she’s never left his side, not once. this is no longer his quest but their quest, no matter how much either of them would deny it later. the medallion is their history. he also teaches scully how to play baseball. the years have been filled with horror and the unknown, and mulder wants to give her a happy memory. something beautiful—not material, but part of him. he says that it’s a “no reason present” which are the types of things that we start to associate with mulder: something given on no special occasion (even if it is) with infinite meaning. if he spent his childhood making mistakes with insignificant gifts to insignificant people, he finds true meaning in the most meaningful gifts to the only person that matters.

when he has a case without her, mulder simply rejects that reality. he’s spent so long on his own and loves scully so fully that to imagine or live a life without her just. doesn’t make sense to him. he’ll go to turn to scully and wait for her to say something that sounded intellectual but was really supposed to be insulting even if she’s not there. he’ll hold the door open two seconds too long for someone by themselves. he’ll automatically turn the ac up in the car because he knows that scully would rather be freezing than warm. at restaurants he’ll begin to order her ice water with two lemon slices. scully is simply an extension of him and doing things for her is like doing things for himself—out of nature, out of reflex, out of necessity to sustain and help her as she’s helped him become himself.

not far into their partnership, scully realized that mulder never truly had anyone else. no one went out of their way to care for him because that’s what they wanted to do—it was always done out of necessity.

the biggest way that she shows her love is just by doing things for him. “scully pack your bags we’re going to texas” “scully i need you to look through all of these files for this one phrase” “scully i need you to follow up on a lead.” no matter how much she would generally wish to not do these things, she can’t not do them. she’ll make a half-hearted complaint and throw him a mandatory pleading look, but inside she’s waiting for him to leave the room so she can get started with as much enthusiasm as he has when he talks about the case. she doesn’t care about the case, but she cares about him. she’ll keep sunflower seeds hidden in a cabinet on her side of the office just in case he runs out. she’ll sometimes replace his coffee if he’s busy doing paperwork and it gets cold. she drags him to get food so he’ll remember to eat. she’ll hold the umbrella just a little higher so he doesn’t have to bend down as much as he would at her height. she’ll move the driver’s seat back so when he gets in to drive his legs have enough room. one time, scully saw that mulder’s tie was crooked and her hands went to straighten it on their own volition. after that, mulder went out of his way to make sure it was just a little off. scully always straightened it for him.

mulder has always been notoriously hard to read, always building walls to distance him from the hurt that inevitably comes with getting close to someone else. but he was never hard to read to scully. she learned that slightly narrowed eyes meant that his brain was going a mile a minute, scanning for any imperfection in a crime scene or a statement from a witness. that when he tilted his head to the right a little it meant that there was something he didn’t understand, and then when his eyebrows would furrow a little bit it meant that that infuriated him. that when he looked at her and his eyes melted and his face became vulnerable that he was seeing the same thing in her that she saw in him: the universe and themselves and every secret that they’ve ever needed and the answers to every question that they’ve asked or were going to ask.

she also listens to everything he says. if its something big—a pervious case, mythology, a theory—she’ll remember it like she remembers songs from her childhood. the smaller the things are and the more in-passing they’re said, the more she’ll remember it and think about it, until it becomes etched into her heart and her soul. the feeling of terror he felt when sam was abducted. his favourite colour. that he prefers chunky peanut butter over smooth peanut butter. that he’ll obsessively write in books and dog-ear the pages because he likes the way the paper feels after you write on it. then there are the more intimate things. that the last time he truly felt safe was when he was in her arms. that every time he wakes up he’s afraid that something’s happened to her. that none of it matters without her.

between the both of them it’s not about saying “i love you” but it’s about trust. it’s about support. for years mulder went through being ridiculed and criticized by his peers for his belief in the supernatural. people would steal his work and get the credit for it while he stood in the background in a silent rage before he brushed it off and focused on his own mission. conversely, scully worked harder than anyone else in her field but never had anyone believe in her or back her or just listen to her. when they started working together there was someone there ready to listen and trust them, even if their views didn’t align with their own . together, they will playfully tear into each other’s theories, but the moment someone else tries, they will always support them 100% even if they aren’t totally convinced. it was unconditional.

#i have more 2 say but i will save that for another day #the x files #anon #answered #txf headcanon

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atths--twice · 4 years

Link

And now it’s time for their only visitor to see how they are doing and meet the baby.

The Ninth Month 6h/6

Chapter Eight

The Visitor

Scully gets an unexpected but most welcomed visitor.

October 31st- late afternoon

Scully was feeling a smidge more like an actual human. She had a shower and changed her gown again. She still ached and felt like a freight train had crashed into her lower half, but she was cleaner than she had been a couple of hours ago.

Faith had also had a bath. The day nurse, an older woman named Jill, had brought in a basin and helped them give her her first bath. Mulder had really been in charge of helping and Scully had taken some pictures with his phone. He had been so nervous and adorable, ill had already fallen in love with him, therefore he could do no wrong in her eyes.

He put Faith’s diaper on and put on a little onesie, extra careful and asking all kinds of questions. Jill had smiled and answered them all. She showed him how to swaddle the baby once she was dressed, then let him try on his own. When he got it right, he had grinned at Scully. She got another picture before Jill had helped her into the bathroom for her shower.

When she came out, Mulder was sitting on the couch with Faith. Her head resting on his chest, his hands resting on her head and her bottom, holding her securely. She could see his fingers slowly rubbing across her back, his eyes closed.

When he heard her shuffling around, he opened his eyes and smiled at her, his eyes so full of love. She got back in bed and laid down again, Jill making sure she was okay. Mulder got up and brought her the baby. He said he was going to go down to the cafeteria and get some coffee and a snack and he would be back in a few minutes. She nodded and he left the room.

She sat staring at the baby as she held her in her arms, marveling at the intricacy of her features. Her perfect eyebrows, her lips, the softness of her skin, the dark hair that seemed to have the smallest hint of red. She was perfect and so beautiful.

She moved in her sleep and her eyebrows went up, her face scrunched, and she wiggled her tiny body, before settling down again. Scully felt such happiness within her, it was like a drug coursing through her system. It had been worth it. All the pain and the worry, for this moment, and this person she was holding. She was so in love with her already.

The hospital room door opened slowly and she thought Mulder was back already. A pink balloon came through the door, then a shiny pink Mylar one saying “It’s a girl!,” and finally the person attached to the end of the strings. Skinner. Mulder must have called him.

She smiled at him and at the way he visibly relaxed, when he saw she was awake. He put the balloons in the chair by the bed and walked over to her.

He bent and kissed her cheek as he looked at the baby. Putting his hand on Scully’s shoulder, he lightly touched the baby’s head with the other. Scully watched him touch her, unable to tear her eyes away from the baby’s face.

“She’s perfect, Dana,” Skinner said in a whisper and Scully smiled. He stroked her small head and then stood up and back from the bed. Scully looked up at him and smiled.

“Would you like to hold her?” she asked him quietly.

She saw his moment of panic, but she nodded encouragingly at him as she started to shift around and move the baby. She waited until he put his hands out and then she passed her over. He cradled her head and pulled her in close. She smiled at the sight of him holding her second child. Skinner, the big tough man, losing his cool exterior when a baby was placed in his arms.

He kept his eyes on the baby before glancing at her with a smile. He moved the balloons and sat down on the edge of the chair. Scully moved around a little, seething when pain shot through her lower half.

Skinner looked over at her and she shook her head. She raised the head of the bed up a little to a more comfortable position. She smiled watching Skinner look at the baby. He smiled softly as he did, unaware that she was staring at him.

Tears filled her eyes at the beauty of the moment. The sweet way he held and murmured to her. He smiled at her and then looked back at Scully.

They smiled at each other and he sat back in the chair. He looked at the baby again and sighed.

“She is truly beautiful. I don’t know if this will sound good or bad, considering she’s a girl, but she looks a lot like Mulder,” Skinner said as he watched her sleep. Scully laughed and Skinner looked at her with a smile.

“Since I have always enjoyed looking at Mulder, I’ll take that as good news,” she said, still chuckling. Skinner nodded and smiled. He looked down at the baby again and then shook his head, rocking her a little.

“What’s her name?” he asked.

“Faith,” Scully said, watching his reaction to the name. “Faith Katherine Mulder.”

Skinner froze his small movements and looked at Scully. She saw that he understood the meaning behind the name, without her needing to say anything. He stared at her, his gaze falling to her necklace, then back to her face. He nodded and smiled, looking back at the baby and she closed her eyes.

Other hospital visits flashed through her memory. Her cancer, Mulder’s journey back from the dead, Mulder’s mother taken ill, both of them wounded countless times in duty. Skinner had made an appearance at nearly all of them.

The memory presenting itself most, was him arriving to tell her Mulder had disappeared. The way his voice had broken had broken her heart as well.

She had news of her own that day. He was the first and only person who knew her secret for awhile. It was fitting he was their first visitor and the first to hold the baby besides the two of them.

She heard him sniff and she opened her eyes. He was watching the baby, but she heard another sniff. He tried to keep his face hidden, but she saw a tear. Leave it to a small bundle of happiness to bring the strong men she knew in her life to tears. Barely one day old and she already held so much power.

“That’s a fine name. Fitting. It’s a good choice,” he said, keeping his eyes on the baby. “Hello, Faith. It’s nice to meet you.”

Scully’s eyes filled and spilled over hearing him speak to her and continue his murmurings to her. Faith woke up and stared at him. Her big blue eyes seemingly taking him in.

“Wow,” he said, looking over at Scully as she wiped at her eyes. He smiled slightly. “She definitely has your eyes. Mulder is in serious trouble.”

She laughed out a sob and Skinner smiled. He stood up and brought her back to Scully. Placing Faith in her arms, he stood up again. He watched her situate the baby better before he cleared his throat. Scully looked up at him and he stepped back from the bed. He started to pace around the room, not looking at her, his hands in his pockets.

“When I was younger, my dad was a tough man. He was older when I was born, in his late forties. He was hard to get to know and he kept us all at a distance. I had two younger brothers and we all were brought up to be tough, to fight for what we wanted, stand up for ourselves,” he said as he paced. Scully watched him unsure where this was headed.

“My father did not tolerate lying, cheating, or any type of behavior that would cast himself or his sons in a bad light. He wanted us to have strong moral character." He stopped pacing and seemed to be in thought. Scully waited, saying nothing.

“When I left for Vietnam, he told me he was proud of me for my decision, to fight for my country. After I had almost died, and I came home, it was the only time my father hugged me as an adult. Honestly, probably the only time ever, that I can remember anyway. It meant more than I ever expressed to him. I was an adult by age, had fought for my country, but I was still like a child, craving the approval of my father." He paused again and then shook his head.

“After I was married and began working at the bureau, I didn’t see my father much. Phone calls, some holidays, but not much. He died in 1990 and I went home for his funeral. My mother had passed a year before from a stroke. My brothers and I spent a week getting the house ready to sell. None of us had overly fond memories of it and we all had our own lives we were living. Dealing with a house was not something we wanted. On the second to last day, when most everything else was done, we went down into the basement, where my father had spent most of his time. It was a finished room we had played in as kids. We each took a corner and started cleaning out the junk. My brother called us over to where he had been cleaning, by my father’s desk. He had found a box of letters. Letters addressed to each of us that my father never sent. We sat down, each with our letters and began to read the words he wrote, but could never say. There were letters going back years, and his words were beautiful. We sat there, the three men he raised to be tough and strong, crying over words we never heard, but could read and see plain as day. I was thirty eight years old when I learned for the first time that my father loved me." He paused and looked at Scully.

She had tears running down her face. Faith had fallen back to sleep and Scully held her as she cried for the man who was almost like a father to her. To not know love the way she had from her own father, it broke her heart.

She cried for both Mulder and Skinner. Two men who had yearned for their father’s approval and love. Neither had received exactly what they needed, but they had become good men. Honest, hardworking, moral, trustworthy, kind men.

“I know that you and Mulder will do better than my parents did and that is a comfort to me. She will not wonder if you love her, if she has fallen short in any regard, or what she can do to gain your trust and care. She will know it when she looks at you, feels your hand upon her back, lays her head on your chest, or when the day comes and she slams her door in anger but then seeks you out and all is forgiven,” he said, his eyes never leaving hers. “She will know, Dana, because she will see how you and Mulder care for each other and your love will be her example.”

Scully was openly weeping. She dropped her head and looked at the baby in her arms. The one she loved before she was born and would now die for without question. She would know she was loved and lived in a loving household. She would hear it every day and know it by the actions she would see.

Skinner walked close to the bed and waited, handing her a tissue to blow her nose and wipe her eyes. She sniffed and blew her nose once more.

Skinner placed his hand lightly on her shoulder. She took a deep breath and looked up at him, giving him a small smile.

“Thank you for telling me about your family. And you’re right, she will know she is loved. She will know how we love her and each other,” Scully said, stroking Faith's cheek.

Skinner cleared his throat again and asked if he could put the baby in her small bed. She was curious as to why, but she agreed. She handed her over to him and he put her down gently. He turned back toward Scully and reached in his inside jacket pocket. He took something out and held it in his hand before he looked at her.

“When my mother died, after the funeral, my father went down into his basement. He didn’t stay upstairs with the other mourners. He didn’t really speak to any of us, just stayed downstairs. To some, it may have seemed he didn’t care or was not grieving “properly.” I knew my father. He was grieving, but in his own way. When we were packing up the house, we found a card from my mother to my father. She told him how much she loved him and that she was thankful for spending her life with him. This was inside the envelope." He handed Scully what he had in his hand.

It was a small cloth bag with a drawstring. She untied the bag, opened it, and dumped the contents into her hand. On a silver chain was a blue stone that shone brightly in the light. Scully looked at it and then at Skinner.

“My mother’s birthday was in October, that was her birthstone, and the only piece of jewelry she wore besides her wedding ring. I don’t remember ever seeing her without it my entire life. My father bought it for her a year after they were married and she said on many occasions that aside from her children, it was her favorite thing in the world. After she died, my father must have kept it. A way to hold onto a piece of her,” Skinner said quietly.

He smiled at Scully as she cried looking again at the necklace. It was beautiful, but she could not accept something so personal and important to Skinner. She looked at him and started to try to hand the necklace back to him. He stopped her hand and held it in both of his own. He smiled again.

“I said that the name Faith was fitting. Not just because of what it means to you and to Mulder, but because of a memory I recalled when you told me her name. A memory about the necklace,” Skinner said letting go of her hand.

“She lost it once, my mother. The chain broke and she didn’t feel it slip from her neck. She cried when she noticed it was gone. No way to know where it was or when it had fallen off of her. A week it was gone. She said repeatedly she knew she would find it. She had faith that she would. My brothers and I were playing in the backyard, when I noticed something shining in the grass. It was her necklace. It must have fallen when she was hanging laundry on the clothesline outside. I brought it in to her and she cried as she held it in her hands, before she hugged me. She said she never lost faith and her necklace had been found." Skinner smiled at her and pointed to the necklace. “I don’t have, nor plan to have children of my own. When I found out you were having another baby, I planned on giving that to you. But now that I know she’s a girl, and I’ve heard her name, knowing what it means to you and Mulder, I know my mother would want Faith to have her necklace.”

Scully cried as he finished speaking. She leaned toward him and raised her arms out to him. He leaned in and held her for a minute.

“Thank you, Skinner- Walter. This necklace is a beautiful gift and the story behind it was lovely. You are right, it is fitting. I will keep it safe for her until she’s older,” she said as she grasped his hand. She looked at the necklace again. The blue of the stone was beautiful. She gently put it back in the bag. “Could you please put this in the backpack over there?

The baby gave a short cry as she handed him the necklace bag. “And then, would you mind handing me my girl? She needs to eat, and she tends to get crabby if she doesn’t get what she wants when she asks for it. She’s like her mama in that regard.”

They both laughed and he did as she asked. He scooped the baby up and handed her to Scully. He kissed her cheek again and said he would see her soon, to get some rest, and take care of that girl. He touched the baby’s head again and headed toward the door.

“Dana,” he said, his hand on the door handle. “She truly is a miracle and you chose a good name.”

She smiled at him. He opened the door and left. She kept her eyes on the door until the baby began to cry. Scully pulled her gown aside and brought the baby to her breast. She latched on and begin to nurse.

She closed her eyes and reveled in the feel of the baby nursing. Gaining what she needed to thrive.

She finished nursing her and laid her on her shoulder to gently burp her. She leaned the bed back and held the baby to her chest. She rubbed her hand up and down her tiny back.

Sleep was pulling at her as she sat with the baby. The past day catching up to her. She turned on her side, adjusting her gown. She laid the baby on the bed, cradling her in her arms. She closed her eyes and kissed her little head.

“Faith,” Scully whispered. “You are a miracle, little one, and you are so loved. So very loved.” She took a deep breath and fell asleep.

That was how Mulder found them fifteen minutes later. He looked at the balloons, wondering who had been there. He did not dwell on it too long, his gaze landing on the two people in the bed. The two women in his life who meant the world to him. He kissed both of them on the head, pulled up the chair, and sat down.

He watched them sleep before he felt his own eyes growing heavy. He leaned his head back on the seat, closed his eyes, crossed his arms, and was asleep within minutes.

Jill walked in to check on them. She stopped and smiled at the sight of them all asleep. She took out her cell phone and took a picture, slowly backed out of the room, and closed the door behind her. They needed their rest. It had been a long day for everyone in the room.

She looked at the picture of them as she walked away and she smiled. This was one of her favorite parts of her job, snapping the “first picture,” the real one, not a posing and smiling one. The one that showed the truth about birth- the exhaustion, happiness, and love.

She sent the photo to the printer and waited for it to print. She liked to slip in the picture with the file, so it was there with their discharge papers. She looked at it again when it had printed. She smiled as she walked to the nurses station. She found their file and added it to it, putting it back and heading off to the next patient, her phone ready to capture the love she knew she would always find.

________________________________________________

Ahh, Skinner. I love our FBI dad so much. He’s such a good guy, and he loves our favorite agents. He will be a great “Uncle Walter” for the baby. : )

#The X Files #XF Fanfic #Post MSIV #Pregnancy #New Baby #New Family #Happy #Love #Visitor #Sharing the love #Memories #Kindness #Family Fluff

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sambergscott · 5 years

Text

‘cause you’ll be safe in these arms of mine

Summary: Jake and Amy asking people to be godparents, inspired by a convo with @capnperaltiago who asked for me to write this <3

She asks Rosa two minutes after the plastic stick says pregnant.

Jake and Holt are out working a case and Terry’s taken the day off to be with his girls, leaving Amy in charge of the Nine-Nine. Hitchcock and Scully have already started a small fire, one of the uniformed officers lost a piece of evidence and there was a fight amongst two perps in the holding cell. And Amy can’t stop throwing up.

At first she blames it on work-related stress and then she thinks it must have been the Chinese she ate last night while watching re-runs of Friends. It’s not until Rosa pulls out a pregnancy test she picked up from the store that she realises it could be morning sickness.

They’re not even properly trying yet. Sure, she’s come off her birth control because she’s done enough research to know that it could take months to get pregnant after coming off them and they still can’t take their hands off each other, even after over a year of marriage, but neither of them were expecting anything to happen this soon.

She pees on the stick and, several anxiety-ridden minutes later, it comes back positive.

She’s pregnant.

And she panics.

This is what she wanted, what she’s always wanted, but what if Jake’s still not quite ready yet and what if one of them dies on the job and what if they can’t actually afford this and-.

“Santiago,” comes Rosa’s gruff voice, her hands steadying Amy’s quivering shoulders, “you two have got this. You’re gonna be the best parents I know.”

“Even better than Terry and Sharon?” She snivels.

“Yeah.” Then, quickly, “don’t tell them I said that.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Amy promises, zipping her mouth shut.

“Yours too.” Rosa mimics her zipping action, throwing the imaginary key into the toilet like she’s Steph Curry.

Amy laughs, a sudden idea popping into her head. It seems weird to ask before consulting Jake, before Jake even knows there’s a baby inside her, but it also feels right. She rips off the bandaid. “Will you be the godmother?”

The detective freezes, her mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. “Me?”

“Mm-hmm.” Amy smiles at Rosa’s surprise. They are complete opposites — Rosa likes motorbikes, Amy likes binders, Rosa likes leather jackets and big boots, Amy likes sensible pantsuits — yet they’ve become sisters, sleuth sisters, over the past nine years. There’s nobody else Amy would consider for the job. “You’ve always had my back and I think you’d have our baby’s back, too. Plus, if our baby turns out like Jake, you’ve always known how to handle him.”

Rosa snorts, then smiles back at her. Amy thinks she detects a few tears in Rosa’s eyes, but doesn’t say a word, not wanting to ruin the moment. Rosa eventually nods. “Yeah. I’m in.”

“C’mere,” Amy cries, the damn pregnancy hormones already making her emotions crazy as she pulls Rosa into a tight hug.

It’s Jake’s idea to make Charles godfather.

Amy’s a little… apprehensive at first, to say the least, considering Charles’ track record of being totally obsessed with every aspect of their personal lives. He’s sent her 75 emails about birthing tips, offering his doula services at the end of each one, in the last week alone. He came round their apartment one night to get rid of all coffee, alcohol, shame cigarettes and any other No-No foods during pregnancy. He’s already suggested the names Charles Peralta if it’s a boy and Charlotte if it’s a girl, which Amy vetoed immediately. Making Charles godfather would only allow him into their lives further. And she loves her husband’s best friend, she really does, but she doesn’t want their kid becoming obsessed with weird milk and beige-coloured clothes and the TV show Bunheads.

When Jake argues that nobody else is gonna love their kid more than Charles, Amy finally agrees. Charles will shower their baby with all the love in the world. And if Charles has any influence at all on his godchild, it will be that their kid will be just as big a fan of Jake as Charles is.

Unlike Rosa, they both agree that they can’t just ask Charles. It needs to be an event — like when Jake asked him to be his best man with sparklers and a big ol’ banner. Amy suggests they ask him on Halloween and they spend a full evening planning how it’s going to go down.

“This year’s object is this t-shirt,” Jake announces to the squad on the biggest night of the year, holding up a plain white t-shirt with the words “Amazing Human/Genius” printed in gold foiling. “Whoever has it in their possession at midnight will be declared the winner.”

Like Halloween V, Jake has the real prize waiting in the evidence lock-up. But he doesn’t tell anyone that.

When The Tramps (with Rosa in on Jake and Amy’s secret) barge into the evidence lock-up at two minutes before midnight, thinking they’re finally the champions, Charles is the first to lift the t-shirt out of the storage box.

(It was the one with the uneven dust pattern, just like when Jake proposed to Amy, just like he’d heard a million times over when he asked to hear the story on a bi-weekly basis).

He furrows his brow when he realises the words don’t say what they’re supposed to.

Jake and Amy jump out from behind a stack of evidence boxes and Charles shrieks. For a second they think they’ve caused yet another colleague to die from a heart attack, but he somehow stays on his feet.

“Amazing Godfather/Genius,” he reads the adapted text, trembling like a leaf. His eyes meet Jake’s, who nods, confirming that, yes, his wildest dreams have indeed come true.

“What do you say, bud?” Jake prompts.

“Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!”

Amy laughs happily as she watches her husband and his best friend embrace, exchanging wide grins with Terry and Rosa. Their kid is a lucky guy or girl with their entire Nine-Nine family looking out for them.

There’s only one last thing to do.

They arrange to have dinner with Holt and Kevin to ask them if they will be the “god-grandfathers” of their unborn child.

(“God-grandfathers are not a thing, Peralta,” Amy had said when he first proposed the word, rolling her eyes.

“Who says?”

“The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, for starters.”

“Well, it’s a thing now,” Jake decided. He’d never cared for the Merriam-Webster Dictionary before, so why should he now? No use changing the habit of a lifetime. “It’s our thing. Because they’re our #Dads. I wouldn’t feel comfortable raising our kid without them.”

Her face softened, tears pricking at her eyes — those damn pregnancy hormones again — and she finally agreed. “God-grandfathers it is.”)

She’s incredibly nervous by the time they’re at the front door of the Holt-Cozner home, her fingers twisting the ends of her hair into a messy braid.

Jake places his hand atop hers, stilling her fingers. He gives her hand a supportive squeeze. “It’s gonna be great, Ames.”

They don’t bring it up until there’s a lull in conversation mid-way through the casserole Kevin prepared for them, unable to wait any longer. Even Jake is a little anxious, his leg bouncing beneath the table, when he broaches the subject.

“You know how Charles and Rosa are going to be our baby’s godparents?”

“Yes, I recall Raymond mentioning the fact,” Kevin responds. “Apparently it is all Detective Boyle talks about.”

“He’s very excited,” Amy says, amused. She finds herself less annoyed and more touched by Charles’ antics when they’re directed at others and not her or her email inbox.

“Well, Ames and I would love it if you two would have an important role in our kid’s life because, I don’t know if you’ve noticed because we’re super subtle about it, but we kind of consider you both as father figures.”

“We have noticed.”

“You are not subtle at all,” Holt assures them.

“Cool, cool, cool. No doubt. No doubt. No doubt. What do you say? Would you like to be the god-grandfathers to Nakatomi Peralta?”

“Please tell me you’re not naming your child after a building from your favourite movie,” Holt says disapprovingly.

“No,” Jake scoffs, then, under his breath, “Nakatomi is a character, too.”

“We would be honoured.” Kevin smiles lovingly at his husband, then at Jake and Amy. After a few seconds, his smile falls. “Although you are aware god-grandfathers are not a real thing, yes?”

“It’s our thing,” Amy repeats Jake’s words from earlier, beaming from ear to ear.

When their baby arrives, seven point five pounds of perfection, they have a lot of visitors, all wanting to feast their eyes on the precious addition to the family. The grandparents get first hold (apparently Victor and Roger had another arm wrestling match in the hospital waiting room to decide who got the very first hold), then Amy’s brothers that live in the city, then the godparents and god-grandparents.

Charles starts crying the moment he’s in the same room as her, only stopping when Amy threatens to make him leave.

Rosa smiles more than either Jake and Amy have ever seen her smile.

Captain Holt is quite simply enamoured with the little bundle of blankets, unable to mask his emotions in his usual robotic way when his god-granddaughter grips his pinky finger.

Jake and Amy exchange proud parent smiles as they watch their hours-old daughter with four of the people they trust most, knowing she will always be safe, loved and happy when in their arms.

#my writing #peraltiago fics #b99 fics #jake x amy #the end is corny but!!!!#i've been thinking about this fic for weeks

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mangokiwitropicalswirl · 7 years

Text

Paging Dr. Scully, chp 4

(Note: I’ve decided to title the chapters according to roughly where they fall in season 1)

Paging Dr. Scully 1: Squeeze / 2: Jersey Devil / 3: Shadows

Paging Dr. Scully 4: Ghost in the Machine

It takes less than 30 minutes to wander through the Liberty Bell exhibit hall and eat their cheesesteaks on a park bench.

“Do you want to grab some coffee?”

“I guess that depends,” says Scully.

“Depends on what?” He stretches his legs out and leans back against the bench, wiping the last of the cheesesteak grease off his face with a tissue-thin napkin.

“On whether I’m going to have to keep myself awake for another three hours on my drive back home tonight.”

She’s not sure what she’s asking. She’s not suggesting they shack up in his hotel room, but it’s midnight and she’s dangerously close to nodding off right here on the bench.

“I could keep you awake, drive back with you,” Mulder offers an arm to her as he stands.

“What about your car?”

“It’s a fleet sedan. Left it at the Philly offices.”

“How’d you get here?”

“Taxi,” he shrugs again.

“So you could drive back with me tonight? To D.C.?”

“If you don’t mind swinging by the offices to grab my bag, then, yeah. Sure.”

Scully wipes her hands against her pant legs and smiles up at him. “Okay, but coffee first.”

They find an all-night diner and slide across from one another in a vinyl booth. The coffee tastes like pitch and diesel, but Scully hardly cares. The combination of this sudden bout of spontaneity and the gleam in Mulder’s eye has her buzzing already, and no amount of bitter coffee is going to dampen it.

“So, what was it that possessed you to call me up tonight?” She asks him pointedly as she shakes a pack of sugar in her cup.

“What an interesting choice of phrase, dear doctor,” Mulder teases. “What possessed me indeed? That’s exactly what the victim in my case here thought she was experiencing. Seems everyone around her kept coming to a tragic end. She thought that maybe she was possessed by the restless spirit of her dead boss.” He unspools the story like a ghost tale, pausing dramatically, leaning toward her.

Scully pauses, holding the coffee cup halfway to her mouth, her eyes wide. He’s serious. He’s presenting it as if he’s joking, but she can see he’s serious.

“Was she?” Scully asks him honestly.

Mulder shrugs. “I think so, but the supervising agents on this case weren’t so sure. They didn’t take too kindly to my theories. More interested in pinning the deaths on a local terrorist cell than actually uncovering the truth.” He takes a long swig of his black coffee and glances out the window.

“Do you usually uncover all this... I don’t know,” she pauses, “weird stuff?”

“That’s my deal,” he nods. “They put me on cases where the usual avenues of investigation turn up empty.”

“So that explains your Jersey Devil thing. And the questions in the hospital about whether I believe in aliens.”

“I guess so,” he smiles. “And it’s not every day I meet a girl who can quote me Fermi’s Paradox.”

“That was my undergrad degree talking,” she takes another swallow of coffee. “I majored in physics before med school.”

Mulder’s eyes widen in approval.

She continues. “Not the most typical route, I know, but I liked all the big questions physics asks. And the mathematical theories made O-Chem seem pretty easy in comparison.”

Sometimes Scully feels like she shouldn’t talk too much about her education. More than one girlfriend has reminded her how guys can feel threatened by smart girls. Sometimes even her own mother had suggested that she downplay the fact she graduated early, or that she finished with high honors.

So even though she’s mostly unapologetic for her intellect -- and has the long dating dry spells to prove it -- it’s still not like her to spout off to potential suitors about things like finding O-Chem easy. But there’s something about Mulder that tells her he not only isn’t threatened, but he is finding it compelling. She meets his eyes, a bit embarrassed, and remembers it’s polite to turn the tables.

“How about you? What’d you do in school?”

“Psychology.” He half-mumbles. “At Oxford. Seems the FBI thought I had a knack for getting in the heads of criminals.” He grins.

“So you’re a criminal profiler with a penchant for the paranormal. I think I’ve got it figured out now.”

“Penchant, nice word. Especially at this hour. Remind me not to underestimate you when we play Scrabble.” He glances at his watch. “Should we get going? It’s going to be a late night as it is.”

Scully nods, pretending she didn’t notice he said “when” instead of “if’ in that last sentence, and tips the last drops from her cup. “You want to drive first shift?” She says, holding out her keys.

They’re an hour and a half into the drive, Scully back at the wheel, when the conversation turns. She had asked him about his family, where his parents lived now, where he grew up, all the usual chit chat that gets brought up when you’re just starting to connect.

“You said you had a sister, where does she live?” Scully asks nonchalantly as she checks over her back shoulder for a lane change. She maneuvers the car in line and glances back at Mulder, surprised to find him gone quiet, a solemn look across his face.

“What is it?” Scully pauses.

“My sister disappeared when I was 12.” He stops and takes a breath. “We… um… we never found her.”

Scully doesn’t know what to say so she waits to see if he wants to tell her more.

“She’s the reason I got into all these cases,” he goes on. “Her disappearance was dismissed as unexplained. We never got a satisfactory answer.”

“I'm so sorry,” Scully feels like she should pull over and intently listen, but there’s a sense in which the moving car is propelling him. This way, he doesn’t have to look at her. She senses that it’s easier if he can just stare ahead and talk.

“It’s okay.” He swallows. “I’ve done a lot of work to understand it. And I’ve come to believe that I can find her. These cases are a way to get some answers. If not for myself, then at least for people like me, when science can’t explain their losses.”

“That's a beautiful way to look at it.” Scully looks across the console at the stark relief of his profile in the streetlights. “To give a larger purpose to what you do.”

“I’m glad you see it that way,” he smiles weakly toward her. “The Bureau doesn’t always. They think I’m caught up in some harebrained pet project.”

“Well, screw what they think,” Scully blurts out emphatically, surprising herself a little. All these revelations make her like him. A lot. He’s wounded, and noble, and it’s making her want to defend his every move.

“I should get you to come and work for me,” he teases. “It’d be nice to have an ally.”

“I’ll keep that in mind in case this doctor thing doesn’t work out,” she teases back, smiling, resisting the urge she’s feeling to reach across and take his hand.

It is almost 5 am when they pull, bleary-eyed, in to Mulder’s parking lot. Sleep is drifting over them both so thickly, it is all Scully can do to push the button, pop the trunk and wave goodbye as Mulder stumbles up his stoop.

“Get some sleep,” she calls out weakly.

“I’ll call you soon, okay?” He calls back, waving.

She sleeps away her Saturday completely.

Her Sunday shift bleeds into Monday, and then they ask her to stay on because they’re suddenly short staffed. A scheduling supervisor approved too many people for too many vacation days at once. Even during normal stretches, it’s not that unusual for work to swallow weeks whole without her noticing. She keeps clothes in a locker at the hospital, and naps in empty rooms between rotations.

So it’s Wednesday before she realizes that if he’s left a message at her home number, he probably thinks she’s blowing him off. She’s never been good at what they call the “work-life balance” and she knows it has driven more than a few potential dates away. But she just doesn’t know how to give her work anything less than everything she has.

Thursday afternoon she’s writing orders and reviewing charts, hopeful she might get a chance to rush home and take a real bath after several days of hospital quickie showers, when she glances up and sees Mulder pacing in the hall of the ER. He doesn't see her.

Scully smoothes her scrubs and tucks a couple greasy flyaway hairs behind her ears. At first she’s annoyed she never bothers to tuck a tube of lipgloss in her pocket, but as she watches him, it’s evident he’s far too worried about something to take stock of how she looks.

“Mulder,” she calls out, walking toward him where he’s pacing. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“Doc.” He looks up, startled and pale-faced. “Oh that’s right, this is your hospital. I didn’t even think….”. He trails off, wiping a bead of sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Seriously, are you okay? You look like you need to sit down.” Scully gestures toward the waiting room.

“I'm fine. It’s…”. He swallows, his eyes darting aimlessly around the room. “A friend of mine. My partner, my former partner…”.

Scully nods, assuming this has something to do with a girlfriend or an ex, determined to look unfazed by whatever he might reveal. “Do you need me to find out if she’s okay?” Scully offers hesitantly.

“No, it’s not,” Mulder stutters, “she’s not, I mean, he’s not… He was my partner at the FBI. Several years ago. He was in an accident in an elevator today. They told me they rushed him here.”

Scully reddens just a little, embarrassed at the tiny flare of jealousy that had sparked inside her gut, and even more embarrassed to have been feeling that amidst what is obviously a difficult and tragic situation.

“I’ll see what I can do.” She angles her head toward the waiting room. “Why don’t you go sit down? What’s his name?”

“Jerry Lamana,” Mulder answers, reluctantly stumbling back down the hall.

It doesn’t take more than a couple minutes for her to find the intake records. DOA. Dead on arrival.

She’s going to have to tell Mulder that his friend is dead. They have chaplains and comfortable bereavement rooms for this kind of thing, but it seems wrong that anybody else give him the news. She smooths a hand over her hair and takes a swig of stale, lukewarm coffee from her old stained mug.

At the door of the waiting room, she meets his worried gaze and her own eyes widen. She opens her mouth to ask him to step into a private room, but closes it again when she sees that he already knows what she’s about to say. He’s read her expression effortlessly. She sees his hazel eyes fill up with tears as he stands up to go. She wants to get him out of this public space. She wants to pull him by the arm into a room where he can cry.

Instead, Mulder gives her a long look as a single tear spills over down his cheek. He nods and mouths, “thank you,” before he turns and goes.

She sees death so regularly, it feels like a blow to the stomach to remember that every death she sees as part of her day in day out business is someone's friend, someone’s partner, somebody’s lover or parent or child. It’s a difficult but essential thing to remember, or she risks becoming cold. A few tears brim in her own eyes as she realizes just how detached she has started to become. And then she feels terrible for the fact she’s also wondering if he’d called her back this week. It’s not the kind of petty thing she should be wondering about when somebody just died. But she’s wondering it anyway, and whether she’ll ever see him again.

#paging dr scully #xf fic #xf fanfic #xf alternate universe #msr fic #mywriting

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