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riderwrites · 2 months

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questions

Six pages of post-episode Unruhe where Scully tells everyone she's fine and thinks of some questions that no one ever asks her about her experience, that she would want them to anyway.

not rated/ 3,862 words/ expert below, read full on ao3

Scully’s wrists still burned where they had been bound. It had been duct tape this time, something new this time, and the sticky residue was still on her skin. She picked at it as she watched EMS workers and local FBI agents flutter around like a flock of disturbed birds. She should feel shaken, like the first time, when her hands were shackled to a radiator, but if anything, she felt a disturbing amount of normality. Her breathing was heavy, and she felt her shoulders shaking but she knew these things were happening, and that in of itself was a comfort. She was able to respond to the questions asked by EMS and other agents with a steady voice, afterall, she knew them so well.

What day is it? Your name? What about his? Can you look to the left for me? Look to the right now. Good, any pain? You were outside your rental car when he injected you with the chemicals, correct? Do you remember any of the ride to where you were found or were you unconscious? Did he mention anything of his other victims to you? Could you lead me step by step of what happened? Any accomplices? We want to prevent copycats. Do you still feel groggy from the drug? Any other aftereffects you feel?

Yes, he was underneath the car, I didn’t see him. It is the third of February. My full name is Dana Katherine Scully. The man who looks as if he swallowed a frog is Agent Fox Mulder. I woke up in the RV. Yes, I’m sure, I can’t recall anything else. He didn’t mention anything else to me beyond what I have already told you. He talked about the Howlers, he insisted his father was good, he never gave me any details on his sister’s suicide. Yes, I asked him. I already told you that.

With the soft sound of their notebooks closing, the conversation was over and already being replaced with their later than usual lunch. Scully looked back down at her hands, at the red marks the tape left. He must have taken off part of the epidermis. She lightly ran her finger over it as she tried to force herself into a calm demeanor. The epidermis comprises five layers, basal, prickle cell, granular, clear and cornified. She ran over the definitions in her mind, trying to focus on fact over the mimicking voices in her brain.

What did the cotton that covered your mouth taste like? How did it feel looking into the delighted eyes of manic men who had you where they fantasized you? How dirty did you feel when their eyes ran up and down your body? Where did the restraints cut into your wrists? Did they draw blood? Do you still feel the sting, even at night in your own bed? Tell me the locks you use, how the move to an upper-level apartment strained your back, how many times do you look across the street before crossing it?

Her body shot forward suddenly at the sudden warm, solid presence of something on her shoulder. Scully turned her head around to find Mulder’s hand retreating, his eyes widening and his mouth beginning to form a question. Scully focused on drifting her eyes without a care to keep that question down. She was getting tired of having to say that she was fine.

It was the only answer anyone would take without question or follow-up. An honest one would make the room uncomfortable and would have questions regarding her ability to succeed in this type of position raised. Scully didn’t want to be doubted, not any more than she usually was. A great, looking forward to not sleeping the next three days would only be met with her being called a bitch. She was a little tired of that too. So fine, because it was the only one that the police officers and agents around would take without question.

Apart from Mulder who would only take it as an answer so far and become her self-appointed guard dog whenever she said it. He stood suffocatingly close to her the entire time after she had been freed from that RV. Scully could feel his body heat on her back, taste the carbon monoxide he exhaled, and hear the slight grinding of his teeth. It made her skin prickle, her own anxiety she had been trying to push away feeding on Mulder’s. He stood by when the EMTs checked her out. He watched their hands suspiciously as if an ice pick would appear out of them to finish the job from before. He watched Scully give her report on what happened, butting in when he thought details would be too much for her. Scully leaned back when he did. From the back, she couldn’t distinguish him from the rest of the agents around them.

#the x files #dana scully #fox mulder #x files fanfic #txf #txf season 4 #s4e4 unruhe #scully going through it fr fr

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randomfoggytiger · 1 year

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My Encyclopedia of My X-Files Fic Lists, Analyses, Fan Vids, and Fan Fiction Resources

So, I pushed all my little anthills into one dust pile because I got sick and tired of having to manually search through my colonies to find that ONE drone.

~~~X-Files Collector’s Edition~~~

Overview

The Fics That Started It All

Meet the Mulders

Car Accidents, Injuries, and Fluff- Oh My!

Creepy and Cozy Cabins

Redux II Samantha Was Real

I Want To Be Leaves (Fall Fics)

Mulder’s Early or Late Birthdays (Season 1)

Mulder’s Early or Late Birthdays (Angst)

Amor Fati(gue)

Amor Fati(gue) AUs

Time Travel, Time Loops, and Just Wrong Timing

Happy Halloween with the Mulder-Scully Family

Many Mondays and “The Creeps”

Ghostly Hauntings and Experiences- AUs

Thanksgivings Are Better Twofold

Flying for Christmas

Christmas and Emily’s Fate

New Year, New Relationship

Canonical-Esque Crack Fic {Edited}

Off-The-Wall Crazy Crack Fic

Coming Home to Their Unremarkable House

Little Samantha’s Life in Capture

Car Wrekt

Friendship Fix (According to Various Authors) Part 1

Friendship Fix (According to Various Authors) Part 2

Valentine’s Day, the Platonic Way

MSR Kicks Platonic Valentine’s to the Curb

Mulder and Scully Fight Insomnia

Scully’s Arcadian Birthday

The X-File That Started It All

Diana Fowl(ey) Play-- All Parts

S9 Mulder Stays or Returns While the Mytharc Barrels On

Anasazi– Shot and Emotionally Fraught

Pranks and Other April Fics

Celebrating Passover and Easter

Poll Results: Fic Niches and Polls

Fics That Deserve More Comments (Part I)

Fics That Deserve More Comments (Part II)

Fics That Deserve More Comments (Part III)

Fics that Deserve More Comments (Part IV)

Fic Moments That “Hit Different”

Fics That Fit My Niche "Dad!Mulder" Likes

MORE Fics That Fit My Niche “Dad!Mulder” Likes

Dad!Mulder, His "Mini Me"s, and Sports

Fight the Future Fics (Part I)

Fight the Future Fics (Part II)

Crazy X-Cops (and Watching the Tragic Ep. Later)

S9, The Season of Secret Dad (Long Fics)

MOTW but Rinse and Repeat

The Field Where I Fix-It Fic-ed

Beefy Revival Mulder

S8 Mulder Resurrects to a Miracle

X-Files Collector’s Edition: Mulder, Scully, and Scents

A Short Fic Tribute to Samantha's 50th Anniversary

Mulder, To Jew or Not to Jew

It’s the Most HTGSC Time of Year

Mulder and Scully and Dancing

Sins of the Eaten Flesh

Mulder, Scully, and Courthouse Weddings

Cars and Conversations (Part I)

Cars and Conversations (Part II)

Bill Scully, MSR, and Pain (Part I)

Reviving that Love

~~~Curated Authors Collection / Short Entries~~~

randomfoggytiger’s Son of Egypt

randomfoggytiger's Fictober Wrap Up

randomfoggytiger’s Chariots of Fire

Eight Nights of Mulder 2023

randomfoggytiger’s “Mr. Mulder, I Know Something About You”

randomfoggytiger’s “You Up For Joining Us?”

randomfoggytiger’s “Think He’ll Call You Tonight?”

randomfoggytiger’s ”You're Not Here, Dana-- You're a Million Miles Away"

randomfoggytiger’s "You're Only Going to End Up Hurting Yourself"

randomfoggytiger’s The Hospital Where You Slept

randomfoggytiger’s "I Know You. It’s What I Do."

randomfoggytiger’s “I Think It’s About Fate”

A Happy Family (Curated Baroness Blixen’s S9)

Curated Baroness Blixen’s Millennium Fics

Curated Jamie Greco

Alligator Moon by jordan

Still Waters by XP1

Everything But the Kitchen Sink by Amy Schatz

Morse Cody by grumpysimon

Fox’s Den I/II/III by Thalia D’Muse

Curated suitablyaggrieved/ScullyLovesQueequeg’s Cancer Arc Fics

Haze and necromance by astronaught

fragility by homecomingserf

Just Another Day on the Oil by Vickie Moseley

Skyland Mountain (AU) by JenAndrews

My Favorites Curated Fics and Quotes by suitablyaggrieved

X-Files Fic That Irons Out the Mytharc... by touchstonea

Curated muldertxf Fics

Curated melforbes Fics

Curated settle-down-frohike Fics

Curated Baroness Blixen’s Car Conversations

~~~X-Files Fan Fiction Resources~~~

Collected Resources

~~~Analysis~~~

Mailboxes in Arcadia: Allegory, Leitmotif, and Chekhov’s Gun

Arcadia Analysis: Scully Was Enjoying Herself Immensely

Arcadia Analysis: Mulder’s Struggle

Arcadia Analysis: Their Worst Nightmares and Trauma Responses

Babylon Dance: An Alternative

Mulder Did Not “Lose Himself” in His Early VCU Days

Biogenesis’s BIG Problem with the Alien-Human Hybrid Virus

One Son: An Intense, One-Shot Analysis of “You’re Making This Personal”

Never Again: An Intensive Essay

Mulder: Sick Fic Vs. Reality

MSR Communication Summed Up

Mulder and Scully’s Most Defining Moment-- “You. Help. Me.”

Charlie Scully in Beyond the Sea

S8 Scully Would Not Have Let Essence and Existence Happen

Mulder Would Never Let Scully Walk Away with Words Left Unsaid

Mulder’s Necessary Emotional Growth in One Breath

The Mulder Family In-Depth (Part I): Colony and End Game

The Mulder Family In-Depth (Part II): The Past Is Important to the Present

The Mulder Family In-Depth (Part III): Dissecting the Dynamics in Demons

The Mulder Family In-Depth (Part IV-1): The Death and Redemption of the Man Who “Threw In”

The Mulder Family In-Depth (Part IV-2): Bill Mulder’s Tainted Legacy

The Mulder Family In-Depth (Part V): Tena Mulder’s Relationships Begin to Change

The Mulder Family In-Depth (Part VI): Talitha Cumi and Tena’s Lies

The Mulder Family In-Depth (Part VII): Childhood Damage in Herrenvolk

The Mulder Family In-Depth (Part VIII): Tena, Amor Fati, and Who’s the Daddy

The Mulder Family In-Depth (Part IX): Tena Mulder’s Suicide and Saving Mulder from Himself

The Mulder Family In-Depth (Part X): Samantha, Spitfire and Stardust

Mulder Was a Father, Even in the Desert

S8 Scully Healing Before Deadalive

We Don’t Value Skinner Enough

Scully’s Complete Change From One Breath to Herrenvolk

S5 Is a Pretty Dark Time for Mulder

The Glaring Ideological Difference Between Mulder and Scully

I Wish: Post Three Words and Mulder

Ascension: Mulder and Maggie’s Bond

Mulder Saw That Scully Was Alone in Redux II

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part I): Childhood and The Pilot

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part II): The First Christmas Death

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part III): A Facade and a Funeral

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part IV): Luthor Lee Boggs, Love, and Letting Go

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part V): Miracles, Lyle Parker, and Psychic Charlie?

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part VI): Maggie Scully and Mulder Meet

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part VII): Mulder, Maggie, Melissa, and the Snake

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part VIII): Maggie Calls Mulder "Fox"

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part IX): Mulder and the Two Scully Sisters

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part X): One Breath and the Scully Men

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part XI): The Last Conversations of One Melissa Scully

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part XII): Prophecy, Death, and the Question of Fate

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part XIII): The Erosion of Scully’s Security, on Tape

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part XIV): When Nature Turns So Cruel

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part XV): "Other Fathers", Deleted Scenes, and "Things to Prove"

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part XVI): Crouching Cancer, Hidden Motives

Spooky Jr. Was Born in a Ghost Town

Mulder Is a Brooder; and Scully Is His Concluder

Scully and Christmas Ghosts

I Love the Unanswered Questions of the X-Files

Mulder Respects Scully’s Medical Choices in the Most Baffling Ways

Scully’s Failures and Her Villains

Mulder Has Max Fenig’s Cap in Beyond the Sea

Scully Is the Conduit Conductor and Mulder Is the Dancer

Mulder Didn’t Use Scully’s Apartment Key Until He “Belonged”

Frohike is THE Man

Mulder and Scully Picked Exes With the Most Red Flag Names Possible

Mulder, the Arcadia Trophy Husband

Mulder Trauma Responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn?

Scully Trauma Responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn?

Arcadia Mulder and His Pillows

How Scully Taught Mulder to Hug

Alpha In-Depth: All Parts

Mulder and Dreams

Milagro In-Depth: All Parts

How the Ghosts Stole Christmas In-Depth: Full Analysis

Scully's Speech in HTGSC Proves Mulder Is Her Ouroboros

Mulder and Scully Didn’t Want a “Network” Outside of Each Other

All Souls, Lost Girls, and Grief

Mulder’s Alien Baby Baby Trauma In-Depth (Part I): Waking Up to Miracles

Mulder’s Alien Baby Baby Trauma In-Depth (Part II): PTSD and Guilt

Mulder’s Alien Baby Baby Trauma In-Depth (Part III): "Processing" How to Fit Back into a Healing World

Mulder’s Alien Baby Baby Trauma In-Depth (Part IV): Passive Mulder Turns Passive-Aggressive

Mulder’s Alien Baby Baby Trauma In-Depth (Part V): The Mutual Pain of Reconnection

Mulder’s Alien Baby Baby Trauma In-Depth (Part VI): Bonds Once Forged Cannot Be Broken

Mulder’s Alien Baby Baby Trauma In-Depth (Part VII): Trickery, Terror, and Tears

Movies Were Mulder's Comfort Placebo Pre-Scully

Mulder and "Killing" Scully

Scully, Snakes, and Reincarnation

CSM Inflicted Insanity On the Syndicate

Mulder’s Little Smile in the Paper Hearts Morgue

Mulder and Scully and the Graves of Many Little Girls

Elegy: A Lie Between Two Truths

Mulder and His Nests

Mulder’s Dichotomy in Three Words

Skinner’s Regrets

Fire and False Romance, Ice and Love

All IVF Roads Lead Away from The Unnatural and to Millennium

X-Cops and Vince Gilligan’s Mulder

The Cancer Arc and Scully's Reliance on Mulder's Strength

Tomboy Scully and Pretty Boy Mulder

Mulder and Scully's Love Story: Season 1

You’re a Magician, Scully

"Proving" Mulder Knew He Was the Father of Scully's Baby

Mulder and Scully Broke Each Other’s Patterns

AU Samantha and Schizogeny Thoughts

Explaining the Never Again Script

Dreams, Alternate Realities, and Agency

One Breath Walked So Firewalker (and Episodes Proceeding It) Could Run

The List: Setting the Stage for Scully’s Loneliness and Mulder’s Panic

Elegy Explanation (and Realization)

Scully and Matters of the Heart: S1-4

Gethsemane, Bill Scully Apologia, and Maggie the Emergency Contact

Mulder: Jewish or Religious References (and His S8 Funeral)

Little Green Men and Teliko Parallels

I Want to Believe: A Character Study in Disordered Writing

HTGSC: Old Tricks and New Lessons

Mulder and Vulnerability

Developed Psychic Ability and Death

Psychics Developed Their Abilities Through Alien DNA

Attractive Monsters and Mulder

Disproving CSM’s Conjecture in En Ami

An Evolution of Mulder and Scully’s Forehead Kisses

Bill Scully Kept Melissa Scully’s Photo in Baby Matthew’s Room

Update: The Therapist in The Red and the Black

Scully's Abduction, Emily Sim, and the Lost Scully Baby

Mulder’s a Big Wig in the Conspiracy Community (and Colonization Thoughts)

Mulder and Scully, Past Lives, and the White Buffalo Calf

Scully the Honest, Mulder the Relentless

The X-Files and Werewolves

An Avoidance Shared by Two

Scully and Emily Parallels

Dana Scully and Relationships: Initial Commitment and Cyclical Self-Doubt

Scully’s Survival Broke The Field Where I Died’s Cycle

Diana Fowley, the Four-Poster Bed Instigator (Perhaps)

~~~Typing~~~

How to "Type" Personality Types: An Ultimate Resource

MULDER, The Spooky INTP

SCULLY, The Enigmatic ISTJ

Mulder and Scully: Love and Touch for INTPs/ISTJs

Dissecting ‘One Son’ (Part I)

Dissecting ‘One Son’ (Part II)

‘Never Again’ and Fear

KRYCEK, An Unstoppable Manipulator

INTPs In Their Own Words

SKINmanNER, The Bald and the Beautiful

MAGGIE, The Passionate Scully

MELISSA, The Soulful ISFP

BILL SCULLY, Junior and Senior (and Charlie?)

~~~Musicals/Fan Vids/AMVs~~~

Fight Club (Finale)

Fight Club: Finale Redone with Less Kathy Griffiths

TINH: Scully’s Solo

S2 Abduction: Mulder’s Torment

Drivin’ Right Along

Hungry: Everything Is Food

Our Town: Everything Is Food

Krycek and Marita: You’re My Little Choochie Face

Syzygy: Everything You Can Do I Can Do Better

Mulder and Samantha: Miracle of Miracles

Amor Fati: If I Never Knew You

Arcadia: People Will Say We’re in Love

Scully, Far from the Home She Loves

CSM and Diana: The Riddle

The Mulders: Sunrise, Sunset

HTGSC: Christmas Can Can

Melissa: Mother Earth and Father Time

Monday: There’s Always Tomorrow

Memento Mori: I Bring You a Song

Pilot: I Ride Alone

Milagro: Hellfire

Darkness Falls: Walk Outside

Emily: Come to Me

~~~Extras~~~

React: "Return to Me" from the POV of Someone Averse to RomComs

Personality Typing: Return to Me

Personality Typing: Bringing Up Baby

React: Watching I Want to Believe for the First Time (and Losing My Mind)

Personality Typing: Hank Moody, Maggie Scully, and ESTPs

What Happens Later: Misdirection and Miscommunication

What Happens Later: ESTJs, ESFPs, and Building Back Love ‘N Trust

David Duchovny’s Face: an Aesthetics Study

Seasonal Color Theory: a Reference Guide

Seasonal Color Analysis: David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson

Seasonal Color Analysis: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, and Their Colors

Kibbe Body Types: Gillian Anderson

Kibbe Body Types: David Duchovny

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fruitcage · 3 months

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#global's got it!#1994 #90s #1990s TV #wings (back-to-back!)#frasier #grace under fire #the x files #a special tuesday edition yet...#VHS #VHSwave #gif #my gifs #the original air date for that frasier ep was oct 4 1994 #but they used footage from the host which had already aired a few weeks earlier on sept 23 #the next tuesday fell on the 11th #between duane barry and ascension #the v/o calls it a special tuesday edition of txf so ??

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sigritandtheelves · 1 year

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All Along, Like Fire (Part 4)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Explicit | 2.5k wds | MSR, AU

A/N: This one got a little spicy toward the end. One more part after this, I think.

—

March, 1995

They interviewed fifteen of the women on the first day—two individually, and then the third called together a whole group. “I know you,” the woman had said, looking hard at Scully’s features.

Together in one room, the women shared their experiences, shockingly similar to Scully’s own. They held up small vials, each containing a fleck of metal. Scully reached up to touch her own neck in horror.

“May we take a few of these? As evidence?” Mulder asked.

Several of the women nodded and offered up their tokens. Mulder took three. He would bring them to the Gunmen as soon as they were back in D.C.

“There’s something else,” one of the women said—Penny Northern, a redhead like Scully. His partner looked green, hadn’t said a word in several minutes, so Mulder encouraged the woman with a nod. “A few of us had children before we were taken… but none of us has been able to get pregnant since.” She looked at Scully’s ashen face apologetically. “Whatever they did to us, it seems to have taken our ability to conceive.”

Mulder looked around the room, and all of the women’s faces confirmed this. “Infertility? And you’ve… tried?” More nods.

A small woman with dark eyes spoke up. “My husband and I went in for fertility testing,” she said. “They found scar tissue around the ovaries. And Jane,” she tilted her chin at a freckled blonde, “she had the same results.”

Scully stood without warning. “Excuse me,” she said, and rushed out of the room.

Mulder watched her duck into a washroom down the hall. He turned back to the women. “Thank you,” he said. “This has been extremely helpful, and I promise we’re working to get to the bottom of it. If anyone asks…” he hesitated, unsure what degree of paranoia he wanted to reveal. “Maybe it’s best not to tell anyone we were here. We’re not sure who can be trusted right now.”

The women didn’t seem to find this surprising in the least. He moved to check on Scully in the bathroom, but one of the women’s voices stopped him—the dark haired woman who had called the others. “Mr. Mulder.” He turned to her. “One of our friends is very sick. Betsy Hagopian. Her name may be on your list?”

He checked. It was.

“She was the first to be taken and the first to remove her implant. She has cancer, and… and a few of the rest of us have shown symptoms.”

Now it was Mulder’s turn to go white. He was glad Scully hadn’t heard this on top of everything else—not yet.

“Thank you,” he said again, his voice rough with emotion.

—

Back at the motel, Scully turned around and offered her back to him, as she’d done once before, tilting her head down. Mulder parted her hair with his fingers to reveal the delicate skin of her neck. Right at the nape was a small red mark, hardly visible. He touched it, felt the tiny hard lump beneath the surface, then cupped his whole palm over the spot as if he could soothe away its implications.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s there.”

Scully drew in a shaky breath and turned to face him. “Cut it out of me.” At his panicked expression, she doubled down. “I need you to cut it out of me, Mulder. I don’t want that thing inside me.”

“Scully…”

She was shaking now, her eyes filling with tears. “What else did they take from me? What else can they take?”

Mulder swallowed hard. “Your health,” he told her. “Your life, maybe.”

“What?”

“The others… some of them who have removed the chip are getting sick.”

“What kind of sick?”

He wanted to hesitate, but she deserved the truth. “Cancer.”

It took a moment for the word to settle between them. Mulder watched a series of emotions cross her face: confusion, realization, anger, and finally a heartbreaking grief. Scully choked out a sob and the tears finally came. Mulder reached out, took hold of her elbow, and pulled her toward him. She came willingly, crashing into his chest and burying her face in his sweater. He held her to him and felt his own tears pushing at his eyes, reddening his nose.

“I’m so sorry, Scully,” he said into her hair. “I’m so sorry.”

She was shaking and he was gripping her like his swallowing arms could keep everything else in the world away from her. “I won’t take the implant out.” He could barely speak for the lump in his throat. “But you’re okay right now, Scully. You’re okay.”

Scully shook her head, not sure how he could think anything was okay.

Later, they sat side-by-side on the motel bed, dazed and drained. Anguish shifted toward anger, toward resolve and determination. Mulder watched his partner draw back into herself, erecting armor, pushing him back to a safe distance.

“I want to see the woman in the hospital,” Scully said. “Betsy. I want to read her charts.”

“Okay,” Mulder agreed.

“And we should keep going on the list.” She looked at him, eyes cold steel now—the same determination he’d seen after her abduction. “Some of the other women might remember more, or remember things differently.”

Mulder nodded.

“And you need to stay with Diana.”

It was like she’d punched him in the chest. “What?”

Scully turned, pulling one leg up onto the mattress to face him better. “She can’t know that we know, Mulder. We have to pretend like… like everything is normal. We’re back to work. We’re investigating cases like usual.”

“Scully—“

“If she thinks you’re onto her, what do you think will happen to our leads? Our evidence? Stay with her and maybe she’ll slip up. Play dumb and we might find something huge—maybe the people she’s working for.”

“So you want me to sleep with the enemy?”

Scully blushed at this and her posture retreated back even further. “Weren’t you already?”

Touché, he thought, but her words stung nonetheless. Mulder dropped his head in defeat. “How can I touch her, knowing what she did to you?”

His partner didn’t answer, but he knew she was right. It was the only way.

—

August, 1995

Scully could tell whenever Diana was in town by the kicked-dog look Mulder wore in the office. She felt terrible for him and his need to feign dopey-eyed love for someone he knew was working against them. Still, every time she thought of him with Diana, she felt queasy—not to mention furiously jealous. The feeling was unfair to Mulder, but she couldn’t help the rage that filtered through her blood, the snappiness in her voice when she knew Diana was in town and she imagined their life at home, farcical as it was: two pretenders, angling for each other’s secrets.

Meanwhile, she and Mulder marched through cases with their heads down and their hackles up. They confronted invisible elephants, circus murders, bugs carrying deadly pathogens, all while they hunted under the radar for answers. So far everything pointed to a shadowy government faction toying with stolen genetic material, rather than aliens. Medical rape for the sake of “science.” The implants were a technological wonder, but a human one as far as the Gunmen could tell. Of course the chips held no manufacturer’s stamp: another dead-end amongst many.

It was late summer and hot in the midwest. Corn was tall and everywhere, the sky a huge bowl above them, and their case seemed like a waste of time. The air conditioning in Mulder’s room crapped out on the second night, so he ducked out into the evening air to cool off among the cornstalks and screaming insects.

Scully was outside already, perched on the seat of a dilapidated swing set in the yellow dust—what passed for a playground in this place. Mulder looked surprised to see her.

“You okay?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Sure. You?”

“AC went kaput,” he said.

Scully nodded and gestured to the unoccupied swing beside her. “Pull up a seat.”

He smiled at her and took the swing, letting his feet kick at the dirt as hers did. They were quiet, half-swinging in companionable silence, listening to the bugs and watching the great dome of stars above them.

“Huge sky,” Mulder commented. “I always forget that about the midwest.”

“Mmm,” she hummed. She watched him looking up, contemplated the boyish wonder in his eyes that contrasted the way his shoulders had slumped in these past months. Playing both sides was draining him, sucking the joy out of him most days—except when they were on the road. When they climbed into airplane seats or slid into a rental car, he was himself again, sparkle-eyed and ready to sling crazy at her.

“I knew the case was bunk,” he said out of the blue.

Scully raised her eyebrows.

He turned his gaze from the sky to her face, and his expression was so earnest, so pained. “I needed to get away,” he confessed. “Diana was coming back, and I… I couldn’t face her again.” He shook his head and looked away.

Scully wasn’t sure what to say. They hadn’t spoken about Diana except in oblique references for months, because of course they hadn’t. But what could she say now to make anything better? She settled for, “I’m sorry,” because she really was. Much as she hated her own position, she knew Mulder’s was far worse. Neither of them was good at deceit.

He kicked at the ground again in awkward silence. She wanted to reach out to him, to hold him against her and tell him this wouldn’t be forever.

“I’m only free when I’m with you, Scully,” he whispered.

She felt a tightening in her chest—a zap of adrenaline and oxytocin. Was that really because of her, because of something special between them, or was it just circumstantial?

Scully decided she didn’t care. She stood from the swing and moved to stand in front of him—close, so that when he swung forward, his knees hugged her thighs. She held her hand out to him. He took it, laced his fingers with hers. The sparks were still there, like she knew they would be, pricking at every place his skin touched hers. It was the most intimate contact they’d had since she’d sobbed into his sweater five months before.

“We’re free here,” she said. “There’s nothing but us and the stars.”

“And the corn.” He smiled.

She stepped back and tugged him up off the swing. He came willingly. They walked back to her room, which was blessedly cool and lit only by the dim bedside lamp. Scully knew what she was doing, just as she knew how wrong it was—how wrong it was supposed to be, at least. But she was done feeling guilty about loving him. She ached for him, and he deserved something besides the forced performance of his relationship with Diana.

Mulder closed the door behind them.

“This is real,” she told him as he turned to face her. He nodded. Then he was kissing her like the whole world was on fire. His palms held her face. His lips tasted like salt and root beer. Her hands fingered the soft tufts of his hair.

“You’re everything,” he said into her mouth—words he’d said to her once before. Now she was beginning to understand. She licked his bottom lip and pressed a kiss to the mole on his cheek.

“There’s only us,” she whispered.

He nodded. “No one else.”

She pulled at his t-shirt and his fingers slipped under her tank to move across her back, up up, and then around to hold her breasts. His skin burned like she burned. She wanted to touch all of him. Nine months since they’d given in to this need and not a day had gone by that either of them hadn’t thought of it. She tugged at the buttons of his pants, and he pulled her sleep tank up and over her head.

Soon they were both naked and he was walking her backwards to the bed, still kissing her, still touching her everywhere. He nudged her to lay down, then lowered himself to taste her body. He was mouthing her nipples and she was trying not to scream. When he dropped a hand between her legs, she writhed against it in lunatic desperation for his touch.

“Jesus,” he groaned into her skin at how wet she was.

She whimpered and tugged him up to kiss him again, to reach between them and grasp the hot silk of his cock. “I need you,” she murmured into his mouth. They could go slow later, she decided.

Mulder obliged without hesitation, prodding her legs apart with his knee and settling his weight between them. She guided him down, against, into. When he buried himself in her, she almost sobbed with how good it was, how much she’d needed this confirmation—of what they could be, what they really were. This time was different, more deliberate, than their other hushed and guilty trysts. Tonight felt like a declaration, bold and without shame. He moved in her and she arched her hips. She held his face in her hands, locked eyes with him, and it was the closest she’d ever felt to anyone. They were, each of them, bared entirely to the other. Neither said the word love during the act, but it was in every touch, the subtext of every word they did say.

Afterward, they held each other for a long time, smiling with the joy of real connection and breathing each other in. Scully pressed kisses to the sparse hair of his chest and promised that they would find a way out of this. Mulder squeezed her and rolled so she covered him like a blanket. He moved his hands over her cooling skin.

“I won’t sleep with her again,” Mulder told the top of her head. “I can’t and I won’t. I have to end it.”

Scully lifted up to look at him. His eyes were dark with determination. “Okay,” she said. She couldn’t pretend it wasn’t exactly what she wanted to hear.

He kissed her again—a promise.

—

Two weeks later, all hell broke loose in a chain reaction meant to point bullets at them both. A hacker downloaded files from the D.O.D., and someone started poisoning Mulder with psychoactive drugs. Days later, his father was dead and he was locked in a burning boxcar, soon presumed dead himself. Scully was sanctioned and stripped of her badge. In just days, she’d lost everything that meant anything to her.

Scully didn’t believe in coincidences anymore. She touched the scar on the back fo her neck and wondered if the chip had betrayed them both. She couldn’t trust anyone, but she had printed files from the DAT tape and her belief that Mulder was still alive.

Instead of attending his father’s funeral, she got on a plane to New Mexico.

—

End Part 4 - Go to Part 5

#a thing i wrote #all along like fire #txf fanfic #msr #au #part 4

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