🥏 TXF Fic Rec #28: "This House is Burning" by Tesla
Today’s fic is one of the best profiler!Mulder casefiles. It strikes a nice balance, offering just the right amount of everything: the case is engaging with genre-savvy details yet is neither convoluted nor cumbersome; the romance is front and center but not overindulgent. The prose is straightforward and streamlined. It flows with such ease and pulls you into the narrative effortlessly — it’s a page-turner before you know it.
A number of cliched romance tropes are played straight (e.g., the 'one bed' scenario, misunderstandings due to an inability to communicate), but the excellent writing pulls them off with great subtlety. I buy it all. I love the dialogue in the final scene that resolves the emotional arc, marking one of my favorite UST to RST moments. I often find sex scenes dull and skippable, but every single one here is hot, short and well-written. This is a comfort fic that I return to time and again, enjoying it with unchanging pleasure.
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🥏 on X-Libris
🥏 on Gossamer (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
length: novella, 36,000+ words
season: early seasons, probably season 3
pairing(s): M/S UST to RST
tags: casefile, angst, smut, rift, one bed, undercover, Scully-POV, Mulder-POV
rating: mature/R
“World is what it is. We fight and we die. Wishing doesn't change that. You can believe in a better world. I have to live in this one.”
Anyanka’s wish was broken, but the world it created continues. Now Buffy must join forces with rebel vampires to create a world they can all stand to live in. But can Spike, Drusilla and Angel actually work with a hardened slayer, who would just as soon see them all dust?
i have this disease called i will open your message and get distracted and forget to reply and then the notification will be gone so i will not have replied for ages and you will think i am ignoring you but. i am not. it’s incurable
You remember how I told everyone the plot of Season 2 before it aired?
(Everyone tries to remember and then shakes their heads.)
That's right. I didn't. I spent several years going "wait and see". And you waited and you saw.
I'm not going to reveal any of the plot of Season 3, either. So there's really no point in asking me to make things happen, or to tell me what you do or you don't want to happen. I'm not going to.
they really brought david tenant’s son in and said hey do you want to play a gay little boy in good omens 2. just a little camp mf. nepotism done right.
What an outstanding little post-ep for an outstanding episode, “Pusher”.
Today’s fic captures the emotional states of our duo right after their traumatic Russian roulette perfectly, without indulging in sentimentality. It reveals who Mulder and Scully are, and what they are, with unmatched precision. The overwhelming angst running heavy and thick below the surface is restraint in the episode (which makes it great), and so is it in this story (likewise makes it great). But here we sneak a peek below the surface and get walloped with feels.
Beautiful and brilliant, this 600-word fic is a treasure.
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🥏 on AO3
length: ficlet, 600+ words
season: season 3, 3x17 Pusher
pairing(s): M/S UST
tags: episode-related, angst
rating: G