#this entire fit is so missy scully
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you just know this was bought on a shopping trip with missy because she insisted scully would look cute in it, but it lived at the back of her closet until this moment.
#the x files#dana scully#melissa scully#tell me i’m wrong#oh that's right#you can't#this entire fit is so missy scully#she probably helped scully get ready too#rip missy#tfx
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A Jewel Beneath The Moonlight [Rewrite]
@today-in-fic | ao3
Summary: For Mulder, a wealthy English-bred socialite who's had everything given to him since birth, the Titanic is shipping him off to a prison, a life he no longer wishes for or wants. For Scully, an Irish stranger from the lower class, it offers a new life, a future she can truly envision in America. What if the universe put them on the same path to achieve those dreams at the cost of life?
Chapter Four.
“What do you think?” Monica asks, stepping back.
Scully looks at the almost unrecognisable person who stares back at her in the mirror. Monica and her maids had done an incredible job of fixing her up, taking her from the practical, albeit frumpy looking third class girl and changing her into someone who looks just the part. Her hair, which is usually braided or loose, has been twisted and braided, pinned to the top of her head. Monica had touched up the natural curls that hung around her face, wrapping the strands around the curling rod. Dana had winced at the smell and sound of burning hair but Monica assured her it was all worth it.
The dress Monica had found was red and black. The maids had modified it slightly to fit Dana’s slightly smaller frame and it hugged her in all the right places. The dress was tight, constricting, nothing she would ever picture herself wearing again. Then there was the makeup that Monica had applied herself. Her sister, Missy, put makeup on her once for Missy’s wedding; Dana’s face had burned the entire reception and party. The next day, she’d woken with her face red and puffy. Allergic reaction the medical journals had called it. When it is applied this time, Scully waits for the burning sensation but nothing happens.
Now she surveys herself in the mirror. “I look…”
“Perfect,” Monica finishes. The touches up Scully’s hair. “You look the part.”
Scully’s stomach clenches with dread but she wills it away and smiles at Monica.
“Can I offer you some advice?”
“Absolutely.”
“You look the part, now you just have to play the part. It’s all a game to them, a performance. None of it is real.”
Scully nods. She can be the perfect little actress.
“They’ll try to cast you out,” Monica continues and Scully thinks she hears a slight twinge of hatred in her voice. “Claim you aren’t one of them simply because your name isn’t as old as theirs. New money,” She spits the words out like they’re poison. “they call us as if it’s different, as if it doesn’t come from the same bank.”
Dana refrains of telling Monica that she isn’t new money, she’s…no money. Just a simple Irish girl who grew up on a potato farm who got lucky because her brother decided to play poker…who also got lucky. But Monica knows all that. This is Dana’s part to play: new money.
“So you were…poor?” Scully asks intrepidly.
Monica grins. “Oh yeah,” she says. “My parents were immigrants from Mexico. My father hit a gold mine two years ago and suddenly…we weren’t poor anymore. Not that it seems to matter to these people, they still think I don’t belong.”
“I’m sorry.”
Monica smiles sadly. “So I get it. I know what you’re going through. And that’s why I was so disgusted at Phoebe Green earlier. But she’s just jealous.”
“Jealous? Of what?”
Monica gives her a pointed look.
“Of me?” Scully could laugh. How could Phoebe Green be jealous of her.
Monica’s voice drops lower, quieter. “There’s a smart girl under there,” she says covertly. “There’s rumours she used to be quite the book reader when she was younger, and I don’t mean those sappy, romance novels you see them reading, she read real books, factual books.” Monica pauses, letting that sink in.
Dana thinks to her medical journals, their factual writings, designed to educate, the diagrams meant to inform. Missy’s confused look when she picked one up and looked through it, wondering how Dana could be interested in it and Dana’s response; “They’re not supposed to be interesting, they’re supposed to inform.” She thinks of a younger Phoebe doing the same thing, reading through so many medical journals, trying to absorb as much information as possible, like somebody is about to test you on it at a moment’s notice.
“That was until her father found out,” Monica continues, pulling Scully from her thoughts. “He told her she had no business reading such books and when Phoebe said she wanted to go to Oxford he laughed at her and apparently torched their home library not long after, attempting to burn the…” Monica looks for the word. “curiosity out of her. And it worked. She is the perfect example of what that world means. She threw away her potential for fake conversations, for pretty things but there’s a brain in there, Dana and you can’t forget that.”
Scully swallows, nodding. She sees Phoebe in a different light, in a more…dangerous light. That woman was terrifying.
“And…Fox?” Dana says. “Does he know about this?”
Monica shrugs. “I would assume so. It was what endeared her to him, after all.” She smiles knowingly. “He fell for her, you know.”
That shocks her but Scully recovers quickly. “Then what happened?”
Monica picks at the paint on the dresser. “Fox is a…different creature. A Big Foot in the desert, so to speak. He believes the grass is greener on the other side. He wants things he can’t have.” She smiles. At Scully. A chill runs down her spine at all Monica has told her tonight and suddenly, Dana doesn’t want to go. She wants to run away back to third class, to her medical journals, her stupid little brother, turn her back on the door to this world, to Mulder and his endearing smiles, his drawings, his honesty.
But she can’t. She is drawn to this world, to Mulder. They wait for her, he waits for her, his green grass on the other side. Yet the other side is filled with bogs. It is filled with prejudice, with a door slamming in her face. It is the smell of potatoes, of loud, growling, hungry stomachs, a gold cross necklace snatched from her neck, a little boy trying to feed his family, a little girl crying as he tries to take away the last connection to her father. Dana fingers that same gold cross absentmindedly, thinking.
Could that really be greener grass for someone like Mulder?
When she and Monica finally get downstairs to the dining hall, the others are waiting for them. Mulder’s brooding face lifts up when he sees her.
“Scully!” He unlinks his arm from Phoebe, striding towards her. Scully doesn’t miss the offended look Phoebe gives her.
“We didn’t keep you waiting, did we?” She looks towards Monica. Their conversations kept them longer than they planned. Monica had fell into a panic looking at the time, ushering Scully downstairs as quickly as she could. Her stomach had clenched the whole way down, telling herself just to play the game.
“Not at all.” His eyes roam her body, taking in her appearance. A flush begins spreading through her and suddenly the room is 10 degrees hotter. “You look…”
Scully wants to say Different? Strange? Abnormal?
“Beautiful,” he finally says and Scully beams. She looks towards Monica but the other woman in engaged in conversation with a man Scully doesn’t recognise. She looks around the room. There’s a lot of people she doesn’t recognise and suddenly she feels like a fish out of water, an outcast. Her eyes land back on Mulder, revelling in the familiarity. He is her anchor tonight.
He takes her arm and just as Scully is about to ask about Phoebe, Mulder looks at her, a sorry smile across his face as he drops her arm and moves to back over to Phoebe instead.
She doesn’t miss the woman’s smug smile.
“Miss Scully.”
Scully turns to find Mr Mulder standing next to her. He holds out his arm as an invitation. Scully looks around, looking for Mrs Mulder and finds her holding the arm of another man who smokes a cigarette in his free hand, chatting away to him. Mr Mulder stares at her expectantly and Scully takes it with a smile. This has to be deliberate.
“I must say Miss Reyes has done an excellent job.” His eyes skirt over her but they lack the warmth his son had earlier. “You almost look like one of us.”
Scully is about to reply with her thanks when suddenly Mr Mulder pulls her into him, hard, his nails biting into the skin of her exposed bicep. “Almost,” he repeats with emphasis, lowering his voice as he speaks into her ear. “She hasn’t quite managed to mask the smell of poverty.” He lets go of her arm and Scully glares. Mr Mulder pulls out her seat, smiling at her like nothing had happened, and gestures to it. She sits, finally able to breathe when Mr Mulder walks to his own chair.
She takes a moment to look around the room. A lot of money went into making this place look as grand as it does, from its high ceilings to the massive chandelier in the middle of the room, to even the pristine carpet. Charlie could work for his entire life and still not make up the earrings equivalent to the cost of this room.
She looks to the people seated at the tables, probably unaware of the money they are sitting in. They’ve probably never once given it thought but it’s all Scully can think about.
That is until her eyes fall to a dog that sits in its own chair, eating its own scraps of meat that looks better than what is served downstairs.
Even the dogs eat better than us, Scully thinks with a sickening thought.
Scully looks away and finds herself sitting opposite Mulder and Phoebe. She wishes they were sat next to each other but at least she can look up and see him. Mulder smiles at her, kicking her foot beneath the table and Scully smiles back, reassured as she places her foot on top of his.
His smile drops as he gazes at her and the look in his eyes steals her breathe away. She could be the only person in this room right now.
Scully breaks the eye contact, her eyes falling down to look at the plate and the cutlery that sits either side. Three spoons one side, two forks and a knife the other. Scully stares at it, bewildered and wondering why the need for so many utensils. She’s gotten through life just fine with a spoon and the occasional knife every once in a while.
She feels a nudge against her foot and looks up to see Mulder smiling at her with an amused look on his face, casually lifting up the normal looking fork as if to use it. Scully kicks his foot, unimpressed with his finding enjoyment in this.
Dinner begins and despite Scully’s initial fears the conversation doesn’t gravitate to or about her. They discuss the engagement, of what their lives will be like back in New York again, they gossip about people on the ship, so-and-so being seen with so-and-so whilst married to so-and-so. Scully doesn’t listen much, she eats her serving which is a lot more than she usually eats and plays footsy under the table with Mulder. She’s fine and somewhat happy here, eating decent food and no longer feeling like she’s out of place.
That is until the dreaded words exit Phoebe’s mouth.
“Miss Scully…”
The chatter around the table stops as all eyes fall Scully. She stops the game of footsy she’s playing with Mulder, shifting her own eyes towards Phoebe.
“How are you finding all this?” the girl asks. “Not too overwhelming, I hope.” Her voice is laced with false concern.
Scully looks around, taking in all the faces that have gathered around the table.
She swallows her food before speaking. “It’s not too much different to downstairs, actually,” she says, her eyes moving back to Phoebe. “Better food, though.” It gets a few awkward laughs. Her eyes find Monica who looks away almost disappointingly. Suddenly Scully remembers their cover story, new money and now she’s gone and blew it.
“How is steerage, Miss Scully?” Mrs Mulder asks to the side of her. “I heard the accommodations were well on this ship compared to others.”
Scully shifts in her sit, putting her fork down on the table as she leans forward to see the older woman. There was no getting out of it now.
“Beats the cargo hold on a ferry,” Scully says with a smile. “A lot less rats here, too.” She looks pointedly at Phoebe. The woman seethes.
“Miss Scully is joining us from third class,” Mr Mulder explains to the new people on the table. “She met my son the last night on the back of the ship.”
Scully sits back, cautious of the reactions around her. Some make inquiring faces towards Mr Mulder and Mulder and to each other.
An older man begins to speak. “Do you often find yourself conversing with…” he looks unsurely at Scully. “third class passengers, Fox?”
“Not usually,” Mulder admits and Scully watches with curiosity at how he handles this situation. “Though I would consider doing it again,” he looks to her then. “They are quite interesting people.”
Scully smiles, impressed.
Of course Phoebe has to ruin it.
“How is it that you’re here, Miss Scully?”
You asked me here, you eejit is just on the tip of Scully’s tongue before Phoebe herself saves them both from embarrassment and elaborates.
“I mean, how did you get on the ship with so little money?”
Scully begins to play her own game. These people want to degrade her, drag her down and make a mockery out of her, so be it. She’ll be honest.
“It was my brother, really,” Scully says. “He won the tickets when he won a game of poker. We were on our way home actually and instead we ended up here.”
“And where is home?” another man asks.
“Belfast,” she answers. “Or just outside of it to be exact.”
“Titanic was built in Belfast, wasn’t it?” Mulder asks but it’s clear he already knew the answer.
“It was,” Scully says proudly. “It’s the city’s pride and joy. We don’t have much but least we have Titanic.”
“Do you and your brother travel around together a lot?” Mrs Mulder asks.
“Only recently.” She thinks to Charlie who is probably wondering where is she. Or he’s too drunk to care. “He’s fifteen, see, so he’s only just been allowed out of my mother’s eye. He’s never been one to stay put and has wanted to leave Ireland for a while now. Mam wanted me to watch over him, make sure he didn’t get into trouble and that.”
“Looks like all mothers are the same regardless of class,” Mulder says and Mrs Mulder smiles though it looks like it takes a lot of effort.
“How is Ireland given the, er…circumstances?” somebody asks.
Scully pauses. Her battle-worn country wasn’t doing so well lately.
“It could be better.” she says truthfully.
“They should leave Ireland alone,” Mulder says seriously. The table falls quiet minus some disgruntled grunts. “It’s obvious they don’t want to be under the union, just give up and leave it be.”
Scully sits back in her seat, enamoured with Mulder’s statement.
“Doesn’t work that way, son,” Mr Mulder says.
“Why not?” asks Mulder, sincerely.
Before Mr Mulder can answer, Phoebe cuts in.
“Do we have to talk politics tonight? It grows heavily tiresome.”
It’s that comment that has Scully transported back to her conversation with Monica. A sudden image of a young Phoebe reading about politics comes to mind. She wished she’d asked Monica if the rumours said what Phoebe had been interested in.
Her eyes catch Monica’s who smiles, giving her that knowing look and Scully turns back to Phoebe who is laughing at something the man beside her just said. It was politics she was interested in and a sudden pang of sorrow takes over Scully.
Just like that the conversation drifts to something else, something other than Scully or Ireland to which Scully is grateful for.
Dinner moves on, course after course, full from her firsts Scully declines another and soon grows bored. Mulder is in deep conversation with a man who introduced himself to the table as John Byers, Phoebe talks with the fourth woman who had been on the deck earlier- she is called Heidi, is the same age as Scully, and is pregnant with her second child. Monica has disappeared to another table, Scully can hear her loud laughter to which the other patrons look towards her with disapproving glares. Nobody is paying any attention to her, the novelty of a third class passenger in their midst having worn off. Her mind wanders to downstairs, to the party that is no doubt commencing down there and how much she longs to be there with them not up here with sore ears from the piano music and her head hurting with trying to keep up with these people.
Mulder catches her attention with a tap against her foot as he mouths, You want to go?
Looking around, still nobody paying attention to her, she nods.
“Father,” says Mulder. “I’m going to take Dana back to the gate.”
Mr Mulder looks towards Scully, “Have we tired you out already?”
Beginning to stand, Scully replies, “I’m afraid so.” She turns to Phoebe. “Thank you for the invite, Miss Green. I’ve enjoyed it.”
Phoebe smiles, an act for the people. “My pleasure, Miss Scully.” She turns to Mulder then, grabbing his arm. “You won’t be too long?” she asks.
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
He presses a kiss to the side of her cheek in goodbye and Scully feels her heart twisting painfully at the sight.
The cool air is welcoming, as is the freedom, too. She’d done well, Scully, even with the less-than-appealing questions. He was proud, though he had no right to be.
“So, how did I do?” she asks, as if reading his mind, a habit they had seemed to fall into.
“Amazing,” he says. His eyes roam her body again. God, she looked stunning. Not that she didn’t always but seeing her dressed up like this made him crave more. He would sit through a thousand first class dinners if it meant his view could always be her dressed like this. “You fitted right in.”
She smiles bashfully at the decking. He likes it when she grows shy.
“Did you enjoy it?” Mulder asks. He knows what the answer will be but just out of curiosity really.
Her answer is as expected.
“Does anyone enjoy that?” She giggles to herself and it’s a sound Mulder finds himself wanting to hear again. “I think one night is good enough for me.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” He thinks back to that dinner, to the one pressing matter he’s most anxious for her to hear.
“I meant what I said in there, about Ireland, it should be its own country.”
They stop just outside the third class gate. She looks up at him, searching, woefully. “I’m afraid you’re preaching to the choir.” She looks down then, to the stairs, to where the sounds of a party are escaping through the cracks in the door. It sounds appealing, fun, something Mulder has yet to experience of this ship, save from his meetings with Scully.
“Come down with me,” she says suddenly, her eyes big and asking.
Mulder begins to shake his head. “I- I can’t…” he begins, though he wants to protest. “I promised Phoebe…”
Scully sighs, big and heavy, exasperated. “And how many of those promises have you actually kept?” He blinks at her. She sighs once more, calming herself down and shaking her head. “Whatever. You go back and have fun in there.” She spins, beginning to unlock the gate. Mulder stands there, watching, his heart heavy, his heart telling him to go down there and just have some fucking fun, it’s not going to hurt.
“Scully…” he says, catching her arm and she turns. “Will I be okay down there?”
“They’ll be too drunk to care.”
It’s loud and busy. A band composed of various instruments play in the corner, their music floating around the room, upbeat and celebratory. It’s a celebration of life down here, people dancing with whoever, others who drink, play poker, darts, laugh. It’s alive. There’s no need for talking, no need for language or verbal communication, they communicate through dance and laughs, everything is clear and there are no lies. They’re just people. Just people living.
He sits on a stool, a Guinness beside him and watches Scully dance in circles with a little boy who stared imploringly at her hair, not that Mulder can blame the boy, he too has often found himself captivated with it.
He likes it here, likes how he has this corner to himself and he can just appreciate everything- appreciate Scully more so- how much happier she looks down here. She had excused herself to go change when they got downstairs and now she is back in her usual attire, her hair loose but clipped back from her face, her natural curls mixed in with the curls Monica had made. The makeup had remained, though now it was smeared in places from sweat. She was breathtaking.
His gaze stays on her. He can be a voyeur down here; he can watch her without feeling like he’s intruding or looking at her like a creature of wonder. He never has but when it’s just them, and when she looks back at him, he feels like he is.
The boy yawns and the two stop what they’re doing. She wanders back over to Mulder once she’s sent the boy off, a full smile doing its own dance across her face.
“His name’s Willem,” she says as she picks up his drink and drinks from it. Mulder doesn’t protest, they can share everything if she wants.
“Come dance with me?” she shouts over the noise and Mulder had been distracted with the thought of her saliva on his glass that it had taken a moment for him to process her request.
This he protests.
“No…no…” he says, shaking his head.
Scully rolls her eyes, outstretching his hand. “Come on. I’m sure a rich fella like yourself learned how to dance.”
The truth is, his parents had tried to teach him, put both him and Sam in lessons when they were younger and while Sam had naturally excelled (even though she protested originally) he’d lumbered about like a giant (it got worse when he actually grew into a giant)
“And even if you canna,” Scully continues. “Neither can anybody else here.”
Mulder thinks about that for a second, before looking around the room to see that the ‘dancing’ was really just jumping in time to the music. Somewhat less nervous, he takes her hand and pulls himself up.
His hand naturally gravitates to the dip of her waist, and only then does he become aware of how close they are. They bask in the moment of just being free to touch each other, away from all those who might say otherwise. They can do as they like down here and nobody upstairs would know any different.
The tension is broken when a smile breaks out across Scully’s face. “We’re essentially in a tavern, Mulder,” she tells him. “You don’t have to be so formal.”
Mulder doesn’t feel formal; his tie off, buttons undone, sleeves rolled up (he hadn’t missed Scully’s look when he’d done that) He takes his hand out of hers, missing the feeling of it, as it joins his other one at her waist.
There’s a break in the music and Mulder, nervous once more, leans down towards her.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Scully shrugs, “Just do what everything else does.”
And with that, there’s the change of music. Instantly he spins her and then begins jumping around the room, weaving their way in and out of people who are also doing the same thing. It’s fun, Mulder thinks, dancing is actually fun, he could spend the night doing this if he wanted to.
Time speeds up and he has no idea how long he’s been gone for. They know where he is and who he’s with and Mulder couldn’t care any less. He’s six beers in, ready to spend all of Daddy’s money in one night, and in the middle of an arm-wrestling match with someone he thinks is from Belgium.
He refuses to lose, that competitive schoolboy coming out of him. His opponent seems to be the same. There’s no winnings at the end of this- no money or even a free drink. They play for the fun of it.
Mulder loses and he shakes Mr Belgium’s hand and moves on.
Later in the night when the bar has emptied out, the music stopped playing, losing count of how many beers he’s drank but knowing he’s drank enough for the room to be a wee bit out of focus, he gets into a conversation with an American about baseball. Barely anybody in England really knew what he was talking about half the time.
Scully also listens with drunken rapture and he explains the rules to her with a promise that they will play as soon as the ship docks.
The party slowly comes to an end with those left slowly drifting off to their rooms, the bar closing and the band packing away. Mulder sits back in the corner, slouched against the bench, head down, as the room spins around him.
“Think we need to get you to bed,” he hears Scully say.
Lifting up his head, his stomach lurching slightly, a heavy loopy grin crosses his face as he sees two Scullys in front of him.
“Only if I get to go in yours,” he answers back, too happy and drunk to care about the consequences.
He sees her bite her lip and it’s incredibly attractive.
“Come on,” she says, ignoring his comment and helping him stand up.
It was worth the try.
He tries his best to get himself up the stairs but all he wants to do is shut his eyes a sleep, the world spins and he can feel the ship rocking back and forth on the waves making everything worse and he doesn’t like it. He just wants to curl up next to Scully, she’ll make it all go away.
They get up the stairs and he stumbles against the wall, needing a moment to just breathe in the salty air and hope he doesn’t throw up.
“Jesus Christ, how much have you had to drink?” Scully asks.
“A lot more than I usually do,” Mulder says, shutting his eyes against the spinning and the rocking and the overwhelming urge to just throw up.
He opens his eyes and she’s incredibly close to him, concern littered across her features. He focuses on Scully, wills himself to see just one, to use her as a way to calm his twisting stomach.
But something changes as the two Scullys become one Scully, his Scully and he’s had so much fun tonight then he can remember having, he wants this fun for the rest of his life.
He moves forward, ready to capture it, to take that fun and make it stay, make it never go away.
But her hand falls to his chest and all she needs to say is one name.
“Phoebe…”
It sobers him up. Or he sobers himself up. He nods slowly, bringing himself to full height. Phoebe, he thinks over and over again. Phoebe doesn’t deserve this.
Content that he now isn’t going to throw up, or pass out, or whatever Scully moves away from him, taking her hand off his chest and he immediately misses the contact.
Phoebe…Phoebe…Phoebe…
“Goodnight, Mr Mulder,” Scully says, she opens the gate, allowing him to leave.
And Mulder goes, against everything he goes, back to Phoebe, back to his life.
He makes sure to watch Scully go back down the stairs, however, until she disappears from sight.
“Goodnight, Miss Scully,” he mutters to the space she’s left behind.
With a sigh, and a hand rubbing his face, Mulder prepares to leave it all behind and savour the fun he’s had, the world Scully’s opened up to him. Just as he’s about to walk, a voice stops him.
“Had a fun night, Mulder?”
And Mulder’s blood turns cold.
#the x-files#the x files#txf fic#xfiles fanfiction#a jewel beneath the moonlight rewatch#titanic au#scullysexualwrites
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Only One Choice, Part 2, Chapter 23
Read it here on AO3 / Tagging @today-in-fic
It doesn’t feel real until she sees the flutter on the ultrasound, the grey and white pixels flashing erratically confirming a healthy ten-week pregnancy. The doctor gives them a due date of September 17th, and she explains to Mulder repeatedly that the due date is only an estimate, that the baby will most likely arrive sometime in the two weeks before or after that day. Nonetheless, he prints little numbers in the corner of each date on the calendar, counting down.
She is lucky to experience very little nausea, but the time saved clinging to the toilet is instead allocated to bursting into tears at every tiny inconvenience. Mulder comforts her with a confused expression when she cries because she can’t find a Tupperware lid that fits, or her latte has too much foam, or she realizes she can no longer see her toes. She cries because she’s crying, because she feels out of touch with her own body and thrown off by her own emotions. They marvel at the growth of her belly as well as her breasts, which are even more sensitive than they were before. Her libido kicks into overdrive at the same time that she becomes incredibly self conscious about her protruding belly, her fuller face, her swelling feet. This leads to more tears as she grapples with both wanting desperately to be touched and not wanting him to look at her.
He tells her each day how beautiful she is, her hair growing longer and thicker, her skin glowing, her rounding belly housing the perfect little life that they created together. When he’s home, he rubs her feet every night, fetches her countless glasses of water and then helps tow her out of the bed so she can pee ten times in the night. When he’s on the road with Monica, he calls three times a day, asks Missy and her mother to go by and check on her, calls in dinner to be delivered so she doesn't have to cook. As her due date nears, he stops going on out-of-town cases, needing to be close enough to be by her side immediately when she goes into labor. He will not risk missing the birth of his child.
The apartment becomes cramped with a bassinet, changing table, pack n play, and various other baby gadgets. They consider moving, but the idea is too overwhelming for Scully so they decide to stay put until the baby becomes mobile and they really need more space. Mulder breaks the lease on his apartment and moves his fish tank into the living room, putting the rest of his furniture in storage until they buy a house. Priscilla breaks in all the baby gear, sleeping in the car seat and jumping into the swing, covering the tiny onesies with her black fur and making Scully cry yet again. Mulder refuses to let her scoop the litter box, even though she insists it’s safe if she wears gloves and washes her hands afterward. Other tasks she’s forbidden to complete include cleaning the toilet, carrying in the groceries and hauling laundry to the washing machine. When he’s on the road, she misses him as much as she is relieved to be able to be independent, not much caring for being treated as though she’s made of glass.
For the majority of her pregnancy, Scully insists that she doesn’t want to know the sex of the baby, that she wants to be surprised. Mulder respects her decision, even though he would personally like to know, and they create two lists of potential baby names, Scully crossing off “Lisa Marie'' each time Mulder tries to add it to the “girl” column. When she reaches 39 weeks, her pelvis widening as the baby drops into the birth canal, she is so miserable that she has a change of heart, needing to feel connected to this thing that is destroying her body and stealing her sleep. They call the doctor together on a Thursday afternoon as Scully sits on the couch in tears, having woken that morning to find angry red stretch marks marring her previously lily-white belly. When Mulder relays the doctor’s message that the baby is a girl, she sobs harder, and he’s not sure whether it’s because she’s happy or disappointed.
She wakes him at 3:00 am on September 21st, the irregular Braxton-Hicks contractions she’s been feeling for weeks having taken up a predictable cadence, now ten minutes apart almost on the dot. He starts rushing around, scrambling for her hospital bag and his shoes, and now it is her turn to provide comfort, to let him know there’s plenty of time. She doesn’t want to go to the hospital until the contractions are five minutes apart, and so they wait. The progression to nine minutes, then eight, then seven is alarmingly fast, and by the time she agrees that they should head to the hospital she’s starting to feel pressure low in her pelvis. Mulder drives too fast, the streets thankfully still quiet in the early morning, and she is wheeled into labor and delivery with not enough time for an epidural, much to her lament.
Molly Katherine Mulder has blue eyes and a dark shock of nearly-black hair. She barely cries at her entrance to the world, instead searching the room with a curious gaze, squeezing her daddy’s finger with an impressively strong grip and latching like a pro. They are able to go home the following day, Scully wincing as she moves gingerly from the bed to the couch, rinsing her tender stitches with a bottle of warm water and bleeding through entire packages of overnight maxi pads in a day.
Mulder takes off work for two weeks and they spend blissful days curled up in bed with the baby nestled between them as Priscilla curiously sniffs around her, licking her hair with a rough tongue and making them laugh. Each time Scully wakes at night to nurse, Mulder insists she go back to sleep while he changes the baby and walks her around the quiet apartment until she is asleep, singing softly and lulling them both.
When Mulder returns to work, Scully insists that he get a full night's sleep and let her wake up with Molly, reasoning that she can take naps during the day. She does not, of course, take naps during the day. Instead she tries to keep the apartment clean, the clothes washed, the diapers taken out to the dumpster, the litter box scooped. She does too much, and he sees it each day as she grows more and more weary, more and more defeated, the bags under her eyes deepening in color and her mouth rarely hosting a smile. He begs her to let him do more, to ask less of herself, but she is stubborn and strong-willed, the very things he loves about her now keeping her from properly taking care of herself.
They struggle through sleep-deprived arguments over who left the breast milk out on the counter all night, why it matters if he changes the baby on the floor instead of the changing table, why Scully doesn’t want to supplement with formula so he can take some of the night feedings. Her doctor releases her as medically clear to have sex after six weeks and she cries as she tells him that she doesn’t feel ready, that she can’t imagine anything worse than sex right now, and he holds her as he tells her that he doesn’t care, that she should take as much time as she needs, that he can wait.
They struggle, and they thrive. Moments of absolute unadulterated joy are punctuated by intense despair and overwhelm. The gain of a family against the loss of a life where you could pick up and go, stay out until 2:00 am and make love in the middle of the day. They are happy, and they are stressed, and they face it together.
On a Saturday in December, Mulder wakes early and takes care of every conceivable task in the house; the laundry, the dishes, cleaning the bathroom, scooping the litter, buying the groceries. He checks every item off Scully’s to-do list and then takes Molly for a long drive, leaving Scully alone with nothing to do in hopes that she will rest for once. When they return from their excursion, he creeps into the quiet apartment with a sleeping baby in his arms and sets her in the bassinet by the couch. At first he thinks maybe Scully has gone out, but he finds her in bed asleep with soaking wet hair, Priscilla curled up behind her knees. He watches her for a bit, affection clutching at his chest, then changes into sweats and kicks Priscilla out so he can snuggle up behind Scully. It feels so infrequent that they just lay like this anymore; one of them is always about to get up with the baby, about to get ready for work, or doesn’t want to be touched after a tiny person has clung to them all day. He pulls in a deep breath, smelling her lavender bubble bath and feeling the rise and fall of her ribs against his chest. He doesn’t want to disturb her, but he can’t resist pressing a tiny kiss to the side of her neck.
“Mmmm,” she hums in response, twisting her body around so they are face to face.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” he whispers.
“It’s okay. Where’s Molly?”
“She’s asleep in the living room.”
She sighs and snuggles closer to him, pressing her forehead into his chest and pushing one of her legs between his.
“This feels nice,” she says contentedly, and he brushes his hand softly up and down her back.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Tired. Frumpy. Like I haven’t put on real clothes or a stitch of makeup in three months,” she laments.
“Well, I’ll give you tired,” he says softly, “but I can’t agree on frumpy. I think you look very beautiful.”
She scoffs against his chest.
“You don’t have to placate me, Mulder. I know I’m a mess.”
“Maybe so, but you’re my mess,” he retorts, pushing his fingers into her hair to gently scratch her scalp.
She tilts her head up to look at him, appraising his face with a skeptical eye.
“Is this what you thought it was going to be like?” she asks, her tone open and vulnerable.
“I don’t know,” he answers honestly, “I guess I didn’t really know what to expect.”
She sighs. “I just wish I knew when I might start to feel like myself again,” she says sadly. “I can’t help but feel like you’re not getting what you signed up for.”
“What do you mean?” he asks with a concerned frown.
He sees her eyes growing glassy, dampening with impending tears. “I mean the woman you asked out in the autopsy bay isn’t the one you’re with now,” she whispers, swallowing against the lump in her throat.
“That’s not even a little bit true,” he implores, cradling the back of her head with his hand. “You are everything you were then, and more. I’m amazed by you every day.”
She closes her eyes, a tear rolling across the bridge of her nose. He feels his chest ache; the need to make her understand is overwhelming.
“Hey,” he says, pulling the blankets back, “come here.”
He pulls her into a sitting position and slides off the bed, towing her along with him to sit on the edge of the mattress. He kneels on the floor between her knees, his hands on her hips.
“If you think for one second that I want to be with anyone but you, you’re fucking insane. I don’t care if you wear giant milk-stained T-shirts and have spit up in your hair for the rest of our lives, Scully. You’re it for me, okay?”
She pulls in a shuddering breath and wipes at her eyes, but won’t look at him.
“Stay here,” he commands, and disappears into the bathroom for a moment. When he comes back, he returns to his post kneeling at her feet.
“We knew this was going to be hard,” he says tenderly, holding one of her hands in his. “You said it yourself before Molly was born, that it would be the hardest time in our lives, and that we’d be at our worst. And I’m telling you that if this is your worst, sign me up, okay? It hasn’t changed how I feel about you.”
He holds up his other hand, a diamond ring perched between his thumb and forefinger.
“If you’re not ready to say yes yet, that’s okay, but I need you to know that I still want to marry you, Scully. I’ll wait forever if that’s what you need, but there hasn’t been a single day since I asked that I haven’t still meant it.”
Her tears have stopped, though her eyes are still wet and the tip of her nose is red. She looks from him to the ring and back, her eyebrows stitched in contemplation.
“I didn’t hear you ask me a question,” she says quietly, and he picks up on the slightest lilt of playfulness in her voice, which makes him break out into a smile.
“Dana Katherine Scully, love of my life, mother of my child, will you marry me?”
She smiles then, and he thinks his heart may burst right out of his chest.
“Yes, I’ll marry you,” she answers, and he takes her left hand, slipping the ring on her finger.
She wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him repeatedly, soft pecks devolving into lingering smooches as he shifts up slightly, pushing her back gently to recline on the bed. He moves over her, kissing along her jaw and down her neck, not going any further, not wanting to rush her.
She brings her hands to his hips, letting the tips of her fingers slip under the waist of his sweatpants, and his cock stirs. It’s been so, so, long, and he wants her desperately, but not until she’s ready. She pushes her hand down the front of his pants, gripping him as he grows hard under her touch. It’s overwhelming in the best way; he feels like a teenager being touched for the first time.
“I wanna have sex,” she breathes into his ear, the words rushing out quickly as though she’s afraid she might change her mind if she waits too long to say them.
He pulls back to look at her. “Are you sure?” he asks, and she nods, bringing her palm to his cheek before glancing at the ring on her finger and smiling.
They move slowly, though still with a sense of urgency that a baby sleeping in the next room brings. He pushes her shirt up and she lets him take it off, then slips the yoga pants off her hips, leaving her in basic black cotton briefs. He sees the hesitancy in her eyes as he looks at her body, now softer than it was before Molly, curvy in different places, purple streaks running from below her belly button to disappear under her panties.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs, kissing her chest, her breasts, her belly, running his tongue along the grooves of her stretch marks. He loops his thumbs under the waist of her panties and tugs them down slowly, quickly undressing before he rejoins her in the bed.
“Tell me if anything hurts, okay?” he asks with a serious expression, and she nods, letting her legs fall open as he settles between them. He lines himself up with her entrance and pushes in achingly slowly, watching her face raptly. Her mouth opens slightly, and she takes in a sharp little breath. He’s about to ask her if it hurts when she closes her eyes and her mouth drops open further as she breathes out “oh,” in a way that he knows means pleasure, not pain. When he’s all the way in, their hip bones pressed together tightly, he stills and kisses her for a while, feeling like he could melt into a puddle for how good everything feels. His heart, his mind, his body, he is all wrapped up in her and it’s exactly where he wants to be.
He begins to move, and she responds with an arch of her back and a little gasp, her hands clutching at his shoulders. Little by little, he increases his pace until he knows he won’t last much longer.
“What do you need?” he asks, and she brings her hand to her breast.
He dips his head, flicking at the hardened bud of her nipple, and feels her clench around him. He plays with the level of pressure, licking and sucking, pleasantly surprised that she is enjoying it even as her breasts have taken on a purely functional role these last few months.
She pulls in a huge breath, arching her back and pressing her head into the mattress and he groans as he feels her tighten around him. She emits a single piercing cry when she comes, stifling it with an arm slung across her mouth. He pours into her, burying his face in her neck, clinging to her like a life raft. She is, in fact, all he needs to survive.
Resting half his weight on the mattress beside her, he stays inside as they both come down, panting and smiling, brushing hands over each other’s skin, reconnecting.
“Ah!” Molly yells from the living room, and Mulder laughs.
“You’re being summoned,” Scully says with a tender smile.
He withdraws from her, handing her his T-shirt to clean up while he slips on his sweatpants and retrieves Molly from her bassinet.
“Guess what, Goose?” he says, using his special nickname for her, “Mommy and Daddy are getting married.”
“AH!” She squeals, flapping her arms.
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New Fic: “Snapshots and Moments”
Melissa and Monica take a cross-country trip, during which they make a discover that brings changes to the Mulder-Scully family. I anticipate that this will be the last installment in my 1960s AU, which, at the point this story is set, is now a 1980s AU. Special thanks to Gillian Anderson for writing “all things” so that I had two canonical wlw to include in this fic! Rated G, also here on Ao3. The whole series is here.
.....
Snapshot:
The whole family, on Christmas eve. They’ve got a lot of people this year, now that they bought the house, now that they moved out of the city (still nearby, though). Emily’s smiling, holding the present she got to open early, a doll with three outfits that Melissa and Monica gave her. She’s in between Mulder, a little blurry from running back to his spot before the timer went, and Dana, her head tipped back, one hand on her stomach (the baby’s due in May). On the left, Melissa and Monica, arms around each other; on the right, Charlie, wearing a hideous Christmas sweater and a grin. Even Bill and Tara came this year, with Matthew, who’s looking curiously at his relatives. It’s a beautiful picture, Dana thinks, once she sees it printed. It’s not perfect; all families have fault lines and fractures, and the ones she’s part of are no exception. But it’s them, all together this year, happy and whole.
.....
Moment:
Dana and Melissa talk in the kitchen after dinner, once everyone’s getting ready to head their different ways. “You’ll keep in touch with us?” Dana asks. “Call? Or write at least? I just want to know where you are.”
“Don’t worry,” Melissa says. “I’ll make sure I don’t end up in a ditch.”
“Melissa,” Dana says. “Please. Don’t joke about that.”
“Okay, I’m sorry,” Melissa says. “I’ll take care of myself, okay? So I can keep spoiling my favorite niece.” She smiles at Emily, who’s sitting in one of the kitchen chairs, half asleep and half absorbed in her doll. “Besides, Monica won’t let me do anything dumb.”
“What are you saying about me?” Monica asks, coming into the kitchen.
“That you’re my better half,” Melissa says, pulling her to her. “That you won’t let me get into danger on the trip. And that you’ll even get me to write to Dana.”
“Of course we’ll write!” Monica says. “Don’t you want Dana to know what we’re doing? We can send her pictures and everything. And then we’ll have a record of the whole thing, for later.”
Dana laughs. “Well, I can count on one of you, anyway. Thanks, Monica.”
“No problem!” Monica says. “And I don’t know what kind of danger Melissa could get into, anyway. We’re just going to be driving around. Seeing different places. It’s a big country, right? And we’ve never seen most of it.”
“Yeah, don’t worry, Dana,” Melissa says. “It’ll be great. And we will write, and we won’t even be gone that long. Unless we find a place we really like and decide to stay there longer. We’re keeping it open.”
“True,” Monica says. “Who knows what we might find?”
“Who knows?” Dana agrees. She stretches to try to get a bowl back on the top shelf. That’s the one thing she doesn’t like about this house: the kitchen might be well-proportioned for Mulder, but for her, the shelves seem very high.
“Here, I’ll get it,” Monica says, taking the bowl and putting it away.
“Yeah, don’t strain yourself,” Melissa says. “Don’t overdo it. You don’t want to have the baby until we get back.”
“I hope not,” Dana says, “seeing that I’m not due for four and a half months. How long are you planning to be driving cross-country for? I know it’s a big country, but it’s not that big.”
“Well, we’re not planning to be gone that long,” Melissa says, “but like I said, we’re keeping it open. Here, we’ll give you the number every time we’re staying somewhere, okay? And then you can call if you’re having the baby, and we’ll come back.”
Dana shakes her head. “I don’t think you have a great understanding of how human gestation works.”
“Probably not,” Melissa says, “since I’ve never gestated anything. Don’t plan to either. I’m one of those cool aunt types.”
“You’re ridiculous, is what you are,” Dana says, but she’s laughing, and she pulls Melissa close to hug her. “I’ll miss you guys,” she says. “You will write, really?”
“For the last time, yes,” Melissa says. “We’ll write so much you’ll be begging us to stop.”
Bill, Tara, and Matthew have already left, and now Melissa and Monica leave with Charlie; they’re all driving to the train station together. Dana and Mulder stand on the steps to see them off, turning out the light once the car is out of sight.
“We’d better get Emily in bed,” Dana says then. “Tell her Santa won’t come otherwise.” She’s not sure Emily still believes entirely—she’s got a suspicious look sometimes when Santa comes up—but it’s worth a try.
“Good thinking,” Mulder says. “Then we can get us in bed. How does that sound?”
“Good,” she says, and he kisses her, and they go inside.
.....
Snapshot:
Melissa leaning against a car, wearing sunglasses and sticking out her tongue. The setting is a generic gas station; you wouldn’t be able to tell where it was except for the 30 MILES TO CHICAGO sign in the background. It falls out of the envelope along with a letter.
Dear Dana,
Well, no danger yet! I even have a picture to prove it—I can promise that Monica and I were both alive when she took it.
So far, it’s been beautiful. It’s great not having any kind of schedule and just doing and going wherever we feel like that day. We’re in Chicago now, but we probably won’t stay here that long. Cities are nice, but we like being outside much better. Seeing what nature’s like in different places.
Tell my favorite niece that we’re bringing her lots of presents when we get back! I also bought you a dress, and MONICA said she thought you would like it, so if you don’t, you can’t just blame my taste. We don’t have anything for Mulder yet, but we’ll keep looking.
We miss you! Monica says to give you her love. We’ll be back soon though, probably. Sometime in the next month to year. Only joking! We’ll write again so you know.
Love,
Missy
.....
Moment:
Mulder’s home before she is, tonight. “You got a letter,” he says when she comes in. “From Melissa, it looks like.”
“Oh, good!” Dana says. She takes the envelope he hands her and opens it, reading her sister’s words. “They’re having a great time,” she tells him. “And…oh gosh…they bought me a dress.”
“Looking forward to seeing that one,” Mulder says. Melissa and Dana have discovered, over the course of their lifetimes, that they can’t agree at all on clothing purchases. And yet somehow there’s an optimism that leads them to try anyway, at times.
“It was a nice thought, at least,” she says. “I wonder if I’ll fit into it.” She looks down at her stomach; she already feels huge, and there are still months to go.
“You look beautiful,” Mulder says softly, putting a hand on her back. “And you’ll look beautiful in this dress, no matter what it’s like.”
“Thank you,” she says. “How was work today?”
“Hard,” he says, “but worth doing. You?”
“The same, actually,” she says. It’s a little ritual they have, variations on these words. She’s proud of him. She knows he’s proud of her.
.....
Snapshot:
A car parked by the side of the road, surrounded by fields. Wheat as far as the eye can see. Monica leaning against the car this time, also wearing sunglasses, also sticking out her tongue.
Dear Dana,
Melissa said we should send a picture of me this time, so that you know I’m sound in body. I think she’s having a little too much fun with this.
We took this picture in Kansas, which we just left; it’s not going to win a prize for most exciting state, but I still liked it. We sat in the car for a long time last night, watching the stars.
I hope you and everyone else is doing well—say hi to Mulder and Emily, of course, and to everyone else if you see them. I found a store with some of the weirdest postcards I’ve ever seen, so I sent them to Langly. They seemed like his kind of thing. And we got some little things for Emily, and something for the baby too. It’s nice to have two nieces/a niece and a nephew to get presents for.
We’re looking forward to getting to the coast—we have some friends out there we’re planning to see. But I’ll write again when I get the chance.
Love,
Monica
.....
Moment:
It’s a busy evening for them, so Dana reads Monica’s letter later, once Emily’s in bed and things are a little stiller. She shows it to Mulder too. “It sounds like they’re having a good time,” he says. “And like Emily might not have any space in her room, with all the things they’re getting her.”
“They like spoiling her,” Dana says; she’s nestled into the corner of the couch, her back against the cushions. “That’s what aunts are for.” The baby kicks then, and she puts a hand to the spot. “Yes,” she says, “they’ll spoil you too, once you get here.”
“Moving around?” Mulder asks, and when she nods he moves closer too, interlacing his hand with hers. “We should think about names,” he says.
“Yeah,” she says. “Make a list, maybe.”
“Lot of names out there,” he says.
She’s not sure how to ask, but she does. “If she’s a girl,” she says, “would you…do you want to call her Samantha?” It seems right to give him that choice, to make that the first option they consider. She knows Samantha is always a central presence in his thoughts, no matter how many years go by. That might mean he wants to use the name, or it might mean he doesn’t. But she needs to at least ask, to let him know she’s thinking about it with him.
He's quiet for a minute. “I’m not sure,” he says, eventually. “I think I might.”
“We don’t have to decide today,” she says, and they nestle together on the couch, their hands still joined over the curve of her abdomen, where their baby moves and kicks.
.....
Snapshot:
Four women under the trees. Melissa and Monica have their arms around each other; Monica’s a little tanned from their travels, Melissa a little burned. Colleen and Carol stand to each side of them; Colleen has her arm flung out in an expansive gesture, as if showing them the lay of the land. They’re all wearing sweaters or sweatshirts—Oregon is cold this time of year. There isn’t much foliage, out on the farm. But they’re here.
.....
Moment:
“Thanks, Sally,” Colleen says, to the woman who took the picture.
Sally nods, handing the camera back. “It’s no problem!” she says cheerfully.
“Do you want us to take one with you in it?” Melissa asks.
“No,” Sally says. “No, that’s okay,” and she turns and hurries off towards one of the buildings.
“Did I say something to upset her?” Melissa asks.
“No,” Carol says. “No, Sally’s just like that. She’s great! But she’s a little shy.”
The wind is picking up, so they turn to go inside themselves too. “It’s really so beautiful here,” Melissa says.
“Yeah,” Monica says. “Reminds me of where I grew up, a little. It wasn’t exactly like this, of course. But just having land.”
“You two should stay out here!” Colleen says. “You know you’d be welcome.”
Carol nods. “Really, think about it. You don’t know how great it is until you’re here. I mean, we were in the city for years, and we thought we had a great community”—Colleen nods, beside her—“but this is so much better.”
“And not just the land,” Colleen says. “You honestly don’t know how much energy men are taking up until they’re not around anymore.”
Melissa laughs. “I bet. Well, maybe someday. What do you think, Monica?”
“Maybe.” Monica shrugs.
“This trip has been amazing,” Melissa says, “but I still like the city too, you know. We have our friends there. And I like being near my sister.”
“No shame in that,” Colleen says. “But even if you wanted to stay for a while, that’d be all right. Most of the women don’t stay here forever.”
Women are working together in the kitchen when they get inside; they exchange greetings. “Here,” Melissa says, “we can help,” and the four of them join in the work. Melissa sees Sally again, when she’s getting some jars off the shelf. She smiles, and after a moment Sally smiles back, tentative. Her hair is curling over her shoulders. For a second she looks familiar, and then it’s gone.
.....
Snapshot:
A group of women, sitting together after dinner, in one of the common areas of the farm. The room is warm and inviting. Monica’s looking directly at the camera, and so is Colleen, a wry smile on her face, but most of the others are intent on their own conversations, their own occupations. Sally’s sitting in the background; she’s not looking, but you can see her face in profile. Her hair is braided back.
......
Moment:
“Here, I’ll take it,” Monica says, when the picture comes out of the camera. She begins to shake it briskly, turning to join Colleen and Carol’s conversation. Melissa puts down the camera then, stretching, and starts to wander around the room. Sally looks up as she passes, smiling.
“Hi,” Melissa says. “Mind if I sit?”
“Please,” Sally says, indicating the space next to her on the couch.
Melissa flops down. “It’s really beautiful here,” she says. “I love the energy.”
“Yeah,” Sally says. “Me too. It’s my favorite kind of place.” As Melissa looks at her, she goes on, saying, “I don’t think I could ever…I wouldn’t want to have a family, or anything like that. Nothing where you’re just with a few people all the time. But something like this, where you can meet a bunch of different people, be a part of something, that’s what I like.”
It's the most Melissa’s heard her say since they got here, and she’s intrigued. Not that she doesn’t sympathize with some aspects of what Sally’s said. “Families can be a trip, can’t they?” she says.
“I don’t like having people think I belong to them,” Sally says. “I don’t belong to anyone, right? Nobody has to.”
“That’s right,” Melissa says. “No one owns us.” But she wonders if she’s coming at this from the same point of view Sally is. She certainly has family she wouldn’t want to give up—Monica counts in that category, in everything but legality, and there’s Dana too, and Charlie. And while she’s mostly made her peace with it, these days, she wasn’t the one to give up her parents. She likes to think she’s a free spirit; it’s how she’s seen herself for a long time. But she doesn’t know if she’d want to be like Sally, cutting all ties and enjoying it.
“It’s not that I don’t like people,” Sally says. “Just…you know. Not too much.” She smiles at Melissa then, and Melissa smiles back, and then Monica yells that they’re going to play Scrabble.
“Do you want to join us?” Melissa asks.
“Sure,” Sally says, and she follows Melissa back across the room. She’s good, too; she knows a lot of words that Melissa hasn’t heard of, but when they check in the dictionary they’re always real ones. “I read a lot,” Sally says, her braid falling over her shoulder, trailing on the board as she studies her letters. Melissa looks at her face. That familiarity again. She’s pretty sure they’ve never met, though. She doesn’t know what it is.
She talks to Monica about it that night, where they’re in the room that was allotted to them; it’s small, tucked up in a corner of the attic, but it’s cozy, with a heater and a beautiful wool blanket on the bed. “Do you think Sally looks familiar?” she says.
Monica considers. “I didn’t notice. She was never in our group in New York, was she?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Melissa says. “Unless she came once or twice or something. College?” They only overlapped for a semester before Melissa dropped out, and Sally looks a bit younger than her, but maybe Monica will remember something.
“I’m pretty sure she wasn’t,” Monica says.
Melissa lies down on the bed. “It’s going to drive me crazy. Someone she looks like, maybe?”
“Michelle?”
“Who?”
“That friend of Starchild’s who does tarot readings,” Monica says.
“No,” Melissa says, “she doesn’t look anything like her.”
“She does a little,” Monica says, indignantly. “Same kind of hair.”
“Yeah,” Melissa says, “but this…it’s something around the eyes, maybe…give me that picture I took.”
“You won’t be able to see anything,” Monica says, even as she hands it over. “It’s too small.” Melissa studies it, but Monica’s right. She knows there’s an answer, but damned if she knows what it is.
“Let’s forget it,” she says, tossing the picture aside and leaning in to kiss Monica. Monica pulls her close, their limbs tangling together atop the bed, atop the soft blanket, adventuring together here, far from home.
.....
Snapshot:
They’re sitting together on the front steps, the three of them. Emily’s between her parents, looking up at the house almost curiously. Mulder and Dana’s eyes meet, above her head; they’re both smiling at the camera. Mulder is pointing at the house, an exaggerated gesture. It’s sitting on the table in the living room now, in a small plain frame, next to other photographs. Their wedding day. The first day Emily came home with them, back in the apartment. Dana’s medical school graduation. Mulder and Samantha. People and times that are important to them.
.....
Moment:
“That’s a cute picture,” Melissa says, picking it up from the table. “When’s it from?”
“The day we moved in,” Dana says. “Frohike took it when the guys were helping us move. And he told us that we were now sold-out suburbanites. But you can’t have everything.”
Melissa laughs. “We love you even if you have sold out. Open your presents.” She turns to watch as Dana unwraps a tissue paper package to reveal a dress. It’s loose, flowing, in different shades of greens and blues. She lets Dana look at it for a minute. “What do you think?”
“Oh,” Dana says softly, turning it over, “oh, it’s really nice, Missy.”
“Do you actually think that, or are you being nice?”
“No, I actually think that!” Dana says. “You know I don’t lie to you.” She shakes out the dress. “And I might even fit into it, too.”
“Yeah, that’s what we were thinking,” Melissa says. “You can wear it now, before the baby, and then after that you can wear it as a loose dress. Wow, I can’t believe I actually found clothes you liked.”
“Give me the credit!” Monica calls. She’s sitting on the floor with Emily, who’s playing with an array of small stuffed animals, each of them from a different state.
“Yeah, Monica should get the credit,” Melissa says. “Because I checked with her this time, instead of just buying it on my own.” She points to another package. “That one’s for the baby, but you can open it. It’s a little hat. And a blanket.”
Dana opens the package. “This is a really neat pattern,” she says, looking at the blanket. “Where’d you get it?”
“At the farm we told you about,” Melissa says. “The one where Colleen and Carol are living now, with the women’s collective. We met this woman there, Sally, and she makes blankets and things like this. And we were telling her how nice we thought they were. And then on the day we left, she gave us this one. We thought it would be perfect.”
“It is,” Dana says. She touches the material to her cheek. “You should give me the address. I’d love to thank her.”
“I don’t think she’d expect that,” Melissa says. She’s looking through the pictures on the table again, idly. She almost laughs when she sees the one from Dana’s wedding, with her in the background as a bridesmaid; talk about different taste in dresses. “She’s kind of…she’s not really about the social obligations.”
“But we don’t even know each other,” Dana says. “And it was so nice…”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” Melissa says. “I think she was happy about it, making something for someone she doesn’t know. Just for the sake of making it. I don’t know if she’d want to hear—” And then she stops, her words cut off. She sees it, the picture on the table, and the question that’s been in her mind for weeks has an answer. And Mulder comes into the room then, as if that wasn’t enough, and she looks at him and at the picture again, and she knows, she knows.
Dana starts showing him the dress and the hat and the blanket, and Emily comes running over to show him her stuffed animals, and Melissa is glad. Because she doesn’t know if she could say anything, right now. Usually she acts on her first instincts, but right now she doesn’t even have an instinct.
She doesn’t know what to say, what to do.
.....
Snapshot:
It’s blurry, but it’s there. Sally, leaning against a tree outside one of the buildings. She didn’t know Melissa took it, probably wouldn’t have liked it if she did. You can see her face, her long brown hair, her smile. It’s far away and it’s not that clear. But it’s clear enough that you can tell who she is.
.....
Moment:
“What’s with you?” Monica asks when they get home. “You were acting so weird back there. I thought you’d have been happy to see everyone.”
“I was. I am. It’s not that.” Melissa’s only half looking at her; she’s digging through the photographs from their trip at the same time. “Look.” She throws the picture of Sally in front of Monica.
Monica picks it up. “Have I seen this one? It’s not very good. What’s your point?”
“I figured out who she looks like,” Melissa says. “I figured out who she is.”
“And that’s why you were acting weird?” Monica asks.
“Yeah,” Melissa says. “I was looking at the pictures on the table at Dana’s. She’s…she’s Samantha.”
At least Monica knows how big this is. They’ve all heard about Samantha, over the years, enough to know what this could mean. “Are you sure?” she asks. “I mean…not that I am doubting you for a minute, but it’s been a long time. She’d be a lot older now…obviously, I know she is older…and you wouldn’t want to make a mistake about this. If you’re going to say anything. Are you going to say anything?”
“I don’t know!” Melissa says. “I do know it’s her. I can tell. I knew when I looked at the picture.”
“But you don’t know if you’re going to say anything?” Monica asks. “Can we not say anything, even? That feels wrong.”
“I know. I know,” Melissa says. “If it was just Mulder we were thinking about…But I’m thinking about her too.”
“Who? Sally?” Monica says, and Melissa nods. “Should we call her Sally or Samantha?” Melissa gives her a frantic look—she has no idea how to address that question—and Monica goes on. “Okay, Sally for now. You think she wouldn’t want you to say anything?”
“I don’t know if she would or not,” Melissa says. “She kept talking about how she was glad she didn’t have a family. How she didn’t want to belong to anyone.”
Monica looks thoughtful. “Do you think she…does she remember Mulder? How old was she, anyway?”
“Six? Eight? I don’t know,” Melissa says. “But I’m just thinking…there could be reasons that she doesn’t want to be found. I wouldn’t want to do anything…But I just don’t know.”
“What do you think you’d want?” Monica asks. She sits down next to Melissa, puts a comforting arm around her. “In her shoes.”
Melissa tries to think, but it’s not that easy, in a scenario full of blanks and gaps. She can’t imagine not wanting to see Dana again, if something happened to tear them apart. But she can very easily imagine—doesn’t have to imagine, even—plenty of reasons to be wary of families, of the rules they try to impose, of their insidious constraints. She can imagine wanting to know what she was getting into before committing to being a part of one.
“I think I’d want to choose,” she says. “To decide myself. I wouldn’t want anything to happen without me knowing.”
“So let’s go back,” Monica says, easily. “We can see her again and talk to her. And find out what she wants.”
“And if she doesn’t want us to say anything?” Melissa asks. “I don’t know how long I could keep that to myself.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Monica says. “Maybe she’ll…she’ll at least let us tell him that she’s okay.”
“You think he’d let it rest there?” Melissa asks. “Have you met him?”
Monica almost laughs. “Okay, I know. But we can’t know what will happen until we try. When do you want to leave?”
This is the right choice, maybe the only one, Melissa knows. As is so often the case, she needed Monica’s clear vision to figure that out. “Soon. I don’t think I’ll be able to be calm about it until I do. Can you get off work again this soon?”
“Sure,” Monica says. “You’re not going by yourself. I’d have to explain to Dana why I let you do that.”
Now Melissa smiles. “I don’t think we should drive this time, though. I don’t want it to take that long.”
.....
Snapshot:
Mulder, looking at the camera. He’s sitting on the couch—this was back at the apartment, before he and Dana moved, on her birthday last year. He’s smiling, not just a smile for the camera, but a real one, a happy one. Melissa remembers, looking at it, how Dana was standing next to her when she took it, talking to him, smiling too.
.....
Moment:
Melissa’s clutching the picture in her hand as they walk up to the farm. “Do you think she’ll recognize him?” she asks Monica.
“I don’t know,” Monica says. “I think she might. We’ve seen that picture of them when they were kids. You can tell it’s the same guy.”
“Yeah, but that’s because we know it’s the same guy,” Melissa says.
“Still,” Monica says, “I think she’ll know. If there was someone I was that close to…I think I’d know.”
Melissa thinks about it. There’s got to be some kind of lasting connection there, Monica’s right. She can’t imagine Mulder caring as much as he does and Sally not caring at all. Never thinking about him, never even wondering. Not believing it, when it’s there on that little square of shiny paper in her hand.
They told Colleen and Carol they were coming back, although not the whole story, and they’re there to greet them at the house. They exchange hugs, catch up on what they’ve been doing in the weeks since they were here before. And then Colleen says she thinks Sally’s in the orchard, so they go that way.
She’s picking apples when they see her. Melissa hangs back for a moment, watching; she’s fast, precise, assured. She doesn’t think they make a sound, but Sally turns suddenly to look in their direction; her face is startled for a second, and then it relaxes. “Oh, hi,” she says. “You’re here again.”
“We’re here again,” Melissa confirms, as she and Monica make their way towards her. “We wanted to see you.”
“Me?” Sally asks, and there’s a stiffness in her face again. “How come?”
“We have…we have something to tell you,” Melissa says. She doesn’t know where to begin, really; it feels almost wrong, to come out of nowhere and define this woman she still doesn’t know very well. “We think…we might know you.”
Sally shakes her head. “No,” she says. “You don’t know me.” She looks like she might disappear on the spot, run off between the rows of trees, take flight from a branch. Maybe that would be easier for her, not having to respond to anyone’s claims.
Melissa tries to be gentle. “Not us, exactly,” she says. “It’s…my sister’s…did you ever have a brother?”
Sally looks at her with wide eyes, as if she’s made the most miraculous guess. “I do have a brother,” she says. Melissa notes that present tense, wonders what it means. If they’re barking up the wrong tree entirely or if it means that she’s held on. Family doesn’t vanish, after all, even when you might want them to, especially when you treasure them.
“What’s his name?” Melissa asks.
Sally doesn’t speak at first. “It’s…” she finally says. “It’s…well, I do have a brother.”
There might be a time for trying to figure this out with words—there probably will be, in a bit—but Melissa doesn’t think it’s that time now. Instead she holds out the picture, gingerly, and Sally takes it from her.
She can tell that Monica almost doesn’t want to look at Sally’s face; she’s turned her head away to study the trees. Melissa follows suit, because she feels the same way. One glance was enough, and this moment isn’t about the two of them. It’s about two other people, and something that’s sacred. They had to be here to make it happen, but they’re not really a part of it; catalysts, she thinks, remembering something Dana once told her.
The silence stretches out. “Is he tall?” Sally finally asks, the words banal, her voice soft and awed.
Melissa finds that she can’t speak, all of a sudden, but Monica answers. “Yeah,” she says. “Really tall.” Sally’s not tall, Melissa thinks. Funny how families work.
“And he’s smart and he talks a lot?”
“Definitely,” Monica says.
“And he…does he remember me too?” Sally asks, her voice the softest of all.
“Oh,” Melissa says, and she can’t help hugging her, and they cling on, holding tight. “Of course he does.”
.....
Snapshot:
Samantha at eight, just before she disappeared. She’s smiling in the picture, standing under a tree, wearing a purple dress. The edges are blurred; she’s been twirling.
It’s not the only picture here: it’s one of a pile. So many pictures of Samantha, even from that short time. Samantha as a baby, with a bald head and a little hat. Samantha at two, eating birthday cake. Samantha at four, crying because he took one of her toys away. Samantha Samantha Samantha.
.....
Moment:
“Hey,” Dana says softly, as she comes into their bedroom, where he has the pictures spread out. “How are you doing?”
Mulder lets out a breath. “I guess…all right. It’s still hard to wrap my head around.”
“I know.” She comes to sit next to him on the bed, her hands on his back, rubbing gently. “I wouldn’t have believed it could happen this way.”
Neither would he. He keeps thinking back to earlier today, Melissa’s voice on the phone. He almost thought she was playing some kind of sick joke. But it’s real, he thinks, and he’ll know for sure soon enough: they’ll be back here as soon as they can get a flight. Samantha didn’t want to talk on the phone. She only wanted to see each other face to face. He’s not sure if he understands why, but he’ll do this on any terms she wants.
“Looking at pictures?” Dana asks. She picks up one of the two of them, hand in hand on Samantha’s first day of kindergarten, his first day of fourth grade. “This one’s sweet.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Just felt like it.”
“You know…she’s welcome to stay with us for a while,” Dana says. “If that’s what the two of you want, I mean.”
He looks back at her then; he loves her for so many reasons. “We haven’t talked about it,” he says. “Obviously. I think it…it would be good.” But what if it isn’t? What if it’s not the same? Well, that’s a stupid question. It obviously won’t be the same. But what if…The only thing he’s always been sure of is that if he finds her it’ll be like picking up again; it won’t be like two strangers meeting. But now he’s not sure of that anymore. Maybe because he wasn’t the one to find her. Maybe because, when it came down to it, he didn’t do anything.
He doesn’t know how to say all of that, even to Dana. “Maybe it’s not the best idea, though,” he says. “With the baby coming.”
“I don’t think that would be a problem,” Dana says. “Why should it?”
“I don’t know,” he says.
“Hey,” she says, touching his cheek. “This is…I can’t pretend to know exactly how you’re feeling. But I know it’s…I know it’s huge for you, and that isn’t always easy…”
“I should just be happy, though,” he says. “Shouldn’t I?” He is happy, of course, but it’s mixed with so much else: with worries and nerves and doubt and guilt. What’s wrong with him, that he can’t just be happy?
“There’s no should about it,” Dana says. “There’s nothing wrong with how you feel.”
He lets her hold him. “It’s so strange,” he says. “Knowing I’m going to see her again, but not seeing her yet. Maybe when I actually do, it’ll feel…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, because he doesn’t know how. She doesn’t press him.
.....
Snapshot:
None. Some moments are too private for film.
.....
Moment:
He can hear the door open. He looks up.
He’d know her anywhere, that’s his first thought. She’s still short compared to him (imagine if she’d come back taller). She wears her hair long and loose, curling back over her shoulders. Her eyes, her smile. Her bright yellow dress that seems so young. (He knows she’s not eight years old. It matters and it doesn’t.)
“Hi,” she says, so simple, so banal, and then she’s crossing the room, and she hugs him tight before he can even think about it. He hugs back, his head pressed against hers.
“Where’ve you been, Sam?” he asks.
“Lots of places,” she says.
“I always wanted to find you,” he says.
She nods. “I always remembered you.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, even though it isn’t enough.
“Why?” she says. “You didn’t do anything.”
“I should have…I should have protected you,” he says. “Kept you safe.”
“But we were kids,” she says. “Just little kids.” As if it’s as easy as that. “And you did protect me. When other kids were mean. Or that time I fell off my bike.”
“You remember that?” he asks.
“Yeah,” she says. “Of course.” And then they hug again, for a long time.
“This is where you live?” she says, when they break apart.
“Yeah,” he says. “I don’t know how much Melissa and Monica told you…”
“I know you’re married to Melissa’s sister,” she says. “And you have a little girl.” Her voice is soft when she says it. It sounds like she likes the idea. “Where are they?”
“Dana wanted to give us some space,” he says. “But I’d love you to meet them.” It sounds so formal. “I’m sorry,” he says. “This is strange.”
She shrugs. “It’s okay,” she says. “You’re my brother.”
He is that. “Do you want to meet them, then?” he asks.
“Sure,” she says.
They go into the living room, where Dana and Emily are waiting. (They’ve explained the basic situation to Emily, although that was a little tricky. He didn’t want to scare her, make her have nightmares about disappearing. He knows what that’s like too well. In the end they just told her that Samantha was his sister who he hadn’t seen for a long, long time, but that she’d be coming to visit them, and that they were very glad.) “Hi,” Mulder says. “This is…this is…” He turns to his sister. “Do you want me to call you Samantha?”
“Yes,” she says. “I want you to.”
So he says it: “This is Samantha.” He can tell this moment means a lot to Dana too: it couldn’t be what it is to him, but then he’s shared so much with her over the years that it might be something close. That’s what their partnership means. “Samantha, this is my wife, Dana. And our daughter, Emily.”
“Hi, Samantha,” Dana says. “It’s so wonderful to have you here.”
Samantha doesn’t say anything for the first minute, just stares at them. He wonders if this part will be strange for her. He certainly didn’t have a wife and daughter, or anything like it, the last time they saw each other.
“Oh!” she says. “You’re going to have another baby, too?”
Dana looks surprised for a minute—it’s not as though they could hide it, when she’s due in just a couple of months, but she probably didn’t expect to be asked like that. But then she smiles. “We are,” she says. “In May.”
“That’s wonderful,” Samantha says. “Really wonderful.” She’s smiling too, as she sits down next to Emily. “Hi, Emily,” she says. “I like your doll. Her dress is so nice.”
“Aunt Melissa gave her to me,” Emily says. “You’re my aunt too. Right?”
Samantha looks at her for a moment, and then she laughs. “I guess I am!” she says.
Mulder sits down with them; he doesn’t want to be far away from her, not even across the room. Not yet. “We thought…we wanted to know if you wanted to stay with us,” he says. “For a little while, at least. I know you have your own life too…” He’s not sure what he’s saying.
She looks back at him. “I’d like that,” she says. “Thank you.”
It’s almost strange to hear her thanking him. He feels like he should be thanking her, for being here with him again, for not blaming him for all he couldn’t do. But he takes it in. He squeezes her hand.
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Paper Tigers
Dana Scully had seen a lot in just a couple of short years; experienced a lot. She’d been injured. She’d been abducted. She’d been scarred in so many ways that she’d lost count.
This time, she’d been attacked by a cannibal. Not just one cannibal; no, that would be too easy. It was multiple cannibals. Plural. A whole damn town, in fact.
To make things worse, they had to wait until tomorrow to leave. She and Mulder had one more night in this sickening environment. Scully had been tempted to ask Mulder if they could just go to a nearby town and stay in one of his prized by-the-hour motels. She knew that all she had to do was ask and Mulder would happily oblige. He’d been a bit more attentive like that since her return from wherever she’d been when she was abducted.
But, she couldn’t ask that of him.
The simple fact was that she, Dana Scully, was a special agent within the Federal Bureau of Investigations. She had chosen a career in an organization that was still, quite frankly, a boys’ club. Mulder might be the exception to the rule, having treated according to and valuing what she brought to the table. With the rest of the FBI, however, she still felt like the girl.
No, she couldn’t ask him to do that.
Scully stared at herself in the gross bathroom of her gross motel room. Part of her wondered why she didn’t just quit this job; wash her hands of the FBI, of the X-Files, and go into medicine as originally planned. Perhaps, her father had been right all along.
“Medicine is a good fit for you, Starbuck,” he’d said when she graduated from medical school. Granted, he hadn’t known about everything she’d gone through during medical school. And, she didn’t want him to know, either. Only Missy knew everything about that.
“Scully?” Mulder’s soft voice asked, muffled by the door in front of him. She snapped back to reality.
Oh, yeah. That was why she couldn’t just leave.
Mulder.
Mulder was an interesting individual. Scully had thought about it often. He’d been through a lot in his life, confided some of that in her. They’d developed a friendship that extended beyond their Bureau-mandated partnership. And, yet, she couldn’t help but to wonder if he saw them as friends, too.
“Just a second!” she called to the door. She quickly composed herself and made her way to answer the door.
Mulder stood there with a smile on his face and a pizza in his hands. She felt her eyebrow arch.
“I figured chicken was out of the question,” he quipped, grinning proudly. Scully must have made a face because he laughed. “Lighten up, Scully.”
“Been working on that all day?” she retorted, stepping aside to allow him entry to the room.
Mulder chuckled in response and made his way to the small table in the corner of the room.
“Only about twenty minutes or so.”
He flipped back the top of the box and looked over at her. His grin, however, turned to a look she didn’t quite recognize. She’d seen it on his face before, but rarely.
“What’s wrong?” he asked softly.
Scully shook let out a sigh. “Nothing.” Mulder didn’t seem convinced as he sat at the small table. “Really. I’m fine.”
A certain awkwardness descended on the room, almost palpable, as he nodded silently. Scully took the other chair as Mulder put a slice of pizza on a paper towel and slid it over to before getting one for himself.
“I guess I could’ve picked up some paper plates,” he said quietly. Scully huffed out a small laugh and he grinned.
They ate in silence for what felt like an eternity although, according to Mulder’s watch which just so happened to be facing her, not even five minutes had passed.
“Mulder, do you think of us as friends?” Scully heard herself ask. His head jerked up to face her.
Bad question.
He composed himself. “What do you mean?” he asked, taking another bite of his pizza.
Scully wanted to ask him what it sounded like she meant, but instead, she replied, “Well, we’ve been working together for almost two years. We’ve been through a lot in that amount of time.” She shrugged. “I’m just curious.”
Mulder wiped his mouth with one of the extra napkins before looking at her.
“Yeah, I think of us as friends.” Something inside Scully relaxed and it was his turn to tense. “Do you think of us as friends?”
“Yes, I do,” she replied without hesitation. He grinned a little grin that Scully didn’t think she was supposed to notice.
“Good,” he replied quietly. He exhaled a breath. “What’s this about, Scully?”
It was Scully’s turn to exhale. “I was just thinking. That’s all.”
The look he gave her silently asked her to elaborate but left the choice entirely up to her. She’d seen that look a lot recently--since coming back from her abduction. Mulder didn’t want to push, she realized. It was sweet of him.
“I guess, I was just thinking about what we’ve been through in the last couple of years…”
“Wondering if it’s worth it?”
There was a sheepishness and innocence to his voice that made her want to hug him and shelter him from the cruel, cruel world in the same way she would a small child.
However, she didn’t reply.
That had been exactly what she was wondering and she wasn’t sure if it was worth it.
“I get it, you know,” he continued. “I’ve wondered it myself.”
“You have?”
“Yeah. More than once.”
“Why do you do it?” she asked quietly.
“My sister. I need answers.” Mulder heaved a sigh before he continued, “My career took a hit when I got assigned to the X-Files.” He chuffed out a humorless laugh. “My reputation took a hit and it was always me against the monsters.” His eyes softened and he said, “Now, we fight against the monsters. But, Scully, they’re not all real monsters.”
Scully stared at him, confused. His life’s purpose was to prove that his sister was abducted by aliens, for God’s sake; he looked for monsters. Literal monsters.
As if reading her mind, he chuckled. “Some of them are just paper tigers, Scully.”
“Paper tigers?” She asked, dumbfounded by the elaboration and half-preparing herself for him to launch into some diatribe filled with explanations from folklore, myths, fairy tales; something from a Brothers Grimm story.
“It’s something from a Chinese phrase,” he elaborated, as she knew he would. “It, basically, refers to something--or someone--that claims or appears to be powerful. Threatening. Really, it’s not.”
“A lot of what we face is powerful and threatening.”
He chuckled at that before saying, “True. We face some very real threats, but we have something going for us now.”
“What’s that?” Scully asked quietly, not quite sure that she was going to like his answer. He gave her a look that she’d seen on his face several times over the last couple of years but still had yet to decipher its meaning.
“Us.”
“Us,” she repeated, not sure where he was going with this.
Mulder chuckled. “When you were assigned to me, it was so they could bring me down, right? Discredit my work?”
Scully felt her eyebrow arch. “Are you saying I’m a paper tiger?”
Mulder visibly fought a smirk and in a tone she didn’t recognize from him, he said, “Oh, you are a very real threat, Agent Scully.” He grinned before continuing. She would stew on that one later. “My point is that the FBI sent you to destroy me but, instead, they gave me an ally; a friend. They were the paper tigers, Scully.”
It was a sweet sentiment, but she still wasn’t quite following.
“So, you’re saying that the only thing to fear is fear itself?” She asked after several seconds.
“I’m saying that it was me against the monsters until a couple of years ago. Now, it’s us against the monsters.”
Mulder studied Scully as she processed what he was saying. Part of him wondered how she could see them as anything less than friends. Or, rather, how she could think that he did. He also wondered what was bringing this up and why now.
She’d been through a lot since she met him. He knew that. He hated that. Scully had been abducted, tested on, attacked, injured… all the things he wished he could take away; things that should have happened to him.
She’d call him a martyr if she could hear his thoughts. Maybe, that’s what he was. It didn’t matter, though.
Mulder thought back to the ritual he’d interrupted. Scully was, quite literally, on the chopping block. He didn’t have to have an advanced degree in psychology to know that it had done a number on her; even if she wasn’t processing it, yet. Eventually, though, she would.
And, he’d be there for her when she did. That’s just what friends did.
He assumed, anyway. He’d never really had friends outside of the Gunmen.
Mulder thought about how his heart had pounded when he saw her there, ready to be killed and… eaten.
Suddenly, he wasn’t hungry anymore.
His friend was almost eaten by cannibals. There was a Donner Party joke in there somewhere, but he didn’t want to find it.
All Mulder knew right then was that he needed to change the conversation.
He cleared his throat and reached into his pocket, glancing at Scully in the process. She seemed to be a million miles away.
“I, uh,” he chuckled as he pulled the small box out of his pocket and held it up. “I got cards.”
It was a weak attempt; he knew that. Maybe, it would help distract her, though.
She blinked in response before chuckling. It was a damn good sound.
“Cards, Mulder?”
He grinned and shrugged meekly. “Go Fish, Scully?”
Scully laughed at that. “Go Fish? What are we, seven?”
He grinned in response. “Okay, fine. We can play a grown-up game.”
“Grown-up game? Mulder, I’m not playing strip poker with you.”
Mulder couldn’t help but to laugh at that. She looked proud of herself, too. “Okay. How do you feel about regular poker? We can use the pepperoni as chips.”
She made a face and he laughed.
Scully watched as Mulder shuffled the cards he brought. It was only then that she realized what he was doing. In his own way, Mulder was making sure that she was okay. Pizza. Poker. Jokes.
Suddenly, she was overwhelmed. It must have shown because he straightened up.
“What is it?” Mulder asked softly.
“I was almost eaten by cannibals,” she replied. Mulder set the cards to the side, giving her his undivided attention. Scully heaved a sigh before she met his eyes. “Thank you, Mulder.”
“For what?”
“Coming to my rescue. Again. For the pizza. The cards.” For being my friend, she almost added.
He smiled a gentle smile. “That’s what friends are for, right?” She chuffed a small laugh before feeling his larger hand cover her smaller one. Scully looked up to meet his gaze.
They stared at each for what seemed like an eternity. He looked like he was on the verge of saying something but he didn’t say a word. There was a look in his eyes, however, that made her feel important.
After a moment, Scully spoke up, “Mulder?”
“Yeah?” he replied softly.
“Are you going to deal?”
Mulder laughed at that and pulled his hand back. He reached for the cards and continued to shuffle.
“Hey, Scully,” he said, without taking his eyes from the cards in his hands.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for being my friend.”
There was a vulnerability in his voice that both broke her heart and made it swell. For as much of a pain in the ass as he could be, Fox Mulder truly was a sweet man.
“Thanks for being mine,” she countered.
He looked up at her with a smile. Scully smiled back.
“You know, Scully,” he said, more confidently. “I’m a pro at poker.” Scully arched an eyebrow and he grinned. “I’m gonna kick your ass.”
“Paper tigers, Mulder,” she replied, smirking as she did so.
Mulder laughed as he finally began to deal the cards.
#x-files#dana scully#fox mulder#fluff#friend fluff#pre relationship#XFFluff2020#fanfic#xfiles fanfic#fanfiction
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Renaissance fair au
1She’s brushing Missy’s mane until it shines when he walks in. Missy whinnies and stamps a foot on the hay-covered floor of the stable yard. “I think she likes me,” he says and his grin spreads wide. Behind him, her other horse rears in his pen, blowing air through his nostrils and scattering tools and costume pieces in a clatter. She tuts. “It seems Billy doesn’t share the same attraction.” She runs a hand over Missy’s velvet snout and tends to the agitated colt.He shrugs and walks away, to the end of the yard. She thinks she knows who he is, by reputation on the circuit. Spooky Mulder. 2She dresses the horses and goes to the food stalls. It’s hot and she can feel her hair frizzing in the humidity. The costumes are always so heavy and ill-fitting, leaving her sticky and agitated. She waits in line and the smells of onions, meat frying and sugar rises. “Can I interest you in the Extraterrestrial Burger?” His voice is so close to the back of her neck that it sends a shiver down her spine. “It’s shaped like a flying saucer.” “I prefer something a little more earthly,” she says and looks up at his smug face. His good-looking face. His broad nose, his plump mouth, his curious eyes. “A cinnamon roll?” he says and adds a light chuckle. She rubs her hair, smoothing it down. She can practically feel her freckles popping out on her face. She takes a deep breath. “Sounds good,” she says, reaching for her wallet. “And why don’t you let me buy you something?” He quirks his head a little, like she’s surprised him. He steps away and when she hands him his food he laughs out loud. “Prize Jerk Chicken. Thanks Scully.”3Her father has run the Renaissance Fair circuit for years. She’s been jousting for the past five years and she competes in the archery. He tells her he’s come from the east coast for the climate and the girls and she has to laugh at his boldness. There’s a crack of thunder and the heavens open. They run for shelter in the stable block, but she’s soaked through. He gives her his jacket as she shivers in the darkness of the hay shed. They sit side by side on a bale, eating their soggy lunch. “Why are you here? Really? Who are you running from?” He wipes his mouth. “That’s pretty good, Scully.” He shakes his head and water sprays from his hair. “Samantha,” he says. “Your wife?” His face has crumpled and guilt spreads through her, making her limbs heavy. “My sister. She vanished. It destroyed the family. I couldn’t stay and watch it implode entirely, so I ran away.” The rain beats down as he tells her the whole story.4Alex Krycek is grinning at her as they ride out to the jousting run. His horse, Marita, is a beautiful silver-grey mare and Scully knows she’s going to have to be at her best to beat them. His renown for dirty tricks is ignored because he pulls in huge crowds with his charismatic showman routine, dancing his horse down the track and ramping up the excitement with his warm-up moves. This is her first time in the mixed tournament. The joust is brutal. Her bones shudder. Her skin prickles under her suit and the oppressive heat. The final clash sees her flipped from the saddle, thudding to the ground, rolling over and over. She vaguely hears the crowd ‘ooh’ as she tries to roll herself over when she feels strong hands scoop her up. “You okay, Scully?” Mulder asks, brushing hair from her face. She pulls back from him, brushing grass from her arms and padding her face and chin. She nods. She’s fine. She’s fine. “Bad luck,” Krycek says as he walks past. “Maybe you should stick to the women’s only joust? You’re not really strong enough for me, Dana.” Mulder pulls her away, arm around her. She hasn’t the heart to tell him her shoulder’s sore. “You’ll beat him in the archery, Scully. You’re the best shot.”“Shouldn’t you be getting ready for your competition?” “I’m ready,” he says and she believes him. 5His falcon is a beautiful specimen, glossy brown-black feathers and a serenity she’s never seen before. She flies with such grace and he stands, gloved arm waiting for her to land. They make the best team. “Congratulations,” she says, walking by his side as he takes the bird back to the yard. “What’s her name?” “Sam,” he says and lets out an apologetic laugh. “Why falconry?” “The bird always comes back.”
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Verboten
AU | Part 1/3 | PG - NC17
This was originally supposed to be an @xfpornbattle prompt, but of course, I never finished it. I’ve never really written anything multi-chapter before, so we’ll see how it goes.
**
Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego, California
June 1981
The salt of the sea tangled in her wind mussed tresses. She scrunched her toes deeper into the sand as the surf lapped at her ankles, a siren call beckoning her back to its depths.
A pair of strong tanned arms swept around her suddenly from behind and pulled her firmly against the chest of their owner swaying them gently from side to side, her burst of surprised laughter breaking over the crash of the waves. Her eyes slid closed and lips upturned as his soft lips nuzzled their way from the freckled skin of her shoulder, across the fine bones of her clavicle and up the curve of her neck to her ear.
“God, you are so fucking beautiful, Dana”
He pressed a gentle kiss in that sensitive spot just beneath it before pulling it into to his mouth. His hands crept lower on her hips, long curious fingers edging beneath the suit line, dancing their way towards the thin strings holding the sides together. A gentle tug on her ear…a gentle tug on the strings…closer and closer…
The sound of a car crunching in the driveway gravel jolted her eyes open and her hand from her panties. She jumped up in a panic, quickly wiping her hand on the towel she had laid down.
She peered out the window, her pulse speeding up and another gush of arousal flooding her already sopping underwear.
Fuck. It’s him. He’s here.
Fox Mulder was 19, brilliant, and beautiful, the star of many a late night teenage fantasy beneath the sheets in her darkened bedroom. He was also the on-again, off-again boyfriend of her older sister, Melissa, the forbidden fruit of her lust at whom she was forever allowed to look but never touch.
His tall, lanky frame leaned unaffectedly on the hood of his beat up Jeep, the epitome of cool, hair swept back and aviators perched on his aquiline nose, entirely unaware of the flurry of teenage anxiousness he was causing two floors up.
Her heart rampaged in her chest as she moved from the window to root around in the top drawer of her dresser, flinging her oversized t-shirt over her head in the process.
Damnit, pull yourself together, Dana. You can do this. This is your chance.
Her hand finally landed on what she was looking for and she pulled out the tiniest black bikini she had ever seen, let alone owned. The push-up cups gave her just the right amount of cleavage without looking too risqué and Melissa had insisted she buy it after dragging her to the mall last weekend.
"You need to learn to live a little, Dana," she'd chided, as she shoved her into the fitting room with the scrap of material. "You look smokin' and there isn't going to be a boy in town that can keep his eyes off you!"
Ahab would freak if he knew she had bought something like that. She looked in to the mirror to settle her breasts just right in the top before tugging on the barely there high waisted gym shorts her mother had expressly told she was not to wear in public. “Hot pants” were entirely inappropriate for a captain’s daughter. Her heart picked up speed at the illicitness of it all. Maybe Missy was right, she did need to get out of her comfort zone. And she knew exactly whose eyes she wanted on her.
Melissa and Mulder had been a thing since they met their sophomore year of high school and had broken up and gotten back together more times than she could count. Dana had been just a lowly thirteen year old in junior high, forever in the shadow of her beautiful older sister, but Mulder never treated her that way.
He was always kind, asking about school and her science classes, indulging her ramblings on Einstein and physics until Melissa pulled him away insisting she was boring him. He never seemed bored though. Bored people didn’t ask that many questions. Relevant questions at that. In a house where she was constantly talked over by Bill Jr. and Melissa, it was nice to have someone interested in what she had to say for once.
It was an innocent wish of a happy 14th birthday and kiss on the cheek that had changed everything. She'd stammered her thanks as her face flushed the color of her hair. Bill Jr. had teased her mercilessly for weeks afterwards. Her hand strayed to her cheek, certain she could still feel the gentle pressure of his soft lips on her skin, even three years later.
She smoothed her hair and leaned into the mirror, dabbing on just a hint of lip gloss and a few swipes of mascara, opting for the more natural look she knew Mulder preferred from one of the occasional eavesdropped conversations she had been privy to over the years.
Dana knew Melissa cared for Mulder, but she wasn’t the type of woman he needed. She was flighty and impulsive, and uninterested in settling down with one guy.
"Life is too short to tether one’s heartstrings to a single person so young, Dana," she'd once told her younger sister. "I want to follow my heart, be free to give and receive love."
What Mulder needed was someone stable and grounded. Someone to hold him when the nightmares about his sister woke him up crying and shivering in a cold sweat. He didn’t need someone to wave healing crystals over his head and babble about the deeper meanings of dreams and how they were the key to unlocking the subconscious.
Okay, so maybe she had eavesdropped more than just a few times. And Mulder’s bad dreams and beauty preferences weren’t the only thing she had “accidentally” overheard.
She’d heard him sneak in Melissa’s window one night, when they thought everyone else was asleep. Their shared bedroom wall was thin and hushed conversation quickly gave way to creaking springs. She could hear his muffled moans and felt an unexpected tingle down below.
She'd closed her eyes, imagining that she was the one making him make those noises. She hadn’t meant to, but she'd suddenly found her hand wandering lower of its own accord, pressing against the heat of her center. She'd quickly snatched her hand away, the nuns’ constant warnings about masturbation being the devil’s handiwork ringing in her head. But she couldn’t stop thinking about how good it felt.
In that moment, her innocent crush had turned into a full-blown obsession.
Dana Scully was a good girl. She was obedient and polite and god fearing. The heady rush of doing something so bad and wrong and downright naughty was intoxicating, even better than the time she sneaked one of her mother’s cigarettes in the dark. It was too tempting to resist. Night after night, she listened for his voice through the walls, a pile of soiled panties growing beneath her bed until she was alone in the house to do her laundry.
She took a final look in the mirror with a pop of her glazed lips and light spritz of Jovan Musk on her pulse points. “Discover the power,” the TV commercial had declared, claiming to bring more men and women together than any other fragrance in history. In a world filled with blatant propositions, brash overtures, bold invitations and brazen proposals, she was going to get her share. Satisfied, she slung her beach bag over her shoulder and headed down the stairs.
She wasn’t one of those immature girls littering the pages of her notebooks with hearts and his name in a loopy cursive scrawl. Mrs. Fox Mulder. Not anymore anyway. No, she was a woman. A woman who was going to show him that she was more than Missy’s kid sister.
As she made her way down the front steps to the driveway, he was still sprawled, god-like, against his car, chewing on that much fantasized about bottom lip and pensively shucking sunflower seeds with his tongue, an errant lock of hair flopping into his eyes.
Dana's fingers twitched with the urge to brush it back and just slide her fingers through his hair, certain it was as soft as it looked.
Keep it cool, Dana. You got this. Shoulders back, stomach in, chest out. Cool, casual, breezy, confident.
She strutted towards him with a subtle sashay of the hips, her chin tipped with an air of disinterest.
Mulder lifted his sunglasses slightly to peer over the mirrored lens, his eyes flitting briefly over the newfound curves of her body that had bloomed since she’d last seen him. Dana felt her face flush with a streak of pride and bit her lip to keep from grinning, willing herself to keep her cool. She had only recently become accustomed to having this power over men, and she’d be lying if she said it didn’t thrill her. For once, boys actually looked at her, instead of just Missy.
“Oh, hi Mulder,” she tossed out as casually and breezy as she could manage. He never let anyone call him Fox.
He pulled off the sunglasses, training the full force of his smile on her, the bright white glinting in the noonday sun. Her insides turned to mush and her knees went weak. He had no idea of his effect on her. It was entirely unfair.
“Hey, Dana!”
Just the sound of her name on his lips made her stomach flutter and crotch moisten again. She could listen to that throaty monotone for hours. She took a deep breath in a futile attempt to settle her nerves and prayed the thundering echo of her pulse wasn't audible outside her own ears.
"What are you doing here? Didn't Missy tell you she was going out of town for the weekend?"
“Oh…” Mulder murmured, his smile fading. He shook his head as if to clear it, suddenly looking like a lost puppy who couldn’t find his owner. “Yeah, I guess she did mention that. I must have forgotten. Sorry, I should go.”
He reached to put his sunglasses back on and turned towards the car.
“Wait!”
Mulder jumped, startled at the force of her tone and her sudden hand on his arm.
Perfect, Dana...that was absolutely chill, cool, calm, and collected. Fantastic.
“You should come with me to the beach,” she offered brightly, doing her best not to frighten him anymore than she already had. “It’ll be fun! Plus, I hear it rains a lot in England, so you should enjoy the California sunshine while you can.”
He smiles softly at her, his mood seeming to lift. “Yeah, okay. I'd like that.”
"I was planning on going down to Coronado -" she began, frantically stopping midway at his scrunched nose of displeasure."But if you have a better idea, I'm down for anywhere!"
Mulder chuckled and rested his hand against the exposed small of her back to guide her towards the Jeep, sending a rash of goosebumps across her skin.
“Actually, I think I do. Hop in, kid. I know just the place.”
#it's been forever since I've written anything#let alone something not intentionally terrible#imadethis#txf fic#xf fic#txf fanfic#xf fanfic#the x files#x files
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Spider Eggs
Disclaimer: I wasn’t going to come back to post-MS IV, but I wound up having absolutely nothing to do today, and I needed to write something in between my typical Will-angst and the utter fluff I’ve been reading. Ergo, another weird MSR vignette.
Rating: PG-13
Timeline: Post MS-IV (Yep. Still in this universe.)
Summary: Scully shares her pregnancy with a spider and her eggs, in a strange but fitting friendship.
Tagging @today-in-fic.
The wood pile rotting in their backyard plays host to a society of the Virginia suburbs’ most unwanted. Mulder likes to think they chose this house on purpose, the old-but-still-kicking home of FBI rejects and the sometimes-home of a superhero who doesn’t want to be. Three people whom even death turned away.
Scully lets a raccoon scuffle about as long as it stays away from the house. She tolerates garter snakes and even the stag that munches on their garden. But it’s the black widow spider, tucked into a shadowy corner of the wood pile that fascinates her. She keeps her distance—she’s isn’t stupid—but she watches it craft an immaculate mess of a web. A perfectly disordered home.
One evening in July, the egg sac takes her by surprise. A tight little ball of twine nestled in the corner of the web. Always polite, Scully offers her congratulations.
She’s pretty sure that one typically shares one’s pregnancy with other women—women from mommy blogs and well-timed doctors’ appointments, not a venomous spider she found in the backyard. She has also stopped caring what people typically do—a side effect of twenty-five years with Fox ‘Spooky’ Mulder and of being at least fifteen years older than the couples they see in the obstetrician’s waiting room.
Scully bears her heart to the eight-legged companion. It makes sense, somehow. She carries a cocktail of emotions that only a spider would understand—dancing on fragile strings, catching meals on the fly. Like a spider, she hunts and is hunted her entire life. It’s a wonder she and Mulder were never squished under an old man’s combat boot. It’s a wonder he never crushed their bodies with a dead cigarette and left them dismembered on a grocery store sidewalk for some child to gawk at, scarlet hourglass shining flat on the asphalt.
When Melissa was ten years old, a black widow bit her arm while she was playing in the holly bushes, and Ahab rushed her to the emergency room. They pumped her full of an antidote and sent her home, promising that after a few days of nausea and low fever, she would be fine. For such an infamous creature, the black widow’s attack was strangely underwhelming.
Scully overlooks the crack between two decrepit boards where the spider has built its family. She sips an extra-large lemonate from the gas station down the street. She resents how awkwardly she moves through the tall grass, keys in one hand and soda in the other, her still-small baby bump cumbersome even now. In the isolation of their middle-of-nowhere home, she wants to be vocally proud of her unborn child, and she wants someone to listen.
“Hey, Missy,” she says, stopping ten feet from the spider and her eggs. At first, she wondered if it was inappropriate to name it Missy, but this is how she honors her sister because if Missy were here, she would share share in this strange experience. If Missy were to be reincarnated, she would love to come back as a spider.
The spider crawls lazily into the light, teetering on the upper strand of its web. There it stills. Its hourglass glints in the sun.
“We haven’t spoken since the twenty week appointment,” Scully begins to ramble. “It’s a healthy baby, but with my age and my medical history I’m afraid to be optimistic. Will came by the other day, and he seems excited by the prospect of a baby sister. I think it makes him hopeful, and every time he smiles, the guilt wears off a little bit. It’s strange and awkward with him. It’s strange and awkward to be pregnant again. Everything is awkward, but I’m getting used to it.”
Today is the first day she’s stopped feeling as though her life is a haunted house, an endless stretch of waiting for something awful to jump out at you. To spin around and find a horrifying creature chasing you with a chainsaw like a fucking Halloween movie.
Mulder helps. He looks at her like she netted the moon and hung it over his bed. He touches her gingerly, with unadulterated amazement, as if she rode into his life in a UFO and her body is made of gypsy moths, fleeting and velvet-soft. Like the moths beneath their porch light, she is bordering on clumsily large, although in coming months she’ll not so much flutter as waddle.
The spider retreats back into its web and crouches over its egg sac. Scully envies its slow grace. She hopes she remains as elegant as Missy, as quietly confident in her ability to protect her children from harm. Scully likes to think she has a dangerous bite, deadly to anyone who tries to hurt her son or her unborn daughter. She has bitten like Missy in the past, with her firearm. Too many times, she’s had to bite.
She tells Missy, “I hope your family is healthy. You chose a nice home; any closer to the house and we might have to relocate you. I don’t think your babies would like ours very much.” She chuckles softly and dares to touch the curve of her abdomen. Dares to believe she’ll have a baby and not a tragedy. Sometimes, it hurts too much to be skeptical.
She wishes Missy a happy evening and goes inside.
Autumn arrives, and with it the spider’s inexorable death. She didn’t really consider this part. The part where befriending a spider would inevitably end in her standing teary-eyed before the empty web and it’s stiff exoskeleton hourglass-up in the grass. She is a scientist. She’s read Charlotte’s Web. She knows how these things go. That doesn’t stop her overflowing hormones or the stupid tendency of humans to anthropomorphize everything they speak to.
Standing next to her, Mulder pulls her into a hug. “I’m sorry, Scully. I didn’t know she was that important to you.”
“I didn’t either,” Scully sniffs. She allows herself a weepy laugh. “I feel silly.”
“No,” Mulder tilts her chin and kisses her. “Never silly.”
She wipes the corners of her eyes. “It’s hormones.”
“Scully,” he says, “you’re allowed to be sad over a spider. It doesn’t invalidate your grief for bigger tragedies.”
“I know…” Scully trails off. “It’s irrational, but I hoped she would live until the baby was born.” Mother to mother, creature to creature on this unforgiving planet. She took comfort in watching the egg sac bloom, the lives within it healthy and strong. Her own stomach rounded in time with the knot of spider silk. For each day the spider eggs grew, she let herself hope that something so small would survive here, in the fragile ruins of a human structure. If the spider could do it so could she, and oh, how fragile she felt. She had forgotten how small her frame had always been, how spare and wiry. She only got tougher with age.
“Scully?”
She looks up to Mulder’s concerned eyes. “Hmm?”
“Are you ready to go inside?”
It’s code for I love you. Everything is. The way he grills sandwiches in his boxers, the way he inhales the blueberry scent of her shampoo after they shower, the way he plays eighties rock so quietly it sounds like a waltz and dances her around their living room. She sees it in the way he makes love to her at sunrise, the way he rolls up her nightshirt when he thinks she’s asleep and presses his cheek to her belly, the way he worships her body as if everything and nothing has changed.
“Yes. Let’s go in,” she agrees. She clings to the smell of him—fresh grass and sawdust and the coffee she can’t drink—and together, they go inside. Before she closes the door, Scully whispers a brief, “thank you,” to Missy the poisonous spider, for the odd comforts she provided. And odd friendship was what she needed, to match the oddness blossoming in every other facet of her life.
Outside, the breeze ruffles Missy’s empty web, twitches the corpse’s legs. The trees bend; the forest churns and hums with living creatures. Insects mate and die. Life finds a way. A tiny black spider takes shelter in a knot of wood.
#the x-files#txf fanfic#msr fanfic#fox mulder#dana scully#ficlet#stupid midlife miracle baby#todayinfic
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Served - Chapter 2
Thanks for your patience!
We’re out of town right now, running around Disney and Universal, being the nerds we are, so I am wiped out by the time I get back to the hotel! (I’m actually posting this in the line for a Potter ride lol)
Thank you all again for you wonderfully sweet words for Chapter 1; this fandom is so truly encouraging! I love you guys! Again, big thanks and loves to @13starbuck42 for being such a fabulous beta and making my words shiny and pretty! Tagging @today-in-fic!
Catch up with Chapter 1 =)
Chapter 2 – Support
Dana couldn’t believe her luck. Her mother actually helped her talk Ahab into letting her go out on her first real date, and it wasn’t a huge ordeal! Sometimes it paid off big to be the kid that never got caught doing stupid things.
It was all set. Daryl had asked her to the movies for Saturday afternoon, then a casual dinner after. She had to be home by 10:00pm. No big deal, Daryl had said. He understood strict parents, Dana thought. And 10:00 was pretty good for a first date. Besides, this was no big deal, just a movie and dinner. Yeah, just keep telling yourself that, Dana couldn’t help thinking. She was a little nervous, despite her bravado with Missy. She wished she had talked to Missy just a little bit more about what an older guy might expect out of a first date.
But if there was one thing Dana Scully didn’t do, it was back down. She had made up her mind; she liked this guy enough to give him a shot. Nerves be damned.
As if summoned by her thoughts, Melissa came around the corner into Dana’s room and plopped down on her desk chair. She surveyed the tornado of clothes strewn across the bed and smiled, then looked at her sister with an appraising eye.
“You need a hand?”
Dana was not usually the type to ask for help, but this was definitely one of those moments when a big sister’s presence was appreciated. “How could you guess?” Dana laughed. “I have no idea what to wear. I don’t want to send the wrong message!”
Missy looked briefly at what her sister was wearing: worn, faded jeans and a short sleeve fitted sweater. It was soft and pretty, but not over the top. “Your outfit is perfect. Let’s talk about what’s really on your mind.”
“You always know when I need you, Melissa. Thanks.” Dana smiled and took a deep breath. “I’m just kinda nervous about what to expect. Does he expect me to kiss him? I don’t even know him! And what about in the theater? He hasn’t actually asked me to be his girlfriend, but I don’t really mind holding his hand, I guess, but what if that means something else to him entirely, and-”
“Dana, slow down! I’m sure it’ll be fine. If you don’t want to do something like hold his hand or kiss him goodnight, just don’t do it. Don’t worry about his expectations; just do what is right for you, ok?” Melissa said sincerely.
Dana took a quick breath and nodded. Missy always knew what to say to make her feel grounded again. Okay, I think I’m ready, Dana thought.
“Yeah,” Melissa said as she walked out of Dana’s room, “you are ready to roll.”
“Missy, you are the spookiest person I have ever known.”
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If Ever There Is Tomorrow; Chapter 1
An AU in which Mulder and Scully meet three times over the course of their lives; told in a series of vignettes.
Tagging @today-in-fic and fulfilling my @fictober promise. I also wanted to dedicate this one to all the lovely, talented people who helped me out during the @fic-files write-in, because without their support and feedback I probably would not have had the courage to put this out there.
1. As Time Goes By
Spring, 1993
The end of the 20th century is only the beginning. Change hits the nineties at a breakneck speed; Hair is getting bigger, technology is getting smaller, colors are getting brighter while the climate begins to suffer, but in the midst of a new era, some old skeletons are about to be unearthed. The third time they meet is the least bloody, yet opens more wounds. It comes, like the times before, suddenly and without warning.
Well, that’s not entirely true. Mulder had been given plenty of warning when Skinner had informed him he was being assigned a partner; A scientist who was to, no doubt, disprove his work and report back to the kind of men he was fighting. To keep him in line and keep him from going overboard. This hadn’t come as a surprise, he always knew the closer he got to the truth, the more curveballs they would throw his way. What made him almost fall out of his chair was the name, Dana Scully.
A name he couldn’t claim had never crossed his mind.
Dana Scully haunted him like an intrusive thought or the vague memory of a strange fever dream. She reminded him of a time he would much rather forget, yet the feeling lingered; the possibility that maybe one day, their paths might cross again. When he’d heard that she’d enlisted he found himself needlessly frequenting Quantico in the hope and the dread of catching a flash of ginger hair. Her thesis was printed and dog-eared the moment it was published; because challenging one of the greatest minds the world has ever known was something so quintessentially Dana Scully, and he was ever the masochist.
His hopes were not high; he didn’t expect her to accept this assignment, and he certainly didn’t suppose she would darken his basement door that very same day, but suddenly, here she is, smiling down on him from the high road.
“Agent Mulder,” she says quietly, with an air of disbelief, “I’ve been assigned to work with you,”
They shake hands like strangers, his fingers burn at her touch; the sensation lingers even after her hand falls away. She had always run as warm as her complexion, His summer girl had become fall. Her hair is darker, neatly tamed. She teeters precariously on heels that give her precious extra inches, that demand he looks her in the eye. Her ill-fitting tweed suit hangs awkwardly on her slender frame; the whole ensemble reminds him of a child playing make-believe. Hidden is her rebellious heart under sensible attire and a polite smile; the heart he knows he broke, and one he refuses to break again.
So he puts down his slides and puts up his guard.
“Isn’t it nice to be so highly regarded? So who’d you tick off to get stuck with this detail, Scully?”
For a moment she’s stunned, then the next she recovers, “Actually, I’m looking forward to working with you,” she tells him.
He responds with a bitter smile, “Oh really? I was under the impression that you were sent to spy on me.”
A fire sparks behind her eyes, she looks as if she was about to retort before he cuts her off. “I’m surprised you didn’t object to your placement, Scully, what with our tempestuous history,”
She hesitates, he hates that she hesitates, hates that he makes her hesitate. “I can’t say I wasn’t caught off guard,” she admits, “Though I knew it was a possibility we would run into each other when I started working at the Bureau…”
“Yes, this is interesting happenstance isn’t it, Doctor?” She tenses, Mulder stands and brushes past her in order to miss her patented Scully glare.
“If you’re suggesting that you played any part in any decision concerning my career…”
“I’m not suggesting anything, I just always supposed you’d be headed towards a Nobel prize by now, yet here you are wasting your talents in the basement with me,”
Scully blinks and tilts her pointed chin, “You think I’m wasting my talents here, Mulder?”
“It’s just that in most of my work, the laws of physics rarely seem to apply,” he shrugs and hits the lights. In the unearthly glow of his projector, Scully looks like a ghost.
He shows her the dead kids, barely older than they had been, once upon a time. He tells her his theories, she rebukes them with a smirk, slowly the ice begins to thaw and a familiar feeling begins to take root.
Then she leaves, and the basement feels darker and emptier than it ever had before. So Scully was back in his life and maybe, plausibly, this time she would stay. Mulder locks the office door behind him that evening and whistles the whole way home.
Fall, 1978
September in Connecticut, 1978 is record-breaking. The air as thick and hot as soup, her stiff collared shirt clings to her skin and dampens at the base of her neck. She wipes away the sweat beading on her forehead with the end of her ugly striped green tie and ignores the disapproving look her mother gives her.
Dana had always marvelled at how the air was always different in every new place they landed, she secretly ranked them from the icy unforgiving winds of the Scottish moors to the serene and exotic air of Japan. Greenwich so far was not doing too well on this list, however, it looked like she was going to have to get used to it. She had long since gotten used to the routine of neatly packing up her life in matching suitcases and burying a lunchbox in the backyard.
Melissa left a trail of broken hearts behind them like push pins in a map. Her sister had always been better at making friends, she claimed it had something to do with her aura, Dana wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, only that hers was probably broken. Usually, by the time she had started warming to people, her father would sit the four of them on the couch and tell them it was time to start saying goodbyes, so Dana eventually stopped trying to find people to say goodbye to.
She had her friends, they were called Mom, Ahab, Missy and Charlie. Sometimes Bill, when he wasn’t being a pain in the A Double-S. They were all she really needed. When she was very young, she even had an imaginary friend called Lucy, who took the form of a red squirrel. Lucy would curl up behind her hair and whispered secrets in her ear. Dana liked the fact that nobody else could see her, that she was hers and hers alone.
Sometimes she would pen a letter to the boy who had forgotten her, only to burn it in the bathtub with her mother’s lighter.
But still, her Mom always tried. She heard her arguing sometimes with her father that it wasn’t good for them, that kids needed stability. It looked like this year she had finally won the war and a house was bought, not rented.
She shifts uncomfortably as her bare thighs stick to the Principals rigid leather seats. The Principal in question was a tall British woman with large teeth, a sensible mousey bob and a collection of motivational animal posters. Dana catches the eye of a mournful kitten hanging from a curtain, encouraging her to Hang In There! and somehow feels even less optimistic.
“Now Diana, a little birdy told me that you’re especially talented at Science is that right, dear?” She smiles in a condescending way that makes Scully bristle. Bill snickers to her right, Missy kicks him in the shin on her behalf.
“It’s Dana, Ms Paterson,” Her mother corrects her patiently.
“Oh, my apologies, Dana.”
Dana represses the urge to roll her eyes, instead, begins to fiddle with the brand new chain around her neck. Naturally she was the last of the three to be enrolled, but unfortunately for her, also the one the school was most interested in.
“As I was saying, it seems you are just the model student, and if you don’t mind the extra work, we might be able to sign you up to the tutoring scheme, we have a nice young man who is in need of a little extra help in physics,”
Maggie nods encouragingly at her, clearly ecstatic at the prospect of her troubled young daughter making a friend. Dana tries feebly to muster her mothers’ enthusiasm,
“Sure, Miss, sounds… neat,”
“Wonderful,” she croons, “I hope you don’t mind, but I already took the pleasure of asking Fox to come by the office, so you could get to know each other,”
Dana’s hand stilled at the base of her throat, she felt her mother stiffen beside her, and her siblings’ squabbles fall silent. No. It couldn’t be that uncommon a name. “Fox?” she falters.
“Yes, quite an odd name isn’t it? He’s truly lovely boy, very very bright, unfortunately, he had to be held back a year…” Ms Paterson yammers on, but Dana had long since stopped hearing her words, as a minute later he appeared.
He was taller and lanky, the skin on his cheeks textured and he was in dire need of a haircut, but he was undoubtedly the same wide-eyed boy who had been her first real friend. And with wide eyes, he stares at her from the doorway, as if he couldn’t believe them himself.
“Scully?”
Framed by a halo of light from the hall, the image of him becomes blurred by the tears which spring to her eyes. Her chair falls backwards with a heavy thud as shoots to her feet. She mutters an apology to the baffled headmistress before she hurries from the room.
“Scully,” Mulder pleads, catching her hand as she darts past and clutches it tight. Electricity floods her veins. She looks into those familiar hazel eyes and pauses only a moment before she pulls her hand away and runs.
Summer, 1969
The summer of ‘69 is worthy of its song. Rock and Roll is at its peak, a man walks on the moon, and somewhere in New England, a lonely little boy meets a lonely little girl.
With a startled wail and a resounding thump, she falls out of a tree into his yard and into his life.
The day until that moment had been dull and unremarkable. Having escaped captivity and found refuge in his favourite spot, under a tall oak tree overlooking the tranquil sea; Fox William Mulder, seven and three quarters, jumps with a start and stares at the heap of limbs and hand me downs, as it groans then starts to giggle.
“Are you okay?” he asks, as his initial shock subsides.
“Yeah, yeah,” it says, “I’m fine,”
Dana Katherine Scully, six and a half, sits up to brush off the worst of the debris but lets out a sharp gasp as a lightning bolt of pain shoots through her wrist. However, being the tough cookie she was having grown up playing rough with William Scully Jr, the sprain was not enough to make her cry.
“You don’t look okay, you’re bleeding,” Mulder observes. She touches a hand to her mouth which sure enough, comes away red. Between them on the crisply trimmed grass lies a pearly white tooth. The ruffled girl picks it up and studies it curiously, tonguing the fresh gap in her gums, then tucks it into the pocket of her overalls.
“I guess you’re gonna see the tooth fairy,” he lisps, gesturing to his own missing front teeth. Her freckles dance as she wrinkles her nose.
“The tooth fairy isn’t real,” she replies, spitting scarlet on the ground and wiping her mouth on her arm, staining her skin like war paint.
“Is too, and so is Santa Claus,”
He offers a hand to help her to her feet, which she takes with a bloody, gap-toothed grin. This girl was brand new, he knew every fresh face in this small seaside town, and not one of them had ever smiled at him like that before. She’s all skinned elbows and scabby knees. She looks like she was spat out by the sun, with a fiery rat’s nest of auburn hair and a mischievous gleam in her bright blue eyes. He feels like Isaac Newton, hit on the head with the discovery of the century.
“You’re not from around here are you?” he asks.
She shakes her head, “No, we just moved here this week. My Dad’s gone to sea, I was trying to see his boat from up there when I slipped,” She replies, gesturing to the web of twisted branches above their heads.
“He’s a pirate?” he jokes; she quirks a little brow.
“No. He’s a Captain,”
“Captain Hook?”
Fox Mulder is still at the age where girls are kind of gross, but the sincerity with which this pretty tomboy laughs makes his ears turn red regardless. She was like a breath of fresh air after spending the whole day trapped inside a stuffy room, which incidentally he had.
“Fox,” he blurts at her, suddenly losing his cool.
“What did you call me?” she replies hotly, her un-injured hand flying self-consciously to her mussed red hair.
“No! my name is – “
“Fox!” They jump at the booming disembodied voice calling from the house a few meters away, “What in the hell are you doing?”
“Crap,” he mutters. Scully can’t help but flinch at the use of the word which would have cost her her dessert. “I’m supposed to be grounded, I think I’d better go,”
She tries not to be disappointed, but finds herself reluctant to say goodbye to this curious boy with a strange sense of humor, who believes in myths and fairy tales; but he makes no move to leave, equally unwilling to say goodbye to the girl who dresses like a boy and smells like the sea, who climbs trees and doesn’t cry when she falls. They eye each other hesitantly until finally, she breaks the silence.
“Your name is Fox?” she asks.
He makes a face, “Yeah, but I hate it. I like my last name better. It’s Mulder,”
“Mulder,” she tries it on her tongue and decides she likes the taste. She straightens her back and offers her hand like she’s seen adults do a thousand times before. “Ok. Nice to meet you, Mulder, my name’s Dana, but I guess you can call me Scully,”
“Scully,” he beams and takes her tiny, dirty hand in his. They shake in childish ignorance to how their stars had just aligned.
#If Ever There Is Tomorrow#txf fic#the x files fanfiction#msr fic#fictober#oh god im still so nervous to post this#i might throw up#this is my baby#no but thank god for the workshop or i probably would have just aborted#my stuff
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Third Christmas
the series is as follows so far:
First … Second … Third … Fourth … Fifth … Fifth Christmas, Part 2 … Sixth … Seventh … Eighth … Ninth … Tenth … Eleventh … Twelfth … Thirteenth … Fourteenth … Fifteenth … Sixteenth … Seventeenth … Eighteenth … Nineteenth … Twentieth … Twenty-first … Twenty-second … Twenty-third
———————–
He stood for a good twenty minutes in the Christmas shop, surveying rows and stacks of ornaments, wondering which would be a good fit for their third year together. He’d gotten her the alien and the Woodstock Snowman and he was leaning towards the Dog trapped in Christmas Lights when something else caught his eye.
A crystal snowflake, cut in such a way that the light caught it from a hundred different angles.
Without thought to price, he bought it, along with two stockings and a box of candy canes.
&&&&&&&&&&
Knocking lightly, he didn’t hear a sound from inside her apartment but given her car was parked at the curb, he used his key, figuring she was probably asleep on the couch. Opening the door, he found the room dim but not pitch black, the only light coming from the TV, which seemed to be on the Weather Channel. Locking behind him, he silently got out of his shoes, hung his coat, tiptoed to the couch, finding her just where he thought she’d be.
Looking up from her sleeping face after a minute, he saw her half-assembled Christmas tree, two sections done, the rest spread across the carpet. With a quietly sad sigh, he lay a second blanket over her and got to work, the glow of the tropical update assisting in his task. It didn’t take too long to get the tree together, after which he opened up the ornaments, putting the newest addition on first, methodically hanging the rest like they’d done in the past.
After stashing the boxes back in the hall closet, he returned to find her eyes open, looking at the tree. He could almost see her trying to remember if she had done it before she fell asleep and kneeling down in front of her, hand pushing back her hair, finding her forehead warm, “hey there.”
“Hi.”
“How are you feeling?” Even in the dark, he could see her turn slightly green at the question so he moved on quickly, pointing over his shoulder, “hope you don’t mind. I tried to be just as OCD about it as you are.”
She wanted to make a joke, give him something to hold on to but the chemo she’d received earlier in the day was taking its toll, wiping her out to the point where even moving her eyelids was exhausting. Forcing her focus on the tree for a moment, she looked back up at him, her voice frail, shatteringly feeble, low to the point he had to lean in, “it looks beautiful. Thank you.”
“I’m not done yet.” Standing after dropping a kiss to her nose, he moved to the other items he’d purchased, affixing the two stockings to the mantle with sticky hooks, then crooking a candy cane in each, he adorned the tree with the rest. “I decided we needed stockings and candy canes. You’ve never put them on before and they looked festive, so I bought ‘em.” Pulling one back off the branches, he returned to sit by her head, unwrapping the candy as he did so. Holding it out to her, “share?”
“Oh, Mulder, I don’t think my stomach can take it right now.”
“It’s peppermint though. That’s supposed to be good for nausea.”
Her heart warmed at the idea of him reading something and paying attention and thinking of her in the middle of wherever he’d been shopping. Wiggling her hand free, she took the candy and sucked on the end for a moment or three before handing it to him, “your turn.”
It took nearly half-an-hour to consume the striped goodness, which they did in silence, Mulder having flipped through the channels on her TV until he found ‘The Christmas Story’, sound off but better than watching half of the country basking in warm temperatures while they had wind chills in the negative double digits. Tossing the now empty wrapper on the coffee table, “you want some help getting to bed or would you like to stay out here?”
It the quiet of winter darkness, rainbow reflections dancing on the walls and in Mulder’s ancient-souled eyes, she didn’t know how to hide anymore. “I was sick in bed earlier and never got around to cleaning it up.”
Tilting his head, he smiled softly at her, his hand back on her forehead, fingers in her hair, “then thank God I gave you something peppermint or this would be an unbearable conversation.”
Oh, he so desperately wanted to make her feel better and for just a moment, she did, chuckling a wet, tear-y laugh, then wincing, her head aching as well. Seeing her, he stopped smiling, getting serious, “spare room?”
“Covered in Christmas presents that still need wrapping.”
“Well, damn it, woman,” he stood, then held out her hand, “can you give me 38 seconds to get this sofa open for you? You need a better place to sleep than all curled up like that.”
Bracing herself, she stood slowly, but the horizon change still got her, the dizziness driving her stomach contents up her throat. Luckily, Mulder was ready with the trash can she had conveniently placed beside the couch and luckily, it was over quickly, nothing left in her stomach to come back out but the few dry heaves that made the bones in her back crack and her jaw pop, Mulder wincing involuntarily.
He also stood the entire time with one hand on her back and one on her hip.
They were beyond trivialities at this point.
He took the can quietly from her when she finally straightened up, letting her grip his arm as she moved the four steps to the chair. Handing her the bucket, “that does not count in my 38 seconds, just saying.” He swiftly lifted the coffee table out of the way, then, with Scully looking on confused, he rotated the couch ninety degrees before pulling out the bed. It had sheets already on it and Mulder grabbed two pillows from the hall closet and her spare comforter, elegantly tossing them all in place, “time?”
Feigning looking at her watch, “41 seconds. Better luck next time, buddy.”
“Shit.”
As he helped her stand, then settle down on the couch, she asked over her shoulder, “why did you move the couch?”
“So you could lay down and still see the tree.” Holding a finger up, “hang on.”
All she had time for was a deep sigh at the heavenliness of the pillow sinking under her head, her fatigue at its breaking point, before Mulder returned, wrapped in sweatpants and an old, torn t-shirt emblazoned with a Care Bear dressed as Batman with the superhero’s iconic symbol beaming from the animal’s chest. “I forgot about that shirt.”
Mulder clicked off the TV, then slid under the covers, not touching her, remaining on his side of the mattress, “the things I can find at a church rummage sale, Scully, would blow your mind.” Trying his best not to jostle her, he got comfortable, turning on his left side, facing both the tree and her profile as she stared at the ceiling, “I’m just glad you steal enough of my clothes on cases that I have a permanent stash here.”
Since she was on her back, she had to choose between turning on her left side to face the tree or on her right to talk to him. The tree won, given she couldn’t bring herself to roll twice and he’d moved the couch so she could fall asleep to the lights. She did, however, reach behind her, her hand flailing until Mulder saw it, taking it in his, “come closer.”
This was something new. They’d bunked down together before, mostly when he refused to leave her alone because she was so sick from previous treatments and she was too scared to be left. When he didn’t move, she pulled his hand towards her, giving him a second indication that she really wasn’t kidding but wanted him closer.
Scooting until there were just millimeters between them, Scully closed the gap, “I am freezing and you are the best furnace I have.”
Carefully letting his hand fall over her hip and around her waist, settling on the mattress in front of her belly, “is this okay?”
Already relaxing under the warmth, “perfect.”
“Whatever you need, Scully.”
Shifting her hand so she could tuck it under her cheek, keep her fingers warm, “thank you.”
Tentatively, daringly, bravely, stupidly, he kissed her lightly on the scar left at the base of her neck, the chip removed and gone, the cancer rampant in its place. He didn’t linger, he didn’t push, he didn’t expect but simply touched for a moment, then drew back, “did you ever sleep under the tree as a kid?”
“A few times,” her neck tingled, “Missy and I would,” her heart skipped, “but I haven’t since I was about 12,” her pulse quickened for a fraction.
“Well, it was high time you did it again then.”
“Yes, it is.” Quiet descended again, until, “the new ornament is beautiful.”
Desperate to tell her it paled in comparison to its owner, he instead moved just a little closer, moved the blankets a little higher, returned his hand to her a little heavier, resting it instead on the downward slope of her side, “are you warm enough?”
“Perfect.”
Safe and sound for the moment, queasiness calmed for the moment, Mulder wrapped around her for the moment, she slipped into sleep, knowing he’d be there when she woke up in the morning.
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X-Files Fic: She’s Beauty, She’s Grace- Chapter Six
Note: I suddenly realized this chapter was getting away from me and cut it off, but there’s an excellent chance (since I was well into what’s going to be the next chapter when I decided it was getting too long) that there will be an additional update later tonight. :)
Previous chapters: one | two | three | four | five
Even though she’s managed her first uninterrupted night of sleep since her shooting, Scully still wakes up exhausted, and the day begins far earlier than she would have liked. Skinner, Mulder, and Elise converge on her hotel room within fifteen minutes of her alarm going off, and all four of them order breakfast from room service, rather than taking the time to go down to the dining room. While they wait for their food to be brought up to them, Elise gives them the schedule for the day.
“Tonight’s the official start of the pageant,” she says. “Your call time is six o’clock, two hours before the curtain goes up. Until then, though, the only two events you’ll need to attend are one last dance rehearsal, which is at eleven, and a rehearsal for the talent portion.” Scully bites her lip nervously. Two dance rehearsals, plus the performance tonight? There won’t be enough Vicodin in the world… or at least not left in her prescription bottle.
“What time is the talent rehearsal?” she asks.
“Each contestant has a fifteen-minute slot, and yours is at one-thirty this afternoon,” says Elise. “The rehearsal is more for the crew than it is for the performers. They need to get a copy of your music, see how long you’ll be onstage, and where you’ll be, so they can put together a lighting design. It doesn’t take long. And beyond that, you’re free for today.”
“How free?” asks Scully. “Lounge-around-the-pool free, or five-strategizing-sessions-before-lunch free?”
“Somewhere in between,” says Skinner. “We do have things we need to go over, but you also need to take it easy as much as you can. It’s going to be a long night.”
“Tonight will start with the group dance number,” says Elise. “Then you’ll have the first round of interviews.”
“I completely forgot about the interview portion,” groans Scully. Elise smiles.
“Don’t worry too much about it,” she advises. “Each contestant only gets one question in the first round. Otherwise, with fifty women, it would take all night.” Scully nods, somewhat relieved. “Then the night will finish with the swimsuit competition.” Scully frowns.
“No talent portion?” she asks.
“That’s the next night,” says Elise. “For the top twenty-five, anyway. After the swimsuit portion is over tonight, you’ll all change back into the evening gown you wore for your interview, and they’ll end the first night by announcing who’s made the cut.” Scully brightens.
“So I might not ever have to perform my talent portion at all?”
“You’re guaranteed to make the top eight,” says Skinner. “To make sure you’re on hand as long as possible.” It makes sense, but still, Scully’s disappointed.
“Don’t worry, Scully,” says Mulder, giving her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “You’ll do fine.” He’s smiling in a way that says, all too clearly, that he’s looking forward to it tremendously, and Scully just barely manages to resist giving him an impromptu shower with the orange juice that has just arrived.
As soon as breakfast is over, Mulder and Skinner leave to meet Kersh and the profiling team, and Elise stays behind to help Scully get ready.
“I had this delivered to your room last night, while you were in your rehearsal,” she says, unzipping a garment bag hanging on the end of a rack in the corner of the room. “Someone from the Luxor brought it over in the afternoon. It’s on loan from one of their floor shows.” She holds up a bright green velvet dress of the sort worn by Irish dancers- long-sleeved, close-fitted through the bodice, with a flared skirt that’s meant to hit the dancer at about mid-thigh. A complicated Celtic knot work pattern is embroidered across the front in silver. “Try it on,” says Elise, passing it to her. “The wardrobe mistress at the Luxor says they have other sizes, but I’m pretty sure this will fit.”
And fit it does. Standing in front of the full-length mirror, Scully has a strong sense of having been transported fifteen years into the past, back to high school, when she and Melissa had practiced their routines together nearly every afternoon. Their mother had driven them to competitions all over California, and once, when Missy had been a senior and Dana a sophomore, they had qualified for Nationals. They hadn’t, however, been able to attend the competition- their father had been at sea, there hadn’t been anyone to watch Charlie (Bill had already been away at school), and anyway, they hadn’t really been able to afford it. Airfare for three, plus hotel rooms and a week of restaurant meals, were a bit much to afford on a Navy man’s salary.
For a moment, standing in front of the mirror, Scully misses her sister more than ever. Missy would have gotten a huge kick out of this, out of the idea that even though they’d been denied the chance to dance in that long-ago competition, her little sister is still going to be dancing in front of the entire country.
“Perfect,” says Elise, grinning at Scully and jerking her out of her reverie. “The judges are going to eat you up.”
“I feel a little ridiculous,” Scully confesses.
“Don’t,” laughs Elise, patting her shoulder. “I’ve seen some truly ridiculous talent performances over the years. This won’t be one of them, I’m sure.” She rifles through the garment rack and pulls off a hanger holding a royal blue one-piece swimsuit. “Try this on next,” she says, handing it to Scully, who takes it into the bathroom.
True to her word, Elise has made sure to secure Scully a one-piece bathing suit that manages to cover what it needs to while still showing off her figure. The neckline plunges dramatically, it’s true, and there are large, geometric cut-outs in the sides, but the gunshot scar is covered, with several inches to spare, so that even if the suit shifts (which Scully doubts it will- it fits like a glove), it will still be covered. Scully imagines, for a fleeting, private moment, what Mulder’s reaction will be when he sees her wearing this, and she flushes all over.
Elise nods approvingly when Scully comes out of the bathroom.
“Do you feel comfortable in it?” she asks, and Scully laughs shortly.
“Comfortable? No,” she says. “Exposed? Definitely.” She looks down at herself. She hasn’t shown this much skin in public since her bikini days on the beaches of San Diego in high school. “But everything’s covered that needs to be.” She smiles gratefully at Elise. “Thank you for finding this,” she says. “It’s probably the best I could hope for under the circumstances.” Elise smiles.
“Not a problem at all,” she says. She crosses to the clothing rack and unzips another garment bag. “We’ve got a killer evening gown for you to wear tonight,” she tells Scully, “but obviously, we’re not going to make you walk around in it all day.” She takes out a pale lavender pantsuit and passes it to Scully. “This should be a little more comfortable.”
“Finally, a piece of clothing I recognize,” Scully says, laughing as she looks at the suit. The cut is perfect, definitely something she’d choose for herself, though not in this color- at least, not for work. “Where’s the blouse to put under it?”
“There isn’t one,” says Elise. Scully raises her eyebrows. The jacket closes fairly high on the chest, it’s true, but still… there’s going to be an awful lot more of her chest exposed than usual.
Once again, she thinks of Mulder, and once again, she goes warm and red all over.
Once Scully’s showered and dressed in the suit, a matching pair of heels on her feet, Elise sits her down in front of the mirrored vanity and goes to work on her hair. There’s not much opportunity for conversation while the blow dryer’s running, but once she moves on to the flat iron and brush, Elise gets talkative.
“So, how long have you and Agent Mulder been together?” she asks.
“I was assigned to work with him a little less than seven years ago,” Scully says. Elise cocks her head to the side.
“Oh, no, I meant how long have you been together?” she asks.
“Um….” Scully’s taken aback. “We’re not… that is, Mulder and I, we’re not like that,” she says.
“Oh!” Elise’s eyes are wide with surprise. “Gosh, I’m sorry, Dana. I didn’t mean to be presumptuous.”
“No, it’s fine,” says Scully. “Plenty of people think that we’re… uh… involved.” She shrugs. “We’re the only two people in our department, we’ve been working together for a long time, and we’re close. There are always rumors.”
“I just… well, Agent Mulder didn’t talk about anything except you the entire time I was with him yesterday,” says Elise. “And I mean the entire time.” She shakes her head, smiling. “I guess I’ve never heard a guy talk like that about a woman he just works with.”
“Well, we’re friends,” says Scully, suddenly feeling defensive. “Best friends, really. We’ve been through a lot together.” Elise nods, but she doesn’t look convinced. She finishes flat-ironing Scully’s hair, and Scully obediently covers her eyes in preparation for the hairspray.
“So,” says Elise, as she swivels Scully’s chair around and pulls up a chair of her own to start on the makeup, “if you and Agent Mulder aren’t a couple, are you seeing anybody?”
“Not for a very long time,” says Scully. “The job doesn’t leave me with much free time.” She sighs. “I’m barely home enough to keep my houseplants alive.” She waits, tensed, for the question she knows is coming next, now that Elise knows her partnership is not a romantic one: is Mulder seeing anyone?
But the question never comes.
————————————
The morning meeting with Kersh is uneventful: there’s no new information yet, no further threats have been received, and no one has noticed anything suspicious or out of the ordinary. All of the other undercover agents are in place as stage hands and security guards, and Skinner and Mulder show Scully the setup for the coming night.
In the dressing room, backstage, Scully has been allotted a space all the way at the end of a long row of mirrors. Each mirror has a corresponding curtained-off changing area across from it. There’s a door just to the left, and Skinner explains that there is a conference room immediately on the other side, which is where all of the agents who aren’t undercover will be, watching a live feed of the pageant. Scully looks at Mulder.
“That’s where you’ll be?” she asks, and he nods.
“With a direct line to you at all times,” he says, tapping his ear. She turns to Skinner.
“And you?”
“In here with you,” he says. “Coaches stay with their contestants throughout the pageant, I’m told.” Scully nods, extremely thankful for the curtained changing areas. Changing clothing in front of her boss would be a whole new level of uncomfortable.
The door to the conference room opens, and Agents Marino and Young wheel in the clothing rack from Scully’s hotel room. They say nothing, but smirk at Scully and exchange a look with one another that she can’t quite read. She assumes they’re still angry about her turning down a body camera, and shrugs it off.
The eleven o’clock dance rehearsal with the rest of the contestants is short, thankfully. They only run through the routine three times before they’re dismissed. Scully tries to get Tina’s attention when it’s over, hoping to pick up last night’s conversation where they’d left off. But it turns out that Tina’s talent rehearsal is starting in minutes, and Scully is forced to leave the theater without her.
Lunch is a solitary affair, in her room, by her choice. Scully’s been surrounded by people more or less constantly since Mulder had picked her up from her apartment yesterday morning, and she’s desperate for some time alone to recharge. She stretches out on her bed and relaxes until one o’clock, when it’s time to go get changed and get ready for her talent rehearsal.
The fit of the green velvet dress, the stiffness of the skirt, and the supple leather of her hard shoes all combine to give Scully the strongest feeling of deja-vu she's had in a long, long time. Backstage, in her changing area, Elise helps Scully apply a heavier coat of makeup to compete with the bright stage lights, and uses a curling iron to give her a head full of tightly-wound spirals.
"Elise, can I ask you something?" In the mirror, Scully sees Elise smile encouragingly.
"Of course," she says.
"I don't want to sound like I'm ungrateful or like I'm not thrilled you're here, helping me, but... is there a reason you're not coaching a contestant in this pageant this year? A real one, I mean." Elise's expression grows sober and uncomfortable. "You don't have to answer if it's a sore subject," Scully says quickly. "I just... you're obviously very good at this. I was just curious." Elise doesn't answer for a moment, concentrating instead on curling the hair at the back of Scully's head.
"I did have a contestant that I was coaching," she says, finally, not meeting Scully's eyes in the mirror. "But we had a falling out... just a few weeks ago, in fact, which is how I ended up being available to help you."
"I'm sorry," says Scully. Elise nods, still not meeting Scully's gaze.
"I'd been coaching her for a long time," she says. "But things started going south right after she won the pageant for her state... and within two weeks, she was just... different. Everything I said or did made her angry, we couldn't agree on anything... she was a completely different person almost overnight." Something pings in the back of Scully's mind, some connection she's missing. She gropes for the loose ends in her head, trying to figure out how this information relates to what she already knows, but it eludes her.
"Well," she says, "I feel awful that that happened to you... but I'm definitely happy to have your help, Elise." She smiles at her, and now Elise does meet her gaze, and she grins.
"You're all set," she says, stepping back. "Go knock 'em dead."
All in all, it's not as bad as it could have been, Scully decides twenty minutes later as she changes back into the lavender pantsuit, returning the velvet dress to its garment bag. She did have to run through the routine three times, so that the lighting technicians could make sure they had her lit the way they wanted, and she's a little sore, but the extra repetitions of the routine had served as much-needed practice squeezed in before tomorrow night's performance. She remembers all of the steps, and while her footwork is certainly not clean enough to win a national competition, it's good enough that she won't blow her cover.
And at the very least, Scully thinks to herself as she leaves the dressing room, Mulder is busy elsewhere, so there's no way that he could have-
"That was awesome!" Mulder's enthusiastic shout is the first thing to greet Scully as she leaves the theater, and she cringes. "How come I never knew you could do that, Scully?"
"I thought you were busy with Kersh, Mulder," Scully grumbles, walking past him with her shoulders hunched.
"I was," he says, turning to walk along with her, "but I made sure to get down here in time to watch you. You really used to do that in competitions?" Scully nods as they step into a waiting elevator. "Why didn't you ever tell me about it?"
"It never came up," she says. "It hasn't been a part of my life for a long time now. And anyway...." She leans heavily against the elevator wall as the car begins to ascend. "It's something I used to do with Melissa, so... it reminds me a lot of her." Mulder's face immediately sobers, the boyish enthusiasm fading away.
"I'm sorry, Scully," he says. "I didn't know." She shrugs.
"Missy would get a kick out of all this," she says. "Me, dancing onstage in a beauty pageant. It's not exactly the sort of thing I ever thought I'd be doing." She shakes her head. "It's not a scenario I ever pictured when I made the decision to join the FBI."
"You're handling it great, Scully," Mulder says sincerely. He reaches out and fingers the lapel of her lavender blazer, pulling the edge ever so slightly towards himself. "This is a good look for you, by the way. I meant to tell you earlier." Scully feels a warm flush spread to the rest of her body from her chest, where his hand is hovering oh so close to where the blazer covers her bare skin.
"Yeah?" she says, her voice little more than a breathy whisper. "You like it?"
"I do," he says. He's moved a little nearer without her noticing, somehow. "I'd say it's too bad you can't dress like this all the time in the office... but then I probably wouldn't get anything done, ever."
He is so close.
"And what makes you say that?" she asks, tilting her head back to meet his intense gaze. He says nothing in answer... only drops his eyes down to the exposed valley of her cleavage, then meets her eyes again. He tightens his hold on her lapel ever so slightly, pulling her inexorably towards him...
...until with a sudden, unwelcome ding, the elevator stops and the doors fly open, admitting Tessa Gillman of Texas, with Stephanie Price of Minnesota standing next to her. Scully tries to pull away from Mulder, but he holds her fast.
"Wait, Kath, don't move," he says. "I've almost got the mascara off your cheek." He rubs his index finger across the skin under Scully's left eye, and she freezes, realizing at once what he's trying to do: if a contestant is caught making out (or looking like she's about to make out) with a man in the elevator, it won't look good for her, and she could get in trouble.
Having her makeup adjusted by her pageant coach's personal assistant, however, is perfectly permissible.
"Katherine, who's your friend?" exclaims Tessa, grinning broadly. Scully's all too aware that her face (and, likely, the exposed skin between her collarbones) is flushed bright red.
"Tessa, this is my coach's personal assistant, Mul...." She trails off, but Mulder, thankfully, is still right on top of things.
"Marty," says Mulder, extending his hand. "Marty Luder." Tessa shakes his hand, then Stephanie, as they pass. Tess looks very much as though she'd like to say something- her eyes are sparkling with mischief- but they’re saved by Skinner’s voice booming down the hallway behind them.
“There you two are!” he calls, and Scully turns gratefully, waving good-bye to Tessa and Stephanie, who are still looking between her and Mulder with enormous grins on their faces. “Katherine, I need you both before dinner.” The elevator doors close, and Skinner beckons them down the hallway.
“Has something happened?” asks Mulder, and Skinner shakes his head.
“Nope,” he says. “I just want you-” he points at Scully- “back in your room and resting until dinner at five.” Scully opens her mouth to protest, but Skinner cuts her off. “That’s an order. Mulder, Kersh is waiting for you in the command center downstairs.” His tone brooks no argument, so Mulder brushes Scully’s shoulder with his hand.
“I’ll see you at dinner,” he says, dropping a wink. “Get some rest.” And Scully retreats reluctantly into her hotel room to lie restless on her bed, with nothing to distract her from her jangling nerves.
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Only One Choice, Part 2, Chapter 21
Read it here on AO3 / Tagging @today-in-fic
“Hi,” she greets him as he walks in the door, “I have something for you.”
She’s perched in the armchair, a smile that’s coy and playful curling the corners of her mouth. He gives her a curious smirk as he slips off his shoes and overcoat.
“Okay, like a gift?” he asks, crossing the room to plant a kiss on her lips, stealing another to enjoy the warm feeling of her mouth against his, which is chilled from the wintery air outside.
She shakes her head as he goes into the bedroom, changing into sweats and a T-shirt.
“You’re going to have to find it,” she calls from the other room, and he smiles to himself.
This is his favorite version of her; playful and flirtatious, quick to smile and laugh. He loves all aspects of her personality, but the rarity of this one makes it feel special. She almost never acts this way in front of anyone else, even her family; it feels like it’s just for him. He moves to stand at the threshold of the living room, leaning against the wall.
“Are you going to give me a hint?” he asks, and she considers the question with a thinking man pose.
“Well, I will tell you that right now you are very, very, cold,” she finally says.
His eyebrows lift in understanding and he walks back into the bedroom.
“Colder!” she calls, and he moves to the kitchen.
“Still cold.”
He walks to her desk.
“Mmm, slightly warmer.”
Next he steps close to the fireplace.
“A little warmer.”
He turns to look at her and narrows his eyes. He takes a step towards her.
“Oh, warmer.”
He stands directly in front of her chair.
“Getting hot,” she says with a playful lilt to her voice.
He drops to his knees between her legs.
“Very, very hot.”
He slips his fingers into the waistband of her pants.
“On fire,” She says with a smile.
He moves to pull her pants down and the tips of his fingers meet with something foreign near the top of her thigh. He quirks his head quizzically, fitting his whole hand into her pant leg and pulling out two long strips of cardstock. Airline tickets.
“How do you feel about a California Christmas?” she asks hopefully, and he looks at the tickets to see that the destination is San Diego, December 22nd.
He knew that she and her mother had been talking about flying out to see Bill for the holiday, but he’d assumed that he’d be left at home.
“What about Priscilla?” he asks, both touched that she wants to include him in her family’s celebration and nervous about meeting her older brother, who he understands will hate him by default.
“We can ask the Gunmen to look after her,” she offers. “Unless you don’t want to come with me?”
He can tell by her tone that it’s not meant to be a way for him to opt out, but a test of his willingness to go. She clearly wants him to.
“Of course I want to go with you,” he replies, moving close and wrapping his arms around her waist. “I will admit to being a little worried about meeting your brother, and in his home, on his turf.”
She gives him a sympathetic smile. “Don’t worry too much about Bill. Missy and Charlie are going, and Mom of course, and they love you. I know Tara will too. So even if he does pull the big brother card and give you a hard time, we have strength in numbers.”
“Is Byers going?” he asks hopefully, and she shakes her head. “Missy only just barely told Mom about him. It’s too soon for them.”
“But not for us?” he asks with the smile he reserves for the times when she alludes to the seriousness of their commitment.
She shakes her head slowly. “Not for us,” she says.
———
“Oh my god, I’m going to lose my mind, Mulder.”
She’s pacing around the apartment, putting things into different piles and open suitcases, her level of stress palpable in the air.
“Honey, stop for a second,” he says, grabbing her by the shoulders and dipping his head to meet her eye. “Take a deep breath,” he instructs, waiting as she does so. “We don’t need to leave for the airport for another twelve hours,” he says, keeping his own tone calm and level to counter hers, “we have plenty of time to pack.”
“It’s not just the packing, Mulder, this entire week was a nightmare. Everything I was hoping to accomplish before this trip was waylaid in one way or another; I missed my doctor’s appointment because of an emergency autopsy and forgot to reschedule it before they closed on Friday, Trudy was out sick half the week so I had to absorb her workload, the dry cleaners lost the dress I was going to bring for Christmas Eve mass, Priscilla is out of food AND litter, and I can’t find my earplugs for the plane,” she rattles off.
He pulls her into a hug, feeling her relax a bit with the contact.
“I will go pick up cat food, litter and earplugs,” he says, pulling away to look at her again, “and I’ll remind you to call the doctor tomorrow and reschedule. Wear that blue dress with the little flowers on it to mass, it looks beautiful on you. And try to breathe,” he finishes, giving her a sympathetic smile.
She forces a small smile onto her mouth and takes another deep breath. “Thank you,” she says quietly.
He pours her a big glass of wine before bundling himself up against the cold and venturing out into the December night.
———
She glances at Mulder intermittently, watching for signs of overwhelm. She knows that coming from a small, dysfunctional family means that he’s not accustomed to the type of gathering they are currently entrenched in; the entire Scully clan plus Tara’s parents and brother, and several members of their church. He seems to be faring okay, sipping a beer while talking sports with Charlie and a few others.
As nervous as he’d been about meeting Bill, he was well prepared. Scully directed him to speak highly of the Chargers while eviscerating the Patriots, and to go easy on the PDA. While they aren’t exactly best friends, Bill doesn’t seem to actively dislike him, and they are calling that a win.
She’d fully expected them to be set up in separate rooms given Bill’s traditional family values, but the number of people who needed to be housed made that impractical. They ended up relegated to the guest room and a single twin bed, though the enormous stack of pillows and blankets arranged on it suggest that one of them is expected to make a bed on the floor. They don’t do that, of course, instead sleeping nested together like spoons, Mulder continuously making half-hearted attempts at getting frisky while she laughs and slaps his hand away.
They are dressed for midnight mass on Christmas Eve, Scully in her flowered blue dress and Mulder in one of his typical weekday suits. They sit in the pew between Mom and Charlie, hands clasped chastely on the bench between them, suppressing giggles as he leans over to warn her that he is at risk of bursting into flame. He traces patterns on her palm with his index finger and she realizes at some point that they are letters. She concentrates, trying to understand his message, expecting it to be ‘I love you’ or something similarly sweet. When she puts together that he is spelling out ‘sex tonight?’ she looks over at him with wide eyes and then purses her lips together tightly to keep from laughing, doing her best to glare at him.
They file sleepily through the door at nearly 2am, quietly going off into their respective bedrooms and pull-out couches, hoping to get some rest before Christmas festivities in the morning. Scully quickly brushes her teeth and washes her face before darting to the bedroom, wriggling under the covers and pressing her back against Mulder, her cold toes brushing against his shins.
“Hm, you’re cold,” he says softly, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her closer.
“Thanks for going to mass,” she whispers back, “it meant a lot to my mom to have all of us there.”
“Thanks for inviting me,” he answers, his breath hot on her neck, “it’s nice to feel like a part of a real family.”
She threads her fingers through his where they rest on her belly, squeezing his hand. She tries to go to sleep, but his chest rising and falling against her back and the heat of his groin tucked against her backside are distracting. She wiggles a little bit against him.
“Hmmm,” he responds, thrusting his hips against her gently.
She swore that she was not going to have sex at her brother’s house. She knows that they can go without for the week they are here. But as she feels him grow hard against her ass, the throbbing between her legs suggests otherwise. No doubt it’s exacerbated by the forbidden nature of the situation; the door doesn’t have a lock and the house is quiet and still, though packed with enough ears that the risk of being heard is high. When his lips press against the back of her neck, she knows she’s done for.
She reaches behind herself to slip her hand into his pajama pants, stroking him firmly as he breathes hard into her ear, suppressing the groan that she knows would normally result from her touch. He pushes his pants down to his knees with one hand, then hurriedly brings hers down as well. She emits a small gasp when he slips inside her, simultaneously pushing his hand under her pajama top to squeeze her breast.
“Jesus fuck, you’re wet,” he whispers harshly in her ear, and she wants to make a joke about not taking the lord’s name in vain on his birthday but when he starts pumping in and out deliciously slowly, the thought slips from her mind.
If he moves too quickly the bed squeaks, so he keeps a languid pace as he pinches her nipples and kisses her neck, then slides his hand down to play with her clit in the tight space between her legs, which are still pinned together by the pajama pants around her knees. It feels incredible, and yet the necessary slowness and need to stay quiet make her wonder if she will be able to come. As if intuiting this, Mulder withdraws momentarily, sitting up and freeing her top leg from her pants, then lies back down and hitches her ankle behind his knee; her favorite position. He pulls the blanket back over them for warmth and modesty, though if anyone were to walk in now they’d have no chance of plausible deniability. With more room to move, he resumes his slow strokes and pairs them with hard and fast circles around her clit, murmuring little affirmations into her ear so softly she can barely hear them, much less anyone else. The vibration of his voice, the slip of his cock, the rough brush of his fingers, all come together in crescendo as she stiffens in his arms, turning to muffle her cries against his mouth as she comes. Now able to focus on his own release, he continues to pump slowly, pressing his face into her neck and letting out a low growl as she feels him throbbing inside her.
He slips quietly out of the bed, retrieving one of his dirty T shirts and swiping it between her legs before he pulls her pajama pants back into place. They get comfortable again, the sexual tension that had prevented them from relaxing before now dissipated.
He kisses her cheek softly, murmuring “Merry Christmas, Scully,” into her ear just before she drifts off to sleep.
In the morning, they sit around the lit tree, drinking coffee and eating pastries as they shake off sleep.
“Is your house haunted, Bill?” Charlie asks, and Bill gives him a doubtful look. “I swear I heard some weird noises, like creaking and whispering, I felt like I was in a horror movie,” Charlie defends.
Scully hides her face behind her coffee cup, glancing over to see Missy giving her a pointed look.
“I’m sure it was just the Christmas spirit,” Maggie says jovially. “Who wants to open presents?!”
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christmas week is the correct time to start posting a fic with multiple scenes set at thanksgiving and largely about sadness, right?
i am gone though i am here early chapters on ao3 or below.
summary: Dana Scully has no appreciation for fine cinema unless someone dies.
@today-in-fic
Wednesday, November 22, 1989
“This is what you want to see?” she asked, attempting to shake out the drooping newspaper without giving her elbows rug burn. She knew that glancing over her shoulder and up at her sister on the sofa, knees tucked up under a blanket and hands curled around a mug of tea, would make her look like she was rolling her eyes. So she did it.
“C’mon, Dana. Greatest writer in the English language. Captures the human spirit, the call to bravery within all of us, like no one else.”
“You just want to watch a bunch of sweaty men covered in mud. I think Daddy and the boys are playing football tomorrow.”
“Ew, Dana.” Missy threw a pillow at her, which crashed into the open newspaper, tearing it from her fingers. She cackled and rolled onto her back, slinging the pillow back in Missy’s direction and flopping her head back onto the floor when it sailed over her sister’s shoulder. Missy carefully set the tea down and then flung the blanket toward Dana, where it caught on her knees and whipped a tassel into her mouth.
“I can’t believe I came home to be ABUSED like this!” Dana shouted, spitting fuzz and laughter.
“Shut up, you’re five minutes away.”
“Am not.”
“Girls,” Mom called from the kitchen, “quiet down or come help.”
The sisters looked at each other, then bolted for the door to the carport, Dana giggling the entire stampede down the hallway as she grabbed their coats and Missy swept her keys off the table, both of them stuffing feet into snow boots as they raced to escape Thanksgiving prep. Missy grabbed the post of the carport with one hand and whipped herself around it, barreling down the driveway, Dana copying her, the sisters careening out into the early darkness as their breath misted around them.
“You’ll like it, I promise,” Missy said as she pulled away from their parents’ curb, both of them still a bit breathless. “Yes, it’s gonna be hard to understand, but you’re not a total dim bulb.”
“Shut it, Arthur Conan Doyle, I eat big words for breakfast.” She pulled the collar of her coat up to her chin and hunkered down into the seat as Missy blew through a stop sign. “Missy! C’mon! I never should’ve let you drive.”
Missy very deliberately put on her blinker and pushed the brakes as slowly as possible as they neared the next turn. “Shut it yourself, Doctor Boring. Haven’t been arrested yet. And you’re a terrible driver.”
“I’m a safe driver.”
“Who can’t park for shit.”
She opened her mouth to respond but really couldn’t argue with that. Her sister carefully pulled into a space at the theater, perfectly straight and perfectly even between the lines. “No, wait,” Missy said, throwing her arm dramatically across Dana’s chest when she moved. “No moving until the engine is off, dear. I’m going to straighten out.” Agonizingly slowly, she put the car in reverse, backed straight out of the space, moved the wheel a micrometer, and then pulled forward again, somehow parking even more perfectly. Dana rolled her eyes, unbuckled, and flung the door open with a groan, clomping toward the booth in her neon purple snow boots to buy the movie passes. She knew her sister was grinning behind her.
And, fine, Missy had been right. As she usually was about this sort of thing, unfortunately.
“That was a lot of death,” Dana said, blowing on her hands as they waited for Missy’s ancient car to warm up. “And I liked the French princess.” She refused to acknowledge that she hadn’t actually understood most of the dialogue, in English or in French. But her sister definitely had suckered her into a movie that fit her tastes pretty well, aside from that little hiccup.
“You know they’re married? She and the guy who played Henry. In real life, I mean. It was in one of the reviews.”
“Mm. I can see that. He seems kind of like a jerk though.”
“You think every man is a jerk.”
“That’s because it’s true.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes, waiting as the engine rumbled and the bum heater clicked in a way that would have been ominous in any other car.
“He was cute though,” Missy said, and Dana rolled her eyes over at her again. “Really, really cute. That accent! And even covered in blood. Maybe especially covered in blood, for you.”
“That’s how I like ‘em. Only cold, dead men for me.”
“Come on. You can’t watch a speech like that and not be moved by his ability to capture something ephemeral and beautiful about perseverance and unity.” Missy put on a bombastic voice. “‘We happy few, we band of brothers.’ Something something, yay England.”
“Wow. Yes, greatest writer in the English language, I totally agree. You’ve captured his poetry beautifully.”
“Shut up.” The car had stopped sounding like it was counting down to an explosion, so Missy put it in gear and ripped out of the parking lot much less cautiously than she’d entered it, despite the slushy snow in patches of the lot. Dana looked at her fingers as they drove, pondering how long it would take the muscles in them to freeze solid if Missy had forgotten to gas up again and they got stuck overnight compared to if she was lying dead under an inch of cold mud in France compared to the reverse thaw rate of the turkey Mom probably had out on the counter by now. It had started to snow while they were in the movie, and she saw her life stretched out along the glinting black road, swirling with flecks of beauty, long and unknown, just like this.
***
#the x files#god i think the last time i wrote xf fic i was probably 14#(i am 36)#imposing extremely silly creative constraints on myself and coming up with something bleak#we all know how this is going to turn out#sorry missy#there's actually another very short chapter on ao3 but it's so much of an interlude#that it was not an appropriate conclusion to a single post
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You Miss Her Everything
author: storybycorey
rating: individual sections may vary, but for entire fic NC-17
summary: fifth part of the Bunsen Burner college AU which begins here
“I don’t wanna miss you anymore. Your hands, your mouth, your…everything, Mulder, I miss your everything…”
“Shhhh,” you whisper, missing her everything, too.
It’s the end of May and it’s been two hours.
Just the length of a movie, that’s all. A terrible movie though, the worst you’ve ever seen. Worse even than that bubblegum mess of a film her roommate recommended last week. Instead of watching, you’d entertained yourself by nibbling at her shoulder, naming each freckle aloud as you tasted it. Cinnamon Sprinkle, Scout, Snowflake, Nessie, Stardust… The credits had rolled before you were able to finish.
You want to finish. You can’t bear the thought there are freckles out there, unnamed and untasted and driving away in her sister’s old beat-up Dodge.
Two hours. It’s as if someone took infinite and crammed it all into a single minute, then took that and multiplied it by one-hundred-twenty.
On the bench beside her dorm, you sit, while used-to-be-freshman-and-soon-to-be-sophomores shuffle boxes around your in-the-way feet. You could move, you suppose, but consideration wouldn’t really vibe with the desperation angle you’re working right now.
It hurts though, right in your heart like the sharpened tip of an arrow would, and each thought of her sad, wet eyes pushes it deeper. You’re not going to survive.
She kissed you last night, pressed those rosy pink lips to yours and clutched the back of your neck like a life-ring. Which is stupid, because if anyone’s a life-ring in this relationship, it’s her. You’d sink if it weren’t for her, you’d drown in this ocean-ful of sea urchins and jellyfish and fraternity boys.
“It’s only the summer. We’ll be okay,” she promised, and you believed her. Dana Scully doesn’t lie. Her little body is packed with everything good in this world, and good things like her don’t lie.
You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay because Scully said so.
…
The two of you took pictures a few days ago with your roommate’s Polaroid camera, were silly and giddy and tragically in love. She teased you and accused you of being a terrible photographer, then pressed her favorites to her chest while holding back tears.
Sometimes you imagine your life as a Polaroid photo. Blurry and hazy, your insides not quite gelled. Until that perfect moment when everything falls into place, until a girl with bluebird eyes and fall-leaf hair shake-shake-shakes you into absolute clarity.
You lay the photos on your unmade bed, arrange them into groups. Times she was adorable, times she was infuriating, times she was playful, times she was breathtaking (really, they could all fall into that last group, couldn’t they?).
But there’s also another pile. One you save ‘til last. Times she slipped off her shirt and tucked her lip between her teeth and almost broke the camera with the milky white glow of her skin.
Christ, she’s beautiful.
She’s beautiful, and now it’s been eight hours.
Your roommate moved out this morning, hallelujah, leaving you to sulk your summer studies away in solitude. Pity parties are much more fun alone anyway. Sliding to the floor, you drag the bedspread with you, Polaroids tumbling into your lap like ping-pong balls on some horribly misguided game show. Mr. Foxxxxx Mulder, you’re walking away today with a fantastic set of prizes! An amazing array of anguish AAAAND a superb selection of sorrow! Congratulationsssss!
Clenched between your fingers is the last photo you took that day, blurred lily skin and rouge-colored nipples, and a look on her face that could bring you to your knees.
“C’mere,” she’d whispered, shy and sweet but sexy as hell. You’d dropped the camera then. The clunk of it had made her gasp, but then the way you’d tossed her back onto the bed had made her gasp even harder. She’d tasted like seawater that day, and when she came against your tongue, you were sure you were close to drowning. But no, she’s your life ring, remember?
You’ve read before about photographs as portals to the past, and you wonder what it would take to slip through plastic and emulsion and back into her arms. You wonder how many years of your life would be required as payment, for just one more taste of her skin.
She’s barely five foot two, but the space she’s left behind is the size of a city, a state, a whole goddamn planet. How can you sleep knowing it’ll be three months until her little hipbones jut against your thigh, ninety days before you suck a contrary-just-for-the-sake-of-being-contrary argument from her sticky lollipop lips?
You’re silently and pathetically losing your shit right now, aren’t you?
It’s been nine hours.
….
You must’ve drifted off to sleep, because you wake on the cold tile floor with a Polaroid pasted dramatically to your cheek. Your photo teleportation methods could use some work.
The phone rings. You’re bleary-eyed and moody. Go away you want to yell.
It rings again though, and somewhere, in the back of your not-quite-lucid brain, there’s a whisper, “There’s potential there, you idiot—can’t you see that?”
And that’s when you grasp it. You grasp that potential so hard, it’ll bear your finger-marks for days.
Across the floor you fly, yanking the phone from its cradle by the cord. Your high school baseball coach would be proud of the hook slide you finagle in order to catch it.
“Hello?” you gasp, frantically and a bit too desperately, but at least the line’s not dead.
A pause.
And then angels, harps, a goddamn heavenly symphony, it’s her. “Hi…it’s me.” Would it be too much if you started to cry? Yeah, yeah it probably would.
Still though. “Scully,” you practically sob. Christ, you’re pathetic.
Another pause. It’s long and heavy and filled with dread like a sewer pipe. The panic sets in. The sheer and utter terror. She’s been waiting to be miles and miles away, just to let you down gently. The captain of her high school football team, Dirk or Biff or some other equally disgusting jock-like name, was waiting on her doorstep, John Hughes-style, ready to sweep her off her feet. You’re going to vomit.
But then there’s something else. A sniffle. A sniffle and the faintest little whimper. And then a terrible, heart-wrenching whisper, “I miss you so much already…”
And right there, right on your filthy dorm room floor, littered with Polaroids and tears and Cheeto crumbs, your heart shatters.
“Scully,” you manage, “Oh baby, me too. So much.” And then you’re crying, you’re both crying, and screw using a photo as a portal. You demand this damn telephone line be your portal, because you need to be with her right now more than anything you’ve ever needed in your life.
“I thought…,” she chokes, “Oh god, I thought I could do this.”
She told you you’ll be okay. She told you that, and you believed her.
There’s a Polaroid wedged beneath your thigh, one from the very last pile, and you hold the slick plastic to your lips while you speak. “You can, Scully.” And oh, she can, she has to. She has to, because if your trusty little life ring can’t stay afloat, there’s no hope for you. “We can do this, we can. Don’t you remember telling me that?”
“But that was before you weren’t here,” she chuckles through a sob, “Before I had to watch Missy and her boyfriend and their melodramatic reunion, slobbering all over each other on the couch. Before I had to listen to Bill lecture me about helping Mom with dinner, when all I wanted to do was take a nap after the drive…”
She’s half-laughing, half-crying, and you want to comfort her and kiss her and shoot another few rolls of film while you’re doing it, because maybe, just maybe, that would help you not feel like you’re dying. “I wish I could hold you right now,” you whisper, “I wish that more than anything.”
“Me, too,” she murmurs back.
You breathe, and she breathes. And in the dark of your room and on the cold of your floor, you can almost imagine she’s beside you, that you’ve just made love and her icy little toes are inches from your shins, ready to burrow between. For ten minutes you breathe, until the hitches in her throat lessen and the gaping hole you feel in your chest doesn’t feel quite so gaping anymore. You’ve never been so in love that it physically hurts before her.
“I have to go,” she finally whispers. “There’s no phone in my bedroom, so I’m out in the living room. Dad would kill me if I accidentally fell asleep out here…long distance charges and all…”
You slide your mouth against that Polaroid photo, the plastic a poor substitute for her lips.
“I love you, Scully. So much.” It’s mindboggling just how much. It’s not even quantifiable. You can’t explain it away with an equation or a calculation or even a million Polaroid pictures. You love her so much you stole a Bunsen burner for her and now it’s worth more to you than anything else in the world, more than money or answers or even your long-lost little sister…
Her voice chokes. “Oh god, me too, you know that.” You look at her expression in that photo and she’s right—you do know that. Because a girl couldn’t look like that if she weren’t in love with you.
“Umm, okay then…,” you stall. You don’t want it to end, you can’t bear the thought of that dial tone taking the place of her voice, so you slowly pull the phone from your ear.
“Wait!” her voice-and-not-the-dialtone blurts out just as you’re about to disconnect.
“Yeah?” you gasp. A bit too eager, but you don’t care.
“Go check the Bunsen burner,” she murmurs, and then she’s gone.
You look at your watch. It’s been thirteen hours now.
….
You’d allow yourself to get all dramatic again, to sink back to the floor in a fit of self-pity, then languish there for the next several days or so, or at least until Professor Krasnowski threatens to fire you from your summer T.A. position, and boy, then you’d really be screwed.
You’d allow that, but your curiosity gets the better of you.
The Bunsen burner’s held a place of honor on your university-issued shelving unit for seven months now. You know some college official intended the shelves for books and most certainly not for stolen lab equipment, yet there it’s sat (along with other not-book things like basketballs and cassette tapes and the occasional pair of dirty gym socks).
You rise in the dim light to find it, taking care not to step on the Polaroids laid across your floor like stepping stones. Only it’s not there. IT’S NOT THERE, and a balloon of panic expands in your chest until you realize that something’s replaced it. That something is a folded up piece of paper adorned with Scully’s distinctive loop-de-loops. Your desk lamp is rickety but functional as you stoop down to read.
Fox (I know you like me to call you Mulder, but sometimes Fox seems appropriate, you know?),
I still remember the first day I saw you, hunched over a lab table and sneaking glances across the room at me, though you thought I didn’t know. I was captivated by you, do you know that? So different from every other boy I’d ever known.
When you stole that Bunsen burner, my heart did things it had never done before. It flipped and it flopped and it clenched within my chest like a fist. You may not realize it, but that’s the moment I fell in love with you.
Three months is going to feel like an eternity. So much longer and more painful than I’m ready for, and yet…
We can do this. We have to.
By now you see that I’ve taken the Bunsen burner, but only temporarily and only as a way of marking the time. There are six pieces to a Bunsen burner. Maybe you didn’t know that, but your ever-resourceful girlfriend (do you know how much I love to call myself that?) has learned it to be true. Six pieces divided by three months equals two (see? I’ve told you I was smarter than you!).
Soooo, just to make sure you don’t forget me, every two weeks or so, I’ll send you a piece. I’m just teasing—I know you won’t forget me—but it’ll be a reminder that I’m out here missing you, that I’m out here as broken and incomplete as that Bunsen burner is. And when that last piece comes back, do you know what it means? It means the Bunsen burner can be put back together again. More importantly, it means we can be put back together again, too.
I love you. So much.
Scully
You’re shaking, you realize. Shaking and grinning and fighting back tears.
It’s eleven at night, and you fall more in love with her with each passing moment. You’re the luckiest guy on the planet. One of these days your brain’s not going to be able to handle just how goddamn lucky you are.
Letter clutched tightly in your hand, you fall back to the bed and smile yourself to sleep.
….
It’s been nine days.
She’s called once more, the two of you giddy as schoolgirls, and the funny thing is you weren’t even embarrassed by that. Her voice in your ear is like the sweetest hard candy—she makes you hyper and jittery, bouncing off the walls, but all in the very best way.
Dana Scully is your sugar rush.
The crash when she’s gone is hard though, and that night, you may have run ten miles just to keep from crying.
But now, two days later, you’re standing in the hallway with a package in your hand, return address making you lightheaded. It’s only a piece of lab equipment, chill out, but it’s also so much more.
Once in the room, you sit on your bed. You don’t even pretend to be slow as you rip open her very meticulous, very Scully-like wrappings, and before you know it, out clangs a piece of metal, which rolls off your knee and onto your toe. “Shit!” you curse, grabbing it before it hits the floor.
There’s also a note (of course there is—this is Scully). Written on pretty blue stationary (again—this is Scully). Which you tear open immediately to read (this is Scully).
First piece! Are you excited? I am! It means we’ve survived so far. It means we’re that much closer to being together again! This is the Bunsen burner’s base, quite obviously. Only five more pieces to go!
P.S. I’ll call you on Tuesday night. Make sure you’re there! Ahab’s being super strict about long distance phone calls, and they’re cheaper after 7…
P.P.S I read a really interesting article about psychokinesis that I cut out and saved for you.
P.P.P.S. Melissa and her boyfriend are SUPER-annoying.
You shove aside a bag of sunflower seeds and a Playboy (hey, you’re very, very much in love but you are still a twenty-one year old guy here) and place the Bunsen burner base on the shelf. Then her pretty little note standing up tall behind it. You’re glad you’re not rooming with anyone now, because now that you think about it, you suppose this could be considered embarrassing.
…
She calls on Tuesday night just like she promised, is painfully far away from you and your needy fingers.
“I never finished naming your freckles, you know,” you tell her.
“Mulder,” she replies, in that voice that makes you want to kiss her face right off, “That’s an impossible mission. As soon as you’ve named the first three thousand there’ll be three thousand more to take their place.”
“Mmmm, sounds exactly like a mission I’d choose to accept from such a mysterious, sexy, tape-recorded voice.”
She chuckles, and just when you think the topic’s been closed, she starts back up again, “You knowww, there’s one right here…an unnamed freckle…” She’s speaking in a sing-songy voice that means she’s up to no-good, or in other words, something fantastic. You’re already panting by the time she adds in a whisper, “This tape…will self-destruct…in ten…seconds…”
Scully wants to play, and whadd’ya know, here comes that glorious sugar rush again.
“Umm, well …,” you stutter, “Freckle-naming isn’t an easy task, you know. It takes skill, inspiration. Why don’t you describe this unnamed freckle for me? So I can appreciate its personality, its essence.” Yeah, its essence, that’s good.
“Wellll,” she Cheshire cat-grins (you can hear the grin, and it makes you a little dizzy). “It’s small. Small and reddish-brown and just sort of…freckle-y. But the skin where it sits is soft. It’s realllly soft…” Ohhh, she definitely wants to play.
“Mmmmm… I bet it is, Scully. And where exactly did you say it is? For research purposes of course.”
“Ah, of course,” she replies, but then adds with a whisper, “Why don’t you guess?”, and you just about lose your shit.
“Well I mean, there are so many possibilities really, so many soft possibilities. Your cheek, your belly, the inside of your—“
“My breast,” she breathes.
“Jesus.” Your voice cracks like a fucking teenager’s.
“Right there,” she murmurs, “Right where it swells from my torso, that spot where the curve starts, you know?”
Oh, you know. You most definitely know. Her skin flushes there before anyplace else, you’ve learned. “You blush there. Your skin turns such of pretty shade of pink, Scully, and I love it.” She makes a noise that sounds distinctly like a purr. You wish you were there to run your nails along her arched-up kittycat back.
“Sooo?” she asks.
“Oh, a name, right.” You’re getting too distracted. “How about Cherry Blossom? Pretty and pink and perfect. D’you like that?” You’re such a moron.
“Mm-hmm, I do like that. D’you want me to find another one?” Her VOICE. It reminds you of those few times you’ve called a 1-900 number, only none of those voices had skin like an opal and eyes like sea glass, none were small enough to fit in your pocket, yet large enough to fill your entire world.
“Please,” you squeak.
“Another one on my breast,” she says all breathy and soft, “This one’s about an inch from my nipple though…” You’re hard inside your track pants by now.
The Polaroids are taped on the wall above your bed, and you find one with her breasts exposed. Running your finger over the plastic, you imagine you’re touching that freckle, that cute little freckle, that sexy little freckle, that most perfect little bit of discolored Scully skin, and you groan.
“Heaven,” you gasp. “I think I’ll name it Heaven.” Again, MORON, but maybe not so much, because she expels the sweetest little whimper into the phone. You wonder whether she’s looking at that spot right now, looking down at her nipple. Is her shirt off, her bra, is she oh christ is she touching herself? “Scully, god, I’m so turned on, baby. You’re making me—“
“Oh crap! They’re home!” she squeals. “I’ve gotta…I’ve gotta go, Mulder!”
She’s gone, and you’re left gasping for air.
You make do with a Polaroid picture and a sweat-slickened palm, the same way you’ve done for the past thirteen days.
….
She calls again on the eighteenth day, reads you passages from Shakespeare while you picture her high on a balcony, tragically beautiful yet forbidden to touch.
With your rogue-ish Romeo ways, you call her back on the twentieth.
“Mulder! No, you can’t afford it!” she scolds, but the girlish lilt to her voice tells you she’s charmed by your impatience. You’re sure it doesn’t hurt that Melissa’s in the background asking “Dana’s on the phone again??”
Conversations are mundane though. Well, no, you take that back, talking with Scully is never mundane—even discussing the weather with her is enough to give you chills. But let’s just say the conversations are cautious. There’s always some various Scully milling around in the background, ready with a judgement or a smirk or a tease.
“Can’t you call when you’re alone?” you whine.
“I’m never alone,” she sighs.
….
On Day Twenty-Four, exhausted from a game of hoops, you open your mailbox to find the next package. It’s been six days since you’ve talked to her, and you miss her like air. You’ve forgotten the smell of her skin in the morning, and that scares you.
Rubber tubing spills from the package like an old ‘snake in the can’ gag. Not like you care though. The tubing’s not what excites you. There, you see it, that’s what excites you—stationary almost as blue as her eyes, and curlicued handwriting almost as refined as her sweet little body.
Second piece, my gorgeous fox-eyed boy!
We’re getting there, aren’t we, day by lonely day. I just keep imagining that afternoon in your room, after you took those photos of me. I miss your mouth, I miss your tongue, and I should be embarrassed to write that, shouldn’t I? I’m not though.
P.S. Cherry Blossom and Heaven say hi. They miss you terribly…
P.P.S. I forgot to tell you, but I’ve picked up a couple extra courses at my local college for the summer—they’ll help boost my credits for next semester.
An hour later, you’re still smiling so wide that your cheeks hurt.
….
Another week.
She’s vacationing at her aunt’s house, you know this, so when the phone rings at midnight, you’re taken by surprise. It’s not like you have no friends, but none of your buddies would be calling at midnight. By midnight, they’re either passed out drunk or boning some chick or sitting pathetically on their bed reading conspiracy theories (oh wait, that last one’s just you). Midnight calls are reserved for bad news or girlfriends or, god forbid, both at the same time.
“It’s me,” she whispers, but she sounds okay.
“Scully, what’s wrong? Aren’t you at your aunt’s?” You whisper, too, just because it feels right.
“Everything’s fine, and I’m going to get in such big trouble if I get caught, but god, I just miss you so much. I miss you so much my bones ache, Mulder.” It’s hard to describe the sensation that comes over your body. She turns you to literal goo.
“Christ, Scully, me too. It’s killing me,” your gooey self whispers back. You hear her sniffle, and there’s a painful crack in your chest as your heart breaks. “Oh baby, I wish I could touch you right now. I wish I could kiss you.”
“Me, too.” Her voice is hitched and wet, and it’s the hardest thing you’ve ever known, being this far away from the other half of your soul.
“I have to go now,” she whimpers. “Seriously, I won’t make it out alive if someone catches me.”
“I love you, Scully.”
“You, too,” she whispers.
The dial tone is your most mortal enemy, you decide.
….
The next package forty days in marks a halfway point more or less. Three down, three to go.
You’ve filled your time as best as you could: twenty percent school, twenty percent work, twenty percent basketball, three hundred percent mourning the absence of her. Good thing you’ve never fully subscribed to the absolutism of formal mathematics.
The screw-like piece of metal smells like her, and you know that’s absurd, that her scent couldn’t possibly have transferred from her hands to a worn piece of steel. Maybe this is how it ends, you in the looney bin pressing pieces of a Bunsen burner up against your nose.
Torn wrappings join dirty laundry on your floor while you frantically unfold her note.
Halfway? Have we really made it this far? I’d like to think these last weeks will speed through quickly, but that’s probably just wishful thinking.
Today’s piece is a stopcock. Yes, you read that right, and I can hear you smirking from here. I tried to think of a dirty joke to accompany it, but that’s much more your genre than mine. I can’t stop myself from wanting your big, hard cock… See? No good.
I can’t though. I want to climb up onto your cock and ride you so hard… God, Mulder, I’m blushing writing this. If my parents knew the things their prim and proper daughter thinks about at night…
I love you, I miss you.
P.S. I swear, Missy and her boyfriend make out in front of me JUST to be mean.
P.P.S. I think I’m going to have the house to myself on Thursday night. Crossing my fingers… I’ll call you, and we can do naughty things like talk about stopcocks.
Your dick is hard and cupped in your palm, and you don’t even remember doing that. You come with a stopcock digging into your ribs and your girlfriend’s last name digging into your throat.
…
It’s Thursday night and it’s been forty-six days. You turned down Bloodsuckers From Outer Space for this. You’d have turned down an actual rocketship to outer space for this. Your priorities are well-defined: Scully first, everything else in the universe second.
You’d think this were a first date. You’d think you’ve never talked to a girl. You’d think you don’t already know that little mewling sound she makes when she’s about to come.
The phone rings. You may clap your hands with glee, but you’d never admit to it.
“Scully?” No hello. Hello is for people who aren’t broken in half. Hello is for people who are sitting on a couch with a girl’s tongue in their ear, not sitting alone on a so-short-your-feet-hang-off-the-end dorm room bed.
“It’s me,” she confirms. Her voice is husky, and your dick is already hard. “It’s… I’m… I’m alone.” You haven’t talked about this—what her aloneness necessarily means, what sorts of scandalous things could transpire as a result of it.
“Good, that’s uhh that’s good...” The uncertainty hits you then. You’ve waited all week for this, but have no idea where to go. “Are you ahh…how’s everything going?”
“It’s okay, just ummm… well, you know…,” she mumbles, shy and nervous and too far away.
“I don’t… uhhh… how should we… do you want to—?” Again, have you ever actually talked to a girl? You’re beginning to think not.
“God, Mulder… I don’t… I’ve never done something like this…”
“It’s okay, Scully… If you don’t want—“
Before you can finish, “Just talk to me,” she breathes. Yeah. Of course. Just talk to her, you idiot. Just talk to her.
Your voice drops, meets her down in that magical place where far-away girlfriends dwell. “Okay. Yeah, okay. Tell me… tell me what you need…”
If you close your eyes, you can almost feel her warm breaths at your cheek. “I just… I miss you,” she whimpers.
“Oh Scully...” You press the words into the hard plastic of the telephone, in hopes by some miracle she’ll feel them.
“I don’t wanna miss you anymore. Your hands, your mouth, your…everything, Mulder, I miss your everything…”
“Shhhh,” you whisper, missing her everything, too.
“I just wish…I wish it were you…I want it to be you when I...no, never mind…” You picture her cheeks flushing, the sharp curve of her chin tucked down into her chest, and you wonder just how much longer you’ll be able to live without her.
“Don’t be embarrassed, Scully… it’s just me. Leave the embarrassment to those of us named after fuzzy little forest creatures, okay? Just talk to me...” She giggles. You’d trade a bit of self-deprecation for a Scully giggle any day of the week.
“It’s just that…when I…god…ummm, you know…when I do that, I just can’t… because it’s not you, Mulder…it’s not you, and I want it to be. So much.” Just the thought of her touching herself, wishing it were you... Are you absolutely, positively sure that portal concept was invalid?
“It’s okay, baby, it’s okay…,” you shush, “I want it to be me, too.”
“Will you… will you tell me what to do? Tell me how to do it…so it feels like you…?” This. This is one of those scandalous things you tried not to hope would transpire.
“God, yes… Yes, oh definitely yes, Scully. Let’s make you feel good, baby.” You’re a bit enthusiastic apparently.
“M’kay.” She’s really just as sweet as can be.
“So…ummm…where are you? You don’t have a phone in your room, right?” Gotta be able to picture this, gotta get the details right.
“On the couch,” she whispers, “Oh god, I can’t believe I’m doing this…”
“Shhhh, I love that you’re doing this. I love it. Do you have any idea how much you’re turning me on right now?”
“Yeah? Really?” There’s that breathiness in her voice again, god help you.
“Yeah. Really. Like really really.” Nothing’s even happened yet, and your hard-on is about as impressive as it gets. “I want this for you, Scully. Making you feel good makes me feel good.”
“Oh baby,” she whines, and your knees go weak.
“So, ummm… what are you wearing then?” You try your very hardest not to make that sounds sleazy, but probably fail.
“Well, ahhh… god, this is so embarrassing…” Her flushed little face…
“Fuzzy little forest creature, remember? This is me, Scully.”
“You’re right, I know. Ummm…” Her voice turns soft, sexy. “I’m wearing the red… the red bra and panties, the ones you bought me…”
Your response is a garbled sort of mess of the words fuck me.
“I had them on all day, Mulder,” she whispers. There’s absolutely no stopping your hips from thrusting into the stale air of your dorm room right now. “Beneath my clothes… while I sat in class, while I studied at the library, while I watched “Jeopardy” with Missy… just thinking about tonight… about you…” Your groan is embarrassing honestly, but hell if you can do anything about it.
“Shit, Scully, are you trying to kill me?” She giggles again, and look, another thrust. “I bet it felt naughty though, didn’t it? My naughty little schoolgirl…”
“God Mulder,” she gasps in that way that means you’ve both shocked and excited her. “Ummm I mean, god… yeah, it did… it felt erotic, naughty… I wanted you to see me so bad…” And you can see, her in that red lingerie on her Daddy’s nice couch, just like one of Matisse’s odalisques.
“Remind me… Tell me how sexy you look… Describe yourself...”
“Mmmm, god… ummm okay… so the bra… do you remember? It’s got this beautiful scalloped lace—“
“You, Scully, tell me about you.”
She waits a few beats before continuing, sharp little breaths echoing in your ear. “Okay… yeah… okay… well, my breasts… they’re… they’re pretty… I mean… the lace…it make their curves look so pretty… D’you like my breasts, Mulder?”
“Yeah, oh hell yeah.” You look down to see the hard ridge of your cock, pressed painfully against the fly of your jeans. It turns you on, how hard you are, and maybe that’s weird, but you’re entirely incapable of rational thought when the girl you love asks you whether you like her perfect pink breasts or not. “I love your breasts, I adore them...”
“My nipples…,” she whispers, “I can see them through the lace… They’re hard….” Your hand finds its way into your pants, how can it not?
“Pinch them, Scully, the way you like me to do. Brush your knuckles over them, baby…” Her little whimper, Christ, her little whimper.
“Does that feel good?” You want her to feel good. That’s become your sole purpose in life right now, to make her feel good.
“Yeahhhh…,” she murmurs, “More though… tell me what else… tell me what you’d do…”
“I’d… ughh… I’d slide my hand down… Do it, Scully, slide your hand down… I’d slide it down inside your panties slowly, real slowly… Are you doing it?” Your own hand in your own pants feels nothing like hers, but it’s still good, so good.
“Mmmhmmm…”
“I’d slide it down past your curls, brush real soft against your clit the way you like, remember?” Her clit, it’s sensitive, can make her jump with just the slightest, barest touch.
“Yeah… it’s… god… god, I’m really wet, Mulder…”
Another thrust, this time a big one.
“So wet for me, right, Scully? Does it feel good?” Your eyes are locked with hers, even though hers are coated in plastic and hanging on a wall.
“Yeahhhh…,” she breathes.
“D’you wanna… wanna taste yourself? Pretend you’re me. Christ, my mouth is watering… lick your fingers and tell me how good you taste…”
“Jesus, Mulder, I don’t know… I’ve never…”
“Please… please, baby…” Are you begging? You don’t even know anymore.
“Okay,” she whispers, and you can hear her, the delicious sound of her tongue and her lips on her fingers. You squeeze the base of your cock before something disastrous occurs. “It’s salty, tangy… god, it’s really sexy, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, fuck yeah, it’s sexy. Now go back down, now that your fingers are nice and wet, go back down and rub your clit a couple times, just a couple though, then slide a couple of them in….” She moans, and you can’t help but moan yourself, moan and spread your pre-cum around with your thumb, the same way she does so well, only yours doesn’t have coral pink polish painted so nice on your nail.
“Now stroke, baby, stroke your fingers in and out, but curl them, you know how I do? Curl them up until you find that spot… god Scully, I wanna touch you so bad… did you find it? Did you find it yet?”
“Mmmmyeah, yeah, just like you, Mulder… mmmm it feels good, but… but… need more... Tell me about you… what are you doing? Are you hard? Tell me….”
“I’ve been hard all day… just thinking about you… about you and about this… Touch your clit now, use your thumb and rub your clit. In little circles like I do… See if you can pinch your nipples a few more times…” Her nipples, sweet and hard behind that latticework of lace…
“Oh… oh… god, it’s so good… Mulder, touch yourself, get yourself off… I wanna hear you…”
And then there’s just breathing, just hot whooshes of air and blurred, slick hands and soft sounds from her throat and your voice whining her name so many times it’s not even her name anymore, just six jumbled letters of need and of lust and of wildly clenched teeth. And then, then, that little mewl, that sexy little mewl that would bring tears to your eyes if you had any more brain cells available right now to do that.
“Oh goddd,” she chokes out, “Oh god, Mulder…,” then you’re coming, too, slickly and messily, hundreds of miles away.
It’s the widest your smile’s been in forty-six days.
“Scully,” you can’t help but add, after you’ve both calmed down, “That was so much better than talking about stopcocks.” She giggles (again), and you sit, for ten minutes you sit, closing your eyes and listening to her breathe and rubbing a Polaroid picture with your thumb.
It makes you ache, but it’s one of the most beautiful ten minutes of your life.
….
You start counting backwards after that; each day the number gets smaller. Psychology would tell you it’s easier that way—you’re still not sure you agree.
With thirty-five left, Joe Benasheck from two rooms down bangs like a buffoon on your door. He tosses a package at your chest. “Dumbasses stuck it in my box instead. Hey, ya got any beer?”
You’re an asshole and don’t even care when you slam the door in his face.
A small metal tube this time. When you fit it onto the stopcock, the burner looks almost complete. Does getting a little emotional make you a total wuss or just a partial one? She’s taken your heart and twisted it inside out, supplied you with emotions you didn’t even realize you had.
Her note, this time, is written in red. You wonder whether you’ll ever see the color red again without thinking about last week. You hope not.
My fuzzy little forest creature,
It’s hard to believe we’re only about a month away, isn’t it? We’re getting there! This fourth piece is called the collar, and though I’d like to be witty, I’ve got nothing too clever to say about it.
God, Mulder, I just keep thinking about that phonecall, keep thinking about you and how you sounded and how you made me feel. It was amazing…
You’re the most special thing that’s ever existed in my life. I need to make sure you know that.
P.S. I love you.
P.P.S. My cousin Leslie’s coming for a visit this week!
P.P.P.S. Bill is a dick. That’s all.
You’re about to toss the packaging when, lookie here, another envelope slips out. Three photos and, even better, another note. You’d almost think it was your birthday.
As a bonus this time, thought I’d send you these.
Three more unnamed freckles (well, actually four—there are two in one of the photos) in need of your superior freckle-naming skills.
I think when I return, we may have the need for a proper naming ceremony, dont’cha think?
Three slick photos offer peaches and cream skin with perfectly imperfect caramel-colored sprinkles. You grin. Freckle-naming ceremony indeed.
….
Penny. That’s the first. From what you can tell, it’s near the bottom of her ribs, right where the curve takes a dive towards her pelvis. The brightest, shiniest heads-up penny—flawless enough to bring you luck for a year.
Second, the Gemini twins. Double the freckles, double the desire to slip inside that photo and kiss her downright silly, right there on her thigh just inches above her knee.
The last. This one requires some thought. Only after in-depth scrutinization do you determine it’s on her rear, on that cute little ass that fits itself into your palms like play-do. Aurora, goddess of the dawn. You hang it on your wall so it’s the first thing you’ll see each morning.
….
It hits you two days later. Lying in bed and tracing lazy, looping curlicues on your stomach (her handwriting is prettier), eyes meandering from one blurred photo on the wall to the next.
Aurora.
How did she take that photo? She’s small and she’s flexible, can curl herself into the cutest of pretzels, but how did she take that photo? The angles are all wrong and the shadows not right. You look ridiculous, you know this, but you try and contort yourself into position for a photo like that, then fall, ungracefully and unceremoniously, flat on your ass.
Or are you just paranoid?
….
Thirty days left the next time she calls.
There’s longing in her voice when she tells you she misses you.
She coos at your freckle names, tells you there are so many more just waiting for your skills, tells you there’s one in a private, special place she didn’t want to take pictures of, tells you you can name that one when you see it in person.
By the time you hang up, you’re as giddy in love as you’ve ever been. You pull down her notes and read them all twice (maybe three times, but who’s counting?), trail your fingers wistfully over the photos taped mish-mash up on your cinderblock wall. You run five miles and pretend there’s still not a niggling, bony finger poking you in your ribs.
Day-na Scul-ly Day-na Scul-ly Day-na Scul-ly Day-na Scul-ly. You breathe her name with each hard pound of your feet.
….
You call her the following day. You know you’re not supposed to. You know Daddy has strict telephone rules, and on top of that, you’ve barely got enough money in your account for the rest of the week. But you call her.
Her brother answers. “Dana’s busy.” Without even knowing, you assume this must be Bill. She’s right. He’s a dick.
“Please, just for a minute. There’s something I need to ask her.” You make it a habit not to bargain with dicks, but this is a special circumstance. Scully is always a special circumstance.
He snorts in your ear, then slams down the receiver. “DANA, PHONE.” Wow, must be an absolute joy living in a house with that.
But her excited squeal makes up for it. “Mulder!”
There—that’s what you needed to ask her. The delight in her voice takes that niggling, bony finger and squashes it into the dirt.
“Hey,” you tell her, “I know I’m not supposed to call, but I’ve just been thinking about you. All day. I couldn’t help myself…” There are twenty-four hours in a day, and you’ve been thinking about her for a solid twenty-five. Even the most standard laws of time and space deviate when it comes to Dana Scully.
“Aww, me too,” she purrs. Her voice is echo-y, like she’s cupping her hand around the mouthpiece to keep quiet.
You hold the incomplete Bunsen burner tightly in your lap.
“Can you talk for a bit? I just… I just want to hear your voice. Recite me the periodic table again. You know what those elements do to me, baby…” She could read you the entire phonebook, and you’d still be begging for more.
She chuckles. “Yeah? Do alkalines make you horny, Mulder?” Again with the soft, echo-y voice, but who cares, she’s playing with you.
With a cute made-up tune, she begins. “Hydrogennn, Lithiummm, Berylliummm, Boronnn…” You’re just about to settle in for the ride when she pauses. You hear a commotion in the background—male voices, her muffled giggle, then she’s back, speaking even more quietly. “Ummm, I wish… I wish I could, Mulder. I want to, I do. There’s just… it’s just not the best time right now.”
Again in the background, a male voice that’s not Bill’s saying her name, then a shush from her she tries quite obviously to hide. “I’m sorry, I’ve really got to go,” she whispers. “I’ll… I’ll call you in a couple days though, okay? Just like we planned?”
There’s a buzzing then, one that starts in your ears and spreads—to your torso, to your arms, to your legs, until you’re entirely consumed. “Yeah, okay, yeah… whatever…” You hang up before she’s even able to respond.
The Bunsen burner slides from your lap and crashes to the floor. You don’t even care.
….
One of Bill’s friends maybe. Or her brother Charlie. No, Charlie’s studying abroad this summer, she told you that. Melissa’s boyfriend. Melissa’s friend. Just some random dude who happened to wander into the Scully house that day. An amazing, hotshot stud who doesn’t live in a dorm room with a worn-out leather couch, who doesn’t have a collection of underground conspiracy rags, who doesn’t jack off to Polaroid pictures and lab equipment because he doesn’t need to, because he’s got the real thing right there in front of him.
You’re being overdramatic.
Or are you? You can’t fucking tell anymore.
Her face up on your wall—sweet and loving and so damn trustworthy. You’re an asshole to even suggest otherwise. She wouldn’t do that. She loves you. She’s told you that again and again and again. She’s shown you. You pull down her notes and read them again. Then again. They’re worn from how many times you’ve read them. …the moment I fell in love with you… my fuzzy little forest creature… you’re the most special thing that’s ever existed in my life… I love you.
No, she wouldn’t do that. You know her. You’ve lived in each other’s back pockets for seven months. She’s lived out of your back pocket for two months since then though, your mind supplies.
NO. She wouldn’t do that. You flop onto the couch and remember your first kiss, right on this very spot of leather. And then another first time, here again, her pale skin laid out as an offering. The way she sounded, the way she became your entire world in just the barest blink of an eye.
Your dick is hard.
You want her.
You know she wouldn’t do that.
You pull yourself out of your sweats and spit into your palms, then pretend they’re her hands when you bring yourself to release.
She wouldn’t do that.
….
Twenty-seven days left. She calls, just like she’d planned.
You consider not answering. She doesn’t deserve your desperation, your paranoid, wish-washy twist of the truth. But you have to answer—it’s Scully.
“I’m sorry… about the other night,” she tells you.
“Who was he? Who took that photo? Why don’t you love me anymore?” you should ask, but you don’t. Instead you say, “No problem.”
But then she’s sweet and Scully-like and says all the right things.
You catch yourself bantering, you catch yourself flirting, you catch yourself forgetting just what exactly the issue was. She ends the call by finishing the periodic table for you, and by the time she’s to the Lanthanide series, you catch yourself right back in love with her, maybe even more than before.
You knew she wouldn’t do that.
….
Joe Benasheck again, bragging about his hot as hell girlfriend in the dining hall. You begin to regret not just grabbing your dinner to go.
“Yo Mulder, you were dating that little redhead, right? The geeky science one?” You suddenly feel like punching someone.
“Her name is Dana Scully,” you grind through your teeth.
“Yeah, that’s right, Melissa’s baby sister. Melissa’s in these pics, too. Denise sent ‘em to me from her trip.” He passes some photos across a pile of soda cans and used napkins. The only person you care less about than Joe Benasheck is his girlfriend Denise, so you barely give the photos a glance. Until…
Her red hair glows, shines like a campfire on a blue-dusk night. “Ain’t Denise hot?” Joe’s asking, but you’re not listening, you can’t breathe. There’s Melissa kissing some guy, there’s apparently Denise, and then there’s Scully… with another guy. His arms are around her waist, his chin on her shoulder, and she’s laughing that laugh that sounds like your mother’s seashell windchime. You don’t even have to be there to hear it.
Joe calls you an asshole when you throw the photos on the ground, but you’re already out the door.
….
Sixty-eight days. Three weeks left.
You try to be mad. You try to hate her. You try to call her a bitch and a slut. But you can’t. You can’t because she’s Scully. She’s still Scully. So instead you turn the names on yourself. Idiot. Loser. Pathetic and delusional and hopeless. Failure.
The fifth package arrives. It sits on your desk while you wage an internal war. Open it, burn it, hold it to your chest and cry for the next thirty-six hours or so.
You’re weak and you know it as the wrapping hits the floor. Out rolls another metal tube. It fits right into the first, up on your shelf. Your fingers shake while you unfold her note, delicate as always. Remember when you and Samantha used to do origami? You were always the clever one, showing her over and over again how to make a valley, yet mountain after mountain she’d fold. You’re not so clever now, are you? Your hands are still shaking.
I can’t believe it, can you? We’re almost there. Today’s piece is the burner tube—fits right in there on top of the collar.
This is the very last package, I just realized. Because the next piece I’ll deliver in person. Oh Mulder, it’s getting so close, I can taste it. Classes finish the end of next week, then it’s time to start counting the days… I just keep imagining seeing you for the first time. I don’t think I’ll be able to run fast enough to jump into your arms, so I hope you’ll be ready…
Hey, is everything okay? Things seemed a little “off” the last time I called. I love you more than anything, please know that. Okay?
P.S. I’ve been reading some really fascinating material about relativity and Einstein’s twin paradox recently.
P.P.S. Bill wrecked his car. My parents are so ticked off!
P.P.P.S. I’ll call at 8 on Wednesday—don’t forget!
You fall asleep and dream of a thousand origami cranes, folded from pretty blue stationary, going up in the flames of a Bunsen burner.
….
The next day, you almost get fired for bailing on a meeting with Professor Krasnowski. You must sound as pathetic as you feel when he calls though, because he lets you off the hook and tells you to get your butt back in tomorrow.
You spend the day taking apart then fitting back together pieces of stolen school property, trying to decide how many pieces back she stopped loving you.
….
You’ve watched the phone since 6:00. It’s Wednesday, and it’s been seventy-one days.
Eight o’clock on the nose when she calls. On the nose, on her pretty sloped nose.
You glare at the phone, glare at it with tears in your eyes and a guilt-trip on your shoulder. Why are you the one feeling remorse here? You sit on your hands to keep from answering.
She calls again in fifteen minutes, then thirty, and a final time in an hour.
She calls a few more times over the next couple days, or at least you assume it’s her. You’ve basically stopped answering your phone altogether.
You vacillate between loving her so desperately you can barely breathe to hating her with an almost violent sort of numbness. You went skiing a few years ago, stayed out in the snow until your feet lost all feeling. It was fun to see how many things you could kick without pain. The bruises bloomed a few hours later though, and hurt like hell for a week.
They’re there now, those bruises, beneath all the numbness, just waiting for the blood to start pumping.
Joe shows up at your door a few days later. “Denise got a call from Melissa Scully, says her baby sister’s worried about you.” You grunt disgustingly in reply.
Good, let her be worried.
….
Seventy-nine days.
You should’ve expected this. Should’ve stopped checking your mail, school notices and magazine subscriptions be damned.
The sky blue envelope mixed amidst the whites is physically painful. You let it sit there at your desk for hours. Maybe it’ll be slowly devoured by the newspaper clipping convention currently taking place on your blotter.
But you watch it, allow it to occupy just the tiniest corner of your vision for most of the afternoon. Pretending not to care all the while.
When you sit on the couch, it reminds you of her.
When you lie on the bed, it reminds you of her.
When you look at your wall, it reminds you of her.
The photos are still hanging. You can’t take them down. They’re the only way you can get yourself to sleep, gazing at her freckles, traveling back in time to that afternoon with the camera, before there were days to count down.
You open the letter only after successfully dribbling the basketball two hundred times in a row. Your downstairs neighbors hate you.
Fox (this feels like one of those times first names are necessary),
You’re scaring me. What’s going on? I’ve tried calling several times—didn’t you remember Wednesday night? Missy checked with her friend Denise, whose boyfriend says you’re there and are fine…
Please, if I’ve done something or if someone’s done something… Please. I haven’t been able to sleep worrying about you. There’re only a few days left, we can do this!
Call me collect, reverse the charges. Please. I need to know you’re all right.
I love you,
Dana
P.S. I really love you.
P.P.S. I really, really love you.
P.P.P.S. Are you getting the picture yet?
….
You don’t call her. You can’t. Each time you reach toward the phone, his hands are there, sweeping back her hair, whispering in her ear. You get an almost perverse pleasure out of imagining it. She’s been too good for you from the start. She’s a bright and shiny little sportscar, all devastating curves and crisp, clean lines, and you’re a broken down pickup, your bed sagging low from all the excess baggage. The two of you could never have shared a garage for long.
It helps to tell yourself these things. Helps you sink more deeply into those dark and melancholy waters.
But then there’s my fuzzy little forest creature, and there’s Cherry Blossom and Aurora, and there’s god, I’m really wet, Mulder, and you find yourself afloat all over again.
You’re going to lose your mind.
You’re going to lose your mind, and there’re only eight days left.
….
Another dozen phonecalls over the next several days (god forbid there’s someone who really needs to talk to you), so many you consider unplugging the phone, except no. Severing that final connection seems unimaginable. There’s something comforting in the ring every few hours, something life-affirming in the knowledge that she’s feeling this just as constantly and consistently as you are.
The thirteenth time, you answer. She catches you at a weak point, when for a moment you wonder whether you’ve gotten it all wrong, you wonder whether you’re hurting her just as much as she’s hurting you.
Only it’s not her after all. It’s the guy who works at the dorm lobby desk, chewing you out for letting your mail stack up for the entire past week, threatening to throw it all in the dumpster.
He gives you the ol’ evil eye when you retrieve it, but you and the ol’ evil eye are good friends by now, so you ignore it. Life’s been giving you the ol’ evil eye for years.
And there it is. That little envelope of sky peeking through the pointed paper clouds just like you were dreading. Were you really though? You suspect you may actually have been hoping, but are quick to deny it. Regardless, it’s there, and your fingers tremble to hold the stack as you make your way to your room.
You stare at it for a while, lay it on the very bed you’ve kissed her upon too many times to count, and stare. A month ago, you’d have been ripping it open with your teeth. They ache now, your teeth, ache from the clenching and unclenching you’ve taken up at night. Despite everything, you still miss her like hell.
It slides open, almost too easily (shouldn’t it hurt?), and you read her words with barely-there tears in your eyes.
Mulder. God. I’m beside myself. What is going on?? Please! Please talk to me, call me, write me, anything! I don’t know what I’ve done or what’s happened, and it’s tearing me apart inside. I walk through my days either completely dazed or fighting back tears. You’re my other half, you’re the rest of my Bunsen burner—I can’t bear the possibility that I’ve lost that. Please. I’ll be there on Saturday, but please, baby, I don’t want to wait that long. I need to know we’re okay.
Please.
Her handwriting, it’s more jagged than usual, and for some reason that hits you more acutely than even the words themselves. Your Scully—she’s beautiful calligraphy; she’s not chicken-scratch. Are you what’s done that to her?
No. No, she’s done it to herself.
But what if you’re wrong?
Without thinking, without considering the what-if’s and the why’s, you pick up the phone and dial. The thought of hearing her voice sends shivers down your spine, if you’re being honest. It also scares you shitless.
It rings. And rings and rings and rings. You wait through eighty seven rings, one for each day you’ve been without her. Each one hurts worse than the last.
….
It’s Saturday, and it’s been a lifetime. Zero days left.
You don’t know how you feel anymore. Numb—that’s how you feel. You hate it. The last few weeks have been torture. Your body can’t take the ups and downs and arounds for one day longer. You need to know. As heart-wrenching and painful as it will be, you need to know.
You don’t know what time to expect her and so you wait. Like a sorcerer before his crystal ball, you conjure things up—anger and fury and rage. Swirling in your head are images of his chin on her shoulder, sounds of his muffled voice in your ear.
But then there’s also her desperate scrawled please, her pale white skin adorned in rose-red satin, that freckle you have yet to name.
You took down the photos this morning, pored over each one for hours it seemed, felt aroused, then not, then aroused again. It will kill you if she’s not yours anymore. It will kill you even more if you’re the reason for that. It’s like riding a bike—pedaling your hardest, hardest, hardest toward the hill, then changing your mind at the very last minute, pounding your brakes like crazy when you crest over the top, only it’s too late and you’re speeding down so fast you can’t even breathe, but there’s nothing you can do. Because you did this to yourself. You did it to yourself.
You remember likening your life to a Polaroid photo. Your existence right now, it’s just a mixture of chemicals, it’s undeveloped emulsion, it’s color without form.
You need to be shaken. Badly.
You still love her.
….
The knock on your door is timid, as much as a knock can be. It sounds like her somehow.
You’ve waited ninety days for this moment.
You gather up your armor—your stoic-straight face and your sarcasm—layer it nice and thick. But it isn’t enough and you know it. You’re destined to crack.
Your heart pounds as you face the door (you fucked her against that door one time), fingers shake as you twist the old brass knob (she squealed when the metal touched her skin). The hinges squeak as you pull.
And then she’s there, after three months of not being there, after Polaroids and freckles and stopcocks, after questionably-taken photographs and muffled phone conversations and photos with a girl named Denise. She’s there.
“Mulder,” she gasps. “Oh my god, Mulder.” Her face, christ, her face. An angel, a Renaissance painting, and all you can do is stare.
Shake.
“My god, I’ve been so worried.” She crumbles then, before your very eyes, falls forward and catches herself with your body. You can’t move. There’s concrete flowing through your veins. Her hair is tickling at your chin and you want to die.
She notices, lifts up her eyes (you’d forgotten how blue they are, in three months you’d forgotten), raises her warm little hand to your jaw. “What’s going on? Please,” she whispers, tears running desperately down her cheeks.
You almost crack—you’ve never felt anything as perfect as her hand there—but then you see his face, Biff or Dirk or whoever, hovering above her shoulder and grinning. “No,” you breathe. Your concrete legs shatter, and you pull yourself away. She stumbles in your absence. “NO.” you say again.
“Mulder, what—?” she sobs, but you don’t even allow her to finish.
“Who is he, Scully? WHO IS HE?” You bare your teeth like a wild animal’s, and her eyes go wide.
“Mulder, you’re scaring me. Who is who?” Ninety days ago, you never pictured this. You never pictured her with tears in her eyes and cowering against your door, you never pictured the most perfect relationship of your life falling like sand through your fingertips.
“That photo, of that pretty little freckle on your pretty little rear, Scully. Aurora.” You say it with a snide sort of sneer. “Who took that photo, Scully?”
“I don’t know what… I took it—for you to name, remember? Mulder, WHAT IS GOING ON?” Her face is still the most breathtaking thing you’ve ever seen, even now, even while she’s lying through her teeth.
“Been taking gymnastics classes, Scully? Or yoga, maybe yoga? Is he some hippy-dippy into yoga?” You can’t stop yourself. You’re a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering speed and snow and anger with each passing second.
“I don’t understand…” She sits tentatively down on the bed and curls her arms around her torso. “I took gymnastics as a kid, is that what you mean?” It’s a protective measure, what she’s doing, and for some reason that makes you even madder.
“The PHOTO, Scully, how did you take that photo? Listen, I know you’re flexible, I mean I’ve seen it, right? But that angle? C’mon, I’m not stupid.” You leer disgustingly at her. You want to throw up. You want to punch yourself in the face, then get down on your knees and beg her to make it all better.
“What? The… the photo?” The confusion on her face lifts, is replaced by understanding, relief. “My god, is that was this is about? A tripod, I used a tripod—Melissa’s into photography, and she has a tripod. In fact, you should’ve seen me trying to get the positioning right. It was so absurd—“
Shake.
NO.
No, it can’t be that easy. She thinks she’s off the hook, but it’s about more than just the photo, and she knows it. “Ahh, a tripod,” you interrupt. “Convenient, huh?”
“Yes…,” she hesitates, “It was convenient. I still don’t know what you’re getting at here. God, I’ve missed you so much. This isn’t the way this was supposed to go…” You can’t listen to her, can’t hear that pleading tone right now, can’t look at her expectant, flushed little face. You tear your eyes away to land on your shelf, and that was an even worse idea. Just one piece left, one she’s probably got hidden in her bag, just one more ‘til the burner’s complete.
“Okay, then what about the guy?” you tear back into her, trying to ignore the gashes your teeth are leaving on her neck. “When I called—the guy you didn’t want me to hear?” You try your hardest to hold onto the anger, you grip it in your sweaty, balled up fists, but his face, his fucking face, and her laughter, and the way she kisses with her whole body, the fact that she could’ve done that with him… You feel yourself cracking. “His arms were around your waist, Scully, they were around your fucking waist, his chin was on your shoulder…” You choke back the tears fighting valiantly to escape.
“You’re not making sense. What guy? Around my waist? You haven’t seen me for three months. My god, Mulder, I don’t understand what’s happening!” Why? Why can’t you just let this be? She’s here now. With you. Her arms would be around your waist right now if you could just leave this alone.
Shake.
But you can’t. Never in your life have you been able to leave something alone. “In the damn picture, Scully! With Joe Benasheck’s girlfriend, Diane or Denise or whoever the fuck she is, HIS HANDS WERE AROUND YOUR WAIST.” You’re pacing, trying your damnedest to outstep the hurt and the pain rising so close to the surface, you can barely breathe.
She looks at you, brings her hand to her mouth and makes a neat little ‘o’. “Oh, oh my god. Oh, Mulder. You saw those pictures? Oh, Mulder, god… oh, I’m so sorry.” She’s coming toward you, reaching out her arms (weren’t you just wishing they’d fit around your waist?), but you panic, stumbling away from her. If she touches you, it’ll be all over.
“So you admit it then!” You try to sound angry but you fail. Instead you sound broken, utterly defeated. This whole time you’ve held onto the tiniest sliver of hope, that it wasn’t true, that she wouldn’t do that. Your back hits the wall. There’s no escape.
She touches you then, tucks her hands into yours and squeezes. You want to flinch, but Christ, it just feels so good. It feels so good, your knees feel weak.
Shake.
“NO. Mulder, listen to me. LISTEN TO ME.” She ducks her head until you’ll meet her eyes but you pinch them shut—it’s the only way to keep from crying. She continues anyway, “The guy in those photos, on the phone—that was Leslie. Don’t you remember? Look at me.” You open your eyes and look. “I told you about him. He’s my COUSIN. My cousin! He’s… he’s just like that. Always giving bear hugs and being silly… It’s… it was just my cousin… Oh my god, Mulder. Is this why—?” She lets go of your hands to stroke your cheek.
Shake.
“Leslie is… a guy?” you ask meekly. “This whole time I assumed…” You trail off into nothing. It doesn’t matter anyway.
“It’s…,” she chuckles, “It’s a family name. He hates it. Jesus, Mulder, I can’t imagine… what must have been going through your head. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.” Her fingers slide through your hair, and you can feel the chemicals beneath your weary plastic surface beginning to swirl.
Shake, shake, shake.
“So there’s not someone else? That’s… It wasn’t true?” Emulsion beginning to gel, colors dragging sluggishly into focus…
She’s petting you now, running her fingers over your chest like ten little caterpillars. Outlines slowly defining…
“Oh, Mulder. No, baby, no. I couldn’t even imagine. You’re… you’re my everything. My fuzzy little forest creature, my fox-eyed boy, the final piece of my Bunsen burner…” She lifts to her toes and kisses you softly beneath your jaw. Then again on your cheek and again near the corner of your lips.
Shake, shake, shake.
And then, in one glorious breath, you snap suddenly into focus. Your entire world becomes clear. You look down at her upturned face and feel the way Hubble must’ve felt, realizing the universe is still expanding, realizing everything was borne of one single, solitary point.
She is that point.
Your universe.
Your Big Bang.
“Oh Scully,” you breathe.
You grasp her jaw and pull her to your mouth, kiss her the way you’ve dreamed about for the last ninety days, kiss her the way you wish you could’ve kissed her with each package, with each pretty blue note, each cold metal piece of the puzzle. She whimpers, and you think she may be crying, you know you’re crying, but none of it matters. Because she’s here, finally, after so long being anywhere but.
“The Bunsen burner,” she mumbles against your lips, “The outer cone. We have to put it together…”
Your hands are working their way beneath her sweater by now, your hungry, hungry hands. She’s smooth and soft, and her leg wrapped around your thigh is the best thing since sliced bread. “It can wait…,” you murmur.
“No,” she gasps, “No. I think it’s important.” She tugs away, and you do your very best to chase after her. She’s quick though, reaching for the Bunsen burner and pulling a package from her purse, holding it out to you like a carrot on a stick.
You grab for her, spin her around so her back is to your front, slide your arms around her waist and rest your chin upon her shoulder. “Mulder!” she squeals.
“It’s my turn,” you breathe into her ear, and she shudders. You work together to unwrap the package, ripping off paper and dropping it to the floor. She peppers your neck with kisses as you lift out that final, finishing piece.
“Oh, Mulder,” she murmurs, pressing back against you, helping you fit it into place. The most delicious chill slides through your body.
You turn her in your arms, ready to kiss her senseless, when she stops you. “There’s a note, too,” she whispers. Of course there is. This is Scully.
Placing the burner back up on the shelf, you fish back into the package for an envelope. “You have no idea how much I love your pretty blue paper, Scully…,” you say when you’ve found it, and she giggles. With trembling fingers, you slide out her note.
Mulder, Let’s never be apart again. Never.
You couldn’t agree more.
She looks up at you with her blue-as-stationary eyes (it finally dawns on you why you loved that paper so much) and runs a nervous tongue along her plump-as-a-berry lips. You smile, then tumble her down to the bed. With barely-uttered words and a hungry, needy mouth, you take back all those unanswered phone calls, you personally respond to each unreciprocated note. You peel back her clothing and commit her pretty-as-a-photograph body to memory. The Polaroids were incredible, but nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to the real thing.
You welcome back Cherry Blossom, you welcome back Heaven. You welcome back Penny, the Gemini twins, and Aurora. You press a kiss to each of those freckles on her shoulders and search out the one she told you was hidden in that private, special place. Then, with her hands in your hair and your tongue sliding through her folds, you name that one, too. Mine.
….
It’s the end of August and it’s been zero hours.
Zero minutes, zero hours, zero days. You’ll never be apart again. You know why? Because Scully said so. And Dana Scully doesn’t lie—her little body is packed with everything good in this world, and good things like her don’t lie.
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