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Redux II s. 5 ep. 2

[arealnowherewoman]

was your first phone a flip phone?

[arealnowherewoman]

Fic: The Altar Is My Hips (M, MSR)

1500 words; M for sexual situations; the POÄNG pals wondered what would happen if Mulder proposed while eating pussy and here is the result (ao3)

Scully’s flat on her back in her bed with Mulder’s face between her legs. It’s her new favorite pastime. She’s got her hands in his silky hair and his tongue flicks at her clit in a steady rhythm. She lets her back arch, pushing her mound against his face. He hums in pleasure and licks a few lazy circles that leave her moaning.

Mulder, as she had always suspected, eats pussy like it’s his calling in life. Mulder eats pussy like other people eat oysters, and with twice as much relish. Maybe it’s that full lower lip or maybe it’s his nimble tongue or maybe it’s that distinguished profile, but Scully can’t resist. His face is a saddle and she’s ready to ride. Yee-haw.

She’s had lovers before who made it feel like a chore, but it’s obvious Mulder enjoys it. He’ll eat her out for hours, given the chance, moving from her on top to him on his knees to him pinning her to the bed to various configurations of 69. He’ll strip her down or tongue her through the nicer underwear she’s started wearing. She has to fuck him between sessions just to redistribute the sensation.

Maybe it’s the seven years of blue balls, but they’ve both been insatiable since they started fucking. She can’t get enough of him. She’s fairly sure Skinner’s noticed the way she’s been staring at Mulder during meetings, partly because she keeps putting the end of her pen in her mouth. It isn’t on purpose. She’s been hungry for so long, and now she’s got a buffet spread out in front of her. Or under her. Or on top of her. She’s flexible. So to speak.

Today she’s a pillow princess and Mulder’s doing all the work. All she has to do is lie back and not think of England. She has no thoughts when Mulder spreads her thighs. Her brain is blissfully empty, filled up with sparklers and fireflies and the heat of a perfect summer evening. Mulder’s made her come so hard she forgot how to speak. She wants him so much it makes her feel stupid. When he’s inside her, she doesn’t care about anything else in the world.

He sucks her clit gently into his mouth, teasing her. Sensation prickles through her. She’s got goosebumps. The tip of his tongue swirls over her clit, and then he rubs at her clit with the flat width of his tongue until it makes her vision go blurry. He moans into her and it’s such a fucking turn-on. If she wasn’t already drenched, she’d be wet just listening to him eat her out.

She combs her fingers through his hair, resisting the urge to grab a handful. She doesn’t always resist, but this isn’t that kind of occasion. This is sweet, deliciously leisurely. He’s been taking it very slow, pausing in his ministrations to kiss his way up the ticklish inside of her thigh. She’s sure she’s got a hickey just low enough that the hem of her underwear won’t conceal it. She’s lucky she doesn’t have one just above the back of her knee. Skinner would definitely raise an eyebrow over that one.

Mulder nudges her thighs further apart, pushing her open with the breadth of his shoulders. She splays her legs wide, putting herself on display for him. He makes a happy noise and pulls a little harder at her clit. She gasps and sighs. Her blood feels like hot honey, thick and sweet and slow. Her whole body is hot and loose. Need builds in her belly, but it’s a deliberate coiling, driven by the pace of Mulder’s tongue.

She doesn’t know how long she’s been here. She doesn’t care. She only knows that her body is a pleasure garden that Mulder cultivates. She’s magic. She’s the rocking of the ocean, punctuated by glints of sharper pleasure. Her orgasm feels inevitable, even in its early stages, but she doesn’t want to rush it. She’s enjoying herself, enjoying him enjoying her.

She can feel the moment his hunger shifts. He sucks harder at her, flicks his tongue faster. He knows how to drive her to the edge. He uses the tip of his tongue to tease the exquisitely sensitive bud of nerves under her clitoral hood and she yelps. The pleasure inside her grows. It’s hungrier than before. She needs more, or different, or something.

“Your fingers,” she manages to say, and he’s pushing inside her almost before she can say it. His elegant hands were made to fuck her. She’s convinced of it, despite any evidence to the contrary. Two fingers is usually enough, but not today. She’s starving for him. She wants him everywhere inside her. If he could eat her out and fuck her at the same time, she’d do it. She’d have an orgy of Mulders, one for every orifice and one to grow on.

“More,” she says, and a third finger joins the other two, thrusting deeper into her, seeking the spot he knows will make her come undone. She loves how well he knows her, how he still studies her. His attention is intense; she’s never felt anything like it. He shifts just a little and suddenly it feels like a kiss, somehow even more intimate than before. Fuck, she loves him. She whimpers as his fingers graze the right place and he groans against her clit.

It doesn’t take long after that. Not with his fingers fucking her and his mouth insistent on her most sensitive skin and his other hand reaching up to touch her breasts. She’s tugging at his hair now. Her thighs squeeze around his ears and she isn’t trying to suffocate him, but she can’t relax. Her body is drawn tight, vibrating like a bow string. He strums his tongue across her clit and his fingers work inside her and he’s tweaking one of her nipples and she’s caressing the other and oh God, she’s coming. Her hips buck and he pins her with one arm and licks her through the waves of pleasure. She shivers over and over, as if she’s chaining one orgasm to the next to the next, until finally it’s too much and she gently pushes him away. He raises his face and rests his chin on her thigh.

“God, Mulder, that was amazing.” She can’t catch her breath.

“Marry me,” he says. His face is wet. His lips glisten. He licks at them. She can’t tell if he’s nervous or relishing the moment.

She laughs and pushes up on her elbows to look at him. “What?”

“Marry me,” he says again. There’s something in his eyes that tells her it’s not a joke, but that’s hard to believe after all his previous proposals, variously in jest or inebriated.

“Isn’t that my line, after an orgasm like that?” she asks.

He huffs and his breath tickles her thigh. “If you’re trying to let me down easy, I get it.”

“Marry you,” she says.

He nods, his chin digging into her thigh.

She looks at him for a long moment. His eyes are dark with unsatisfied desire, but he waits as patiently as if they’re at the ticket counter at the airport. She measures his face with her eyes, as if she doesn’t know it by heart. She lets her heart open, a luxury she rarely allows herself. Love suffuses her as thoroughly as pleasure did, rippling through her until she can hardly breathe. Of course it’s Mulder. It’s always been Mulder. If it could be anyone, it’s Mulder. They’ve been pledged to each other since that night in Bellefleur when she stepped into his hotel room and showed him her skin and her naked fear and he showed her his soul in return.

“Okay,” she says.

His eyes light up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she says. She can wear a dress, white or otherwise. She can vow in front of God and her family to have and to hold him as long as they both shall live. She can wear his ring, be his wife, honor him, obey him (under very specific circumstances). The more she thinks about the idea, the better she likes it. “Will you marry me?”

“Of course I will,” he says.

“Come here,” she whispers, suddenly shy, and he hauls himself up the length of her body until she can kiss him. Mulder kisses like a fairytale: true love wrapped up in the strangest mysteries. She can taste herself on his mouth and feel the rigid heat of his cock against her hip. She shifts until he’s sliding between her folds, sliding into her, rocking slowly as they kiss. They make love; there’s no other word for it. They haven’t done it like this yet, somehow, though she would have sworn they’d tried it all. He moves in her, watching her, and she feels so new and so precious. Her eyes are glossy with tears, but so are his. She kisses his eyelids and he laughs a little. Her heart flares with heat. The world has been so cruel to him. Now he’s under her protection forever.

“Marry me?” he asks again as she arches under him.

“Yes,” she says as she comes again, “yes, yes, yes,” and she knows she’ll never stop saying it.

[arealnowherewoman]

Fic: Heaven Is A Place On Earth (M, MSR)

1300 words; M for sexual situations; no if, ands, or bees or: what if the outtake FTF kiss was the sex we had along the way

Scully’s panting on his lap, her face flushed and her blue eyes wide and hungry. Her knees are deep in his couch; her thighs quiver outside his. He’s trembling too, with anticipation and need. He’s pressing his hips down into the couch, fighting the urge to surge up into her. The latex-clad head of his cock is pressed against her entrance.

“We don’t have to,” he says. It might be the single bravest act any human has ever committed.

He watches emotions flicker over her face: lust, anxiety, delight, desire, love. “Mulder, I want to. It’s just been a while.” She takes a deep breath.

He reaches up to touch her face. “You’re in charge here.”

Ten minutes ago, they were in his hallway. It feels like a lifetime. He told her what she meant to him, that she saved him. She kissed his forehead. And then…and then they reached for each other, inevitably, as if this has been their logical destination all along. He couldn’t remember who had initiated it. Her mouth opened against his and he melted into her. She moved against him and he slipped his hands under her ass and hefted her. Her legs wrapped around his hips as they stumbled backwards into his apartment, lips still locked.

Five minutes ago, they were peeling each other out of their clothes. He’d been hard since the first brush of her lips. He couldn’t let go of her, couldn’t stop touching her. Her hands were all over him, deft and urgent. When he slipped his fingers between her folds, she was soaking wet. He’s not ashamed to admit he moaned out loud. Her eyes widened. She touched his cock, her fingers suddenly tentative.

“I knew you were…substantial,” she said. “But I can’t say I expected this.”

He knows. Phoebe used to drag her palm down the length of him when they were out with friends. Showing him off, she always said, but it was embarrassing. He’s not embarrassed when Scully touches him.

“Guess I’m a grower and a shower,” he teased.

She bit her lip as she considered him. There was a hunger in her face he’d only glimpsed before. Now she was letting him see it. It made fire lick through his veins.

“You on top,” he suggested. “Control the pace.”

“On the couch,” she told him, and he was halfway there before he realized he’d moved.

And that brings them here: to Scully, naked, hovering above him. Somehow in the haze of need, he found a condom and a bottle of lube. She’s so fucking wet, but lube doesn’t hurt. His hands drop from her face to span her waist, holding her steady. Her tits, fuck, her tits are so close to his face.

“Mulder, I want this,” she says. Her voice only shakes a little. “I want it so badly.”

“Go slow,” he says.

She sinks onto him. His cock presses into her, just the head, just past the tight ring of muscle at her entrance. She gasps.

“Oh God,” she says.

He’d agree, if he could say anything. But he’s forgotten every word he knows but her name and the word yes.

She rises, ever so slightly, and he slides out again. She whimpers and so does he. But then she’s sinking onto him again, a little deeper. This time she just stays there, a look of ravenous bliss on her face. He can feel her adjusting around him. Her knees tighten and then relax. He can’t help himself anymore. He leans forward to kiss her tits. He takes one nipple into his mouth, pulling at it with his lips and tongue until she groans his name.

Inch by inch, she takes him. He tells her how brave she is, how gorgeous. He worships her tits the way he’s always longed to. He loves the way she hisses when he scrapes the edges of his teeth across her nipples or sucks at the delicate skin under her ear. She’ll have love bites later, unmistakable marks of the things they’re doing. He thinks she’ll be proud of them.

Finally he’s deep, deep inside her. She’s so goddamn tight around him. Her eyes are closed and her face is a Baroque painting. The urge to pound up into her is so strong that he’s shaking holding back. Scully undressed is so delicate and so strong. He wants to overwhelm her with pleasure, make her eyes roll back in her head again. But he stays still. He waits for her. He needs her to take what she wants from him. He needs her to get what she needs.

“Fuck,” she says. She opens her eyes. “Mulder.” His name is a prayer.

He rubs his face against her chest, drags his lips over her flushed skin. She shifts, groaning as the pressure of his cock inside her changes. She rises a little, sinks again, splays her knees to take him even deeper, and then does it all again. He sees God, and he isn’t even close to coming.

She rides him, so slowly at first and then faster, and he watches her. There’s an expression on her face he can’t quantify. It’s beyond pleasure. She’s so hot and tight and wet around him. He can feel the way he fills her up and it only fuels his pleasure. He reaches down to thumb her clit. He has to make her come. He has to feel her come. He has to feel her come around his cock, because of his cock, because of his fingers and his lips and the rough edge in his voice that he can tell she likes.

He plays her by ear, tuning the pitch of her moans higher and higher. He’s moaning too, and she likes that. Her muscles clutch around him when he gets loud. She’s dragging him closer and closer to the edge. The curls around his cock are absolutely soaked with her wetness. His fingers are slick with her as he draws quick circles around her clit.

“Come for me,” he begs her.

“Fuck me,” she says, and God, he can’t help himself after that. He presses his hands around her hips and surges into her, up and up and up while she cries out and her tits bounce. And she’s coming, her cunt fluttering around him. He fucks her through it and then slows down to let her catch her breath.

“Don’t stop,” she says.

“Never,” he promises, picking up her hand and kissing it. She rises and sinks, gazing into his eyes, and it’s slow and sweet and everything he imagined. He’s close, he’s so close, and the slick of her, the heat of her is astonishing. He can feel every vein in his body as his heart thuds. He loves her. He loves her so fucking much. And he loves her most of all in this moment as she holds him with her stare, fucking herself deliberately with his cock and letting him see each nerve light up with the pleasure his body gives her. There are sparks in her smile and fireworks in her eyes.

“Do it for me,” she croons to him and he comes apart, shivering under her.

He makes her come again, after, on her back with her knees by his ears. She tastes like latex but he licks her until her body shakes and shakes. She pulls him on top of her. He’s still half-hard, worried about the condom but unable to deny her his weight if that’s what she wants. She wraps her arms around him and holds him close. He buries his face against her.

“I could never have left you,” she says into the hollow of his shoulder. “Not really.”

He kisses her temple. “I would have followed you.”

Across the room, a bee staggers out from under the collar of her jacket, topples over, and goes to bee heaven. They don’t notice. They’re in their own private heaven.

[arealnowherewoman]

how to say “I love you” in x-files [14/?] ⤷ 1.01 — “Pilot”

#definitely not gazing at scully

[arealnowherewoman]

Don't usually blog her, but had to lol. How much has she even read to talk about it?

[arealnowherewoman]

"Triangle" || 6.3

[arealnowherewoman]

Mulder's dick is always described as humongous in fan fiction what is yalls source

[arealnowherewoman]

Loved your Skinner POV. I am the ultimate sucker for a Margaret Scully POV. Do one? *doe eyes*

Cancer. How can it be cancer, how can Fox already have been at the hospital, how can they plot and whisper and conspire; how can Dana have cancer?

Margaret is so angry and so afraid. So, so angry.

Terrified.

She has the wild, insane thought that Dana is too beautiful to have cancer, as though Melissa hadn’t been too beautiful to be casually murdered.

Fox looming and lurking in hallways and corners and sunsets and pre-dawn stillness. Like a grim guardian angel, like the beautiful statue of Lucifer Bill once took her to see at Liège.

Margaret sees Fox kiss her daughter’s bright hair one night, kiss her daughter’s sad, smiling mouth.

She doesn’t know what she wants for them. She crosses herself and walks away.

***

She doesn’t understand the situation with Emily, not really. She listens to everything Dana says about induced hyperovulation and surrogates and she nodded, dutiful, because she can hear Dana’s throat so tight, trying not to cry.

Emily is very sick, Dana says. The courts have no precedence for this, Dana says. I want to help her, Mom.

If Emily is Dana’s, if she really is, then she’s Margaret’s granddaughter and Margaret, to her shame, doesn’t want her to be.

Fox stands in the corner of the room, staring out the window at nothing, his jaw hard as stone. He radiates a quiet steadiness and Margaret feels her strange, lovely daughter draw strength from it, like a solar panel on a bright day. Are there lunar panels? Mulder’s eyes are nothing like the sun.

He radiates a cold fury and Margaret almost has pity for the target of it.

“When I was abducted by Duane Barry,” Dana begins, her voice mostly steady. “Wherever he took me had some kind of program where-“

Fox slams his fist into the windowframe and Margaret jumps, gasps. “Fox!”

“Mulder…” Dana breathes, her eyes closed.

He stalks from the room like a panther. Like an assassin.

***

“I’m pregnant,” Dana says, a little blushing laugh. Her hand splays over her flat belly.

Margaret surges with such piercing love for this incomprehensible child she birthed. “Oh honey,” she breathes.

Dana drops her head to the side, cheek to shoulder. “I’m so tired already,” she confesses. “I don’t know how you had four with Daddy away.”

She reaches for her daughter’s slim fingers. “I wanted five. Eight, if we could have. Three miscarriages after Charlie and then….” she is appalled at herself. “Dana, I’m so-“

Dana squeezes her mother’s hand. “Miscarriages aren’t some kind of thought virus, Mom.”

Margaret squeezes her hand back. “I know, I know. It just feels like bad luck. And Fox, will he be….?”

Dana looks up, a flush high in her cheeks. “Why are you bringing Mulder up?”

Margaret rolls her eyes. ““I’m a Vatican I Catholic, Dana. Not an idiot.”

Her daughter has the grace to look away. “He wants me to marry him,” she murmurs.

Margaret loves Fox. She loves him the way people love barn cats and funny cock-eared dogs and every pied beauty. But all of a sudden it’s Fox at Thanksgiving, Fox properly at Christmas this time. Uncle Fox, wedding-anniversary Fox, Fox calling her…what? Mom? Surely not Mrs. Scully still.

Margaret knows her children have done the math on her oldest son’s birthday, that he was mighty hefty for a “preemie.” She knows her latest grandchild deserves to be born in wedlock, she knows every Catholic from Father McCue back to Saint Peter would be absolutely appalled with her.

“Be sure of what you want,” she says to the chestnut tree just past the living room window. To Saint Mary Magdalene, to all repentant sinners.

***

William, six. William clever and tall for his age and gingerbread-colored like his father, with his mother’s round lapis eyes. Fiona, four, happily squirting colored water into a large plastic bin of shaving cream. The twins - Silas and Clara- are nearly three and getting bathed in the sink by their father. Dana, a tenured professor, lolling on the couch. Dana pregnant with number five.

Dana yawns like a cat over some tedious medical journal. Dana ever rail-thin since her cancer. Dana still looking depleted of essential nutrients. Phosphorus? Zinc?

But Dana is still a doctor, so Margaret is silent.

“Are you all right?” Margaret asks her irritable daughter. She beams at Clara, absurdly chubby, with her Aunt Melissa’s coppery curls. Clara with her plump hands like little stars. Silas, rosy and dark-haired, howls in general indignation. Silas with his father’s fairy-forest eyes and impossible lashes. Silas who loves to pat his grandmother’s cheeks.

“Mother I’m FINE,” Dana sighs. “Sy, hush. It’s only warm water.”

Margaret watches her son-in-law for a time, watches his long hands and his furrowed brow as the twins laugh and splash and protest in the deep farmhouse sink. Her Bill could never have done what Fox does.

“Loretta Lynn said she stopped having babies when they started coming in pairs,” Fox observes, sluicing water over his anguished twins. Clara laments pitifully. Silas has a broken air about him, weary as his mother.

Dana laughs, sweet as communion wine. “Stop knocking me up, then,” she grins, hand over her enormous belly.

“Not until you marry me,” Fox replies, thumbing Silas’s fat cheek. Kissing his darkly curled head.

Fiona on the carpet, giggling as William makes farting sounds in his armpits. Fiona with the blackest hair and the bluest eyes and the most perfectly sprinkled freckles like her Uncle Charlie.

William like a wood-elf, so tall and bright.

Dana laughs again. “No priest would ever, would they, Mom?”

Margaret, exhausted and happy, sighs at the pair of them.

In the oven, turkey tetrazzini from the Thanksgiving leftovers. Potty-training sticker charts on the fridge. Will’s perfect math homework, Fee’s wobbly I LOV YU!! above a careful crayon drawing of her family.

Margaret could have never predicted this, could never have seen Fox in sweats and baking Texas Sheet Cake for the PTA. Fox staying home and juggling nap schedules so that Dana could tell anecdotes about maggots to her adoring students.

Fox has a blog, which is Quite The Thing nowadays. Fox is a bestselling author. He’s made the talk show circuit and the girls from bunko send her newspaper clippings.

Fox towels off his exhausted babies. He diapers them, dresses them in fleecy pajamas. They look at him with enormous, reproachful eyes. They pout.

Margaret holds her arms out, draws them in when they toddle over.

The babies nestle, nuzzle, make sweet baby sounds as the sink drains away. Their little mouths pop open, lashes curled on their flawless cheeks. She’s never expected Dana, of all of her children, to be living this life. Cold, prickly, distant Dana with her lunatic partner and her brain cancer and her dead little girl.

“There are infinite infinities,” William tells Fiona. “But some infinities are larger than others.”

[arealnowherewoman]

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Happy 31st anniversary of The X Files ! Mulder and Scully you rocked the universe !!

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[arealnowherewoman]

How very domestic of them

[arealnowherewoman]

I’ve been an x files fan for years now (since 2008ish) but fan fic has never been my thing. If I wanted to give it another go, what writers or pieces of fic would be a good place for me to start? Thanks! 😊

What a dream request, thank you!

Not much of a fic reader? Hm. I drifted to fanfiction because I wanted a canonical hole plugged in; but it sounds like you're looking for quality.

I'm narrowing these suggestions to long-form fics, and going to try to keep them as "fandom approved" as possible. (I'm also cutting back on the "famfic" recs because that's not everyone's cup of tea~.)

Authors whose works could (one could argue, should) be published as novels, in no particular order:

@amplifyme/Lydia Bower, @aloysiavirgata, @slippinmickeys,

@cecilysass, @teethnbone, @dreamingofscully, @sixhours,

@mashnotesofthemythopoeic/Penumbra, @sigritandtheelves/Darla,

@onpaperfirst, @melforbes, @ghostbustermelanieking/skuls,

Jenna Tooms, @seek-its-opposite, @settle-down-frohike,

@frostbitepandaaaaa, @leiascully, @darwin-xf, Beshter,

@scenes-in-between/scullywolf, @scullylikesscience

Here's a brief rundown on each author, to the best of my abilities:

amplifyme

My mother's embraces are frightening in their intensity, and I can feel her fear as though it seeps from her pores. Mulder's arms hold me easily but fully. And there is a calming effect in his touch. He restores me to myself, makes me strong again. I wish I had taken the chance and discovered that years ago.

-Dance Without Sleeping

One of the OGs. Her writing explores the paths of Mulder's and Scully's minds. The Scully in her stories is pragmatic, matter-of-fact, and protective of her secrets. The Mulder in her stories is tender, predictably mercurial, and secretive, as well. The most direct admittance can be the most damaging, and the most healing. Her longest work is, I believe, Dance Without Sleeping; but my favorite, though short, happens to be Light Don't Sleep. Her Ao3 is here.

aloysiavirgata

“That’s a fair question, Senator,” Scully observes in her liquid nitrogen voice. She leans forward in her seat, just a little, just enough, to remind him that predators have eyes at the front of their heads. Scully crosses her legs and gives the Senator the full force of her blue eyes, the hard angles of her good cheekbones.  

She is magnificent, Mulder thinks, smitten. She is Themis, she is Ma’at. One day she will devour the hearts of the unrighteous, his own included.

-Singing of Mount Abora

One of the OGs. She treads the line between poetry and prose so seamlessly you are left, baffled, by her intelligence. Her writing features Mulder and Scully with a little bite: neither are fools, and neither will be trifled with. (They're also wickedly intelligent nerds.) Mulder is Jewish (though that rarely comes up) and was married before (though that only comes up when it comes up.) Canon halts in Season 7, but that doesn't stop her from writing Season 9 masterpieces with Mulder and Scully and their son-- which is where I'd recommend you begin, with By Falling In and In. If that's not your cup of tea, I'd say catch up on her canon divergent Waters of Babylon, Petrichor, and Singing of Mount Abora. Her Ao3 is here.

slippingmickeys

The boy winced and inhaled sharply as her fingers ran over the cleft where the fibula met the talus and she rocked back on her heels, eyeing the darkening horizon. Did he have people nearby? Could she leave him here without guilt? She didn’t really have the time or inclination to take on a project — she and Mulder had tried that before — banding together with other survivors, and it had always ended poorly. And boys his age, as few as she had seen, made her uncomfortable. Her subconscious would scan their features, looking for a genetic echo of the Scully-Mulder’s. Mulder would have to pull her aside and whisper “it’s not him,” and she didn’t have the space in her heart for the guilt. Even now she had to ignore the blue of his eyes and the way his gritted teeth had the same gnathic slant as the only man she’d ever loved.

-North of Zero

One of the OGs. Her Mulder and Scully are practical, capable, sleek survivors. Her writing exists somewhere between the clack of a gun slide and the omnipresence scent of a wild pine forest. She's written extensively on... everything: Colonization, space, POL, case files, mytharc, everything; and well. I'd recommend North of Zero for a starter. Her Ao3 is here.

cecilysass

It’s Mulder, she reminds herself. No matter how long you may have been gone, or what has happened in your absence, you know what to expect from Mulder.

At last he shuffles through the door, and it’s him, definitely him: head bent, looking weary and wilted. He turns to lock the door again, evidently not paying very much attention to his surroundings.

Her heart constricts. “Mulder,” she voices softly.

She can see his whole body go still from behind, but he doesn’t look right away. His back remains to her.

-Pause

One of the OGs. Her Mulder and Scully are weighed by secrets, by their unspoken. Her writing dwells in the silences; and the tones of her work shift depending on the narrative: insular and psychologically exploratory, fast-paced and bitterly overwhelming, slow and unspooling and peaceful-- but always with a bittersweet aftertaste. I would do a disservice if I didn't recommend A Boy on the Beach first; but my personal favorite is Pause (and All the Dead Mulders and Not Orpheus, Not Eurydice.) Her Ao3 is here.

darwin_xf

Mulder. Her genius. Who happened also to be her blithering idiot. A fresh swell of affection overtook her. This is how it was for her, even just talking to him. One minute she was standing in the shallows enjoying or enduring or surviving a day at the beach, whichever kind of day it was. The next she'd find herself walloped and rolled by the rogue wave of her feelings for him. Then she was surfacing, sputtering, salt-blind, struggling to find the steady line of the horizon.

-Vox Mulder: Fired and Wired

One of the OGs. Darwin's writing is clipped and "action" focused. Her Mulder and Scully are fond and quippy and silently torturing themselves with their own repressions or secrets. Vox Mulder: Fired and Wired covers the IVF arc concurrent with Mulder's (secret) brain disease diagnosis; and her notes tearing into canon's handling of the latter arc are incredibly detailed, incredibly satisfying, and incredibly hilarious. Her Ao3 is here.

dreamingofscully

They searched, staying together with Scully’s single flashlight. As she suspected, they didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. The cellar was devoid of sound and light, not a single rat or insect scurrying about. No more traces of the unknown substance.

They followed the trail of viscous fluid back to their room. Their adrenaline-fueled trek left her exhausted, and she was hopeful she would be able to sleep for a few more hours before dawn. Not even her fear could break through the cottony haze that clouded her mind. Collapsing on the bed, Mulder pulled off her slippers. 

-Surely, to the sea

One of the OGs. Her writing is practical and pleading-- the veneer that Mulder and Scully front, and the truth. Her Scully has teeth but prefers silence and distance. Her Mulder stubbornly walks the thin line between opening his partner up or closing her back together tighter. Trust-- in each other, in themselves-- can be broken and mended with the right words, the right meaning. I recommend starting with Surely, to the Sea (and my favorite short fic is this one.) Her Ao3 is here.

Frostbite Panda

“I make you a whole person,” she whispers. The slam of sudden memory is heady, destabilizing, threatening to spin her clean from reality. 

He leans forward, elbows on his knees, a sound escaping him that she cannot identify. Truth be told, he looks a bit ridiculous— wrapped in a green sleeping bag looking like a dormant pupa, not the wrecked and ruined man he was. 

-Four Days on the 63rd Parallel

One of the OGs (I believe.) Her writing is grand and touching, a microcosm of the macro effects Mulder and Scully face alongside, and with, each other. Her Scully is reluctant, doubting Mulder's beliefs but trusting him; and her Mulder is courageous and wallowing, afraid to try for fear of rejection. Four Days on the 63rd Parallel (and its follow-up In a Perfect World) explores what would have happened if Mulder and Scully had been trapped in Antarctica, in a snocat, alone, until help arrived. Her Ao3 is here, and requires you to be logged in.

Jenna Tooms

Then there's the matter of Mulder and his reaction to scissors and the razor. When he was first released from the hospital I took him to his old barber. He made it into a seat, and even let the barber tie the cloth around his neck. At the first flash of the scissors, though, he was up and out so fast for a moment I only stood in the waiting area dumbfounded, the baby in my arms.

He will, however, let me cut his hair and trim his beard--which he grew to cover his facial scars. I let him keep it as long as he lets me keep it neat.

-An Acceptable Level of Happiness

One of the OGs (if I recall.) Her writing is just north of canon, veering off to give us better, brighter spots to land Mulder and Scully. Her Mulder and Scully are soft, seemingly delicate with a touch of steel underneath. They've taken a beating, have internalized that beating, and are being supported wholeheartedly by the other person in their partnership. If you want canon-ish, I'd recommend An Acceptable Level of Happiness; if you want mytharc-ish further down the timeline, I'd suggest Truly, Madly, Deeply, and if you want canon veered off from and returned to-ish after Requiem (16 years later), then I'd strongly lobby for Shooting Star. Her Ao3 requires a log-in, here; but Jenna's works are also on Gossamer (here).

leiascully

“Did you see this?”

She blinked at the screen of Mulder’s phone and gently pushed his wrist until it was at a distance she could focus on. Technology changed but Mulder didn’t. She couldn’t count the near misses with magazines and file folders, the threat of papercuts across her cheeks.

“Ford isn’t going to make Tauruses anymore,” he told her before she’d had a chance to actually read the headline. That was also standard procedure. Mulder was a scrolling marquee of odd headlines and interesting trivia. He was the original clickbait, drawing her in with his promises to change her world and alter her perception.

-Taurus Season

One of the OGs. leiascully's prose captures the essence and magic of ordinary things. Her Scully is secretly a wanderer, her Mulder an errant domestic. There is reciprocity in their strengths and weaknesses; and the world is always more beautifully strange together. I recommend her Visitor series, which rewrites Revival canon along necessary lines. Her Ao3 is here, and requires a log-in.

Penumbra

They slipped among the dumpsters at the back of the building and into the empty quivering night, jaywalking the shadows up the hill streets, ringing the manhole covers. False planetary lights floated about in the foggy sky. Scully opened her fawn umbrella. Mulder glanced often behind them, his fingers pressed into the suspension muscles of her hard young back.

-Bad Radio

One of the OGs. Her Scully is strong and silent and will not be swayed; her Mulder is withdrawn and foreboding. Her most infamous work is Heuvelmans' On the Tracks, but I know her better through this post Gethsemane cancer arc fic: its darkness, its inevitability, its immovable-object-meets-unstoppable-force. Her Ao3 is here.

Prufrock's Love

"He says a horse bit him," Duana translated for her mother. Duana stripped off Lord William's tunic and ruined shirt to reveal the wound. "He damages more clothing..."

Lord William stooped to show Caithrin the twin rows of tooth marks on his left shoulder, still telling his woeful tale....

Not sure what was expected of her and thoroughly intimidated, Caithrin did as she would with her own sons. She made the sympathetic face and clucked over him like a mother hen. Lord William, pacified, settled down on the stool by the fire to let Duana doctor him.

-Hiraeth

One of the OGs. Her Mulder and Scully are messed up, secrets upon secrets, love and miscommunication and chaos towards each other and themselves. Prufrock's prose and dry wit can't be denied; and she's most notably known for Belghor's Prime, a Mulder time-traveling story, and Paracelsus, a Civil War fic that loosely locks into her sprawling, transformative "past lives" series. I, personally, prefer Hiraeth, because the Mulder and Scully I read there aligns (mostly) with my interpretation of canon. Her Ao3 is here.

onpaperfirst

The chip was round and under a microscope the texture looked like fish scales. 

The procedure was over in ten minutes. Three tiny stitches at the back of her neck with a gauze pad taped on top. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did.

-Snakebitten

One of the OGs (if I recall.) Her Mulder and Scully are inherently bound, even if the plot has driven a wedge between them. They speak the same language with different words, they work back to each other with lightning speed, they are chummy, they are contented. Their humor is fantastic. Her longest, angstiest work is Snakebitten, a rewrite leading up to The Pine Bluff Variant; but my personal ones are (surprise, surprise) her "part one" and "part two" short fics, Home, Home and Honey Hi. Her Ao3 is here.

seek_its_opposite

She leaves her rumpled partner in the car with the window cracked while she goes to the front desk, glancing back possessively over her shoulder as the woman behind the counter gets their keys. One room, two beds. “I’m not letting you out of my sight, Mulder.”

She keeps seeing him like she found him, on his knees before the ghosts of his childhood. She sees him praying to the barrel of his gun.

-photosensitivity

One of the OGs (I think?) She writes incredible meta on the series; but she's also written one of my favorite short fics, ever (and I have a lot of those.) You can navigate to the rest of her Ao3 through this link, but you'll have to get through photosensitivity first. >:DDD

settle-down-frohike

“I’m fine, Scully,” indignantly going back to the task at hand. And she’d have believed him too, if he wasn’t looking through her, if his pitch hadn’t been a little too high, if he hadn’t forgotten the fact that her shoes were the very last thing to put on and she wasn’t even out of her hospital gown yet. She allowed it out of pity, mostly. Or humor. But his hands shook, fumbling with the laces like a feening alcoholic.

-for the WIP prompt: hospital

One of the OGs. She writes distraught Mulder incredibly well; and balances him with a Scully who is dry, caring, and bouyant all in one breath. I can't rave enough about her short fics (their links can be found here); but I'd recommend this and this and this because they tie together to form a Redux II whole. Her Ao3 is here.

sigritandtheelves

The world is different now, after so much has been lost. It moves a little slower, takes for granted a little less. It is still a dangerous place—because fear is catching and learning that things are not as they seem can make some go mad with denial and rage and terror at the loss of their footing. But it is also more peaceful, in some ways—because loss reminds us to hold love close. Because all the hearts that stopped beating are still felt in their absence. Because people, in the end, come together in crisis. They don’t only tear each other apart.

“I think we did okay,” he murmurs. “With our quarter century.”

Scully leans her head back to look at him. “Just okay?”

“Mm hmm.”

-Advent

One of the OGs. Her writing is pure sensation: cotton and earth and jeans and nine o'clock shadows and soft skin and the tangible grasp of wishes come true. Advent is her longest fic; but I implore you, on my hands and knees, to read all four of her pages on Ao3-- they're not only the gateway drug to other incredible, incredible short fic writers (ghostbustermelanieking, @baronessblixen, @o6666666, all the authors mentioned here, and so many, many more) but are also a shining example of family fic done well-- a very hard skill to pull off. Her Ao3 is here.

sixhours

Back to sleep. Sleep. No big deal. Just go to sleep.

A minute passes, then two. He’s not tired, in fact, he feels incredibly awake. His heart is pounding, a distracting pulse in his ears. The bed is too soft, too deep, too…real. He can hear her breathing next to him, feel the warmth radiating off her body, his senses screaming at the level of detail, the texture, the vividness of it all. Instinct is a dog with a bone, and it won’t let go.

Something’s wrong.

-Lucidity

One of the OGs. Her writing clips along at an even pace, the story driving Mulder and Scully ever forward. Mulder is most often on the outs, Scully most often peering at her partner silently, trying to figure him out and draw him in. But mostly, the two function independently of each other, content to drift further or nearer as long as they are together. I would recommend Lucidity as a primer. Her Ao3 is here.

touchstoneaf

He did not soften, at first.  Did not edge away, nor did he lean into her.  Much like that awful night when their office had burnt he simply stood cold with shock and while she supported him; the steadfast fidelity of their bond never questioned in the decade that they had been together.

“I was there,” she murmured into his shoulder.  /I’ll always be here./  He could accept it now.  She was finally able to press her arms about him in the night.  Feel the strong bones beneath unblemished flesh; amazed that he was even alive for her to hold after an ordeal that had indeed taken him from her for so long that she had lost all hope.  She shuddered and cinched her arms tighter; felt his ribs shift beneath the silky envelope of his skin.  They creaked in protest, but he did not move, and she spoke like one driven. 

-Amor Fati: Destinata (The Fated Love), Act Three

One of the OGs. So OG, in fact, that the butchery of Season 9's mytharc pushed her to write a mythology replacement. Scully is fearful, anxious, but strong to her core. Mulder is lonely, and loving, and afraid to slip back into dark places. Both push each other to become better than they believed they could be. Her Amor Fati, Destinata (The Fated Love) series is still being written; but it's detailed reconstruction is well-worth the read. Her Ao3 is here.

I separated these two authors out because they're the x and y axes of my personal taste:

melforbes

She falls asleep before him. In some ways, it’s a burden to share a bed with someone, not a pleasure; if he moves, he fears he’ll wake her, but it’s horrible to stay so still for so long, especially when he can’t sleep. But he can see her eyelashes in the dark, and her cheek is squashed against her own pillow, and she checked the room when they arrived to make sure that there were plenty of tissues. Had there been a couch here, even a divan, he would’ve taken to that instead, let her sleep soundly without him. The day of the wedding - he almost tenses at the word wedding, not because he dislikes it but because it feels so strange and unreal, as if it never really happened even though he remembers it so easily and comfortably - they had a makeshift reception in her apartment, just cutting cake with her mother and then sharing slices with the Gunmen after her mother left. If anything, it felt more like a funeral than a wedding reception, so many questions tiptoed around, everything too urgent and human to be a celebration, but between guests, she grabbed part of her slice with her bare fingers and pressed the cake against his face unexpectedly, and he looked at her with surprise, and she laughed in an inward way that made her shoulders move. 

-seaglass blue

One of the OGs (I believe.) I have to start here because seaglass blue is grafted onto my heart. Set before Gethsemane, the author based it on a real couple's journey with impending death; and the way she wrote Mulder's POV-- how she kept us always locked in his head each and every day of his honeymoon with Scully-- is forever burned on my psyche. I don't see the emotional damage, if you will, as unnecessary or melodramatic or traumatic-- it's just a window into the slow approach to the end, or a fear of it. (However, if the writing is too "overlapping" or "run-on" for your taste, I'd recommend aloysiavirgata's gorgeously succinct prose, mentioned above~.) All of her works are fantastic; and, oddly, the rest are usually beautifully cozy (if you can find them on her page.) (Note: authors with their own uniquely similar styles include @teethnbone and @enigmaticdrblockhead -- can't recommend their work enough, particularly The Ansted Graft and this list here, respectively.) mel's Ao3 is here.

skuls

They follow Mulder's trail, Scully's heart thudding too hard against her ribs. Skinner is telling her that Mulder wouldn't do anything crazy when it comes, the headache. Pounding against her skull. And then she hears Will crying out: Dad!

Scully bends over, stomach against her knees, clutching her temple. “Scully?” Skinner is saying. “Scully, what's going on?” But she can't hear him over the roaring in her eyes. William is still speaking, rapid-fire in her mind: They're hurting him, Mom, they're hurting him! Make them stop!

In a flash, she can see what William sees. Mulder barely conscious, being dragged outside through the snow. An axe in the hand of his attacker. “Scully, are you alright?” Skinner protests.

-silent conversations

One of the new recruits (I think.) Her writing is an art form: painting broad, sweeping pictures on the tiniest canvases, in the shortest sentences. Her descriptions, characterizations, and dialogue all serve the plot-- not a hair out of place and not a nook or cranny neglected. I will never be over her short fics, but her longer works are crafted carefully, too. If you want a complete rewrite of the entire series' mythology, then the Half-Light universe does it, and does it better; if you want a Season 8 casefile, then snow in april manipulates Mulder and Scully to a very sinister town; if you want Season 7 to properly deal with Mulder's brain disease, encephalon's got you covered; if you want William to stay with Mulder and Scully, William AU (relent, silent conversations, noises echoing, not out loud) bends in that direction; and if you want a complete rewrite of Samantha's abduction, california winter is where I'd start. Her Ao3 is here.

And lastly, do you want to read long-form fill in series? These three are masterfully done.

Beshter

There were few things in the world that Dana Scully could imagine were more arduous in her the world than family dinner night. Perhaps climbing Mt. Everest in the middle of a howling blizzard would be one. Maybe crawling out of the Amazon rainforest with a broken limb would be another. Even walking single-handedly into the desert with just one canteen of water between you and horrible death under the scorching sun could trump the monthly gathering of the Scully clan at her parent's house in Baltimore to have dinner with her parents.

One of the OGs. Her X-files Seasons cover every crack, crevice, and canyon in the show: Scully's life and family separate from Mulder, the journey drawing her closer into Mulder's world, and her own transformation from the green agent she was to the woman of diamond she became. Her Ao3 is here.

scullylikesscience

Over the course of the weekend, Mulder hardly talked at all. When he did speak, he was abrupt, flippant, and sometimes defensive. He still didn’t want to be touched, nor did it seem to Scully that he wanted to touch her. He kept a wall up around him, a protective shield. She tried to give him what she thought he wanted, space and distance, while at the same time trying to let him know that she was there if he needed her. It was a difficult balance. He seemed glad of her company, yet disinclined to talk to her at all.

-Chapter 87

One of the OGs. Her He is the Master of His Fate, She is the Captain of Her Soul series exquisitely fills in Season 7, Season 8, Season 9, IWTB, Season 10, and S11 while filing over and rewriting the incredibly stupid canon decisions along the way. Her Ao3 is here.

scullywolf

Mulder stirred again and mumbled something she couldn’t make out, and she wasn’t sure if he was talking in his sleep or actually trying to tell her something. She leaned over to put her face closer to his, listening.

“They’re not the same.”

She frowned. “What’s not?”

He shifted, blinking up at her. “Moth men. You might think they’re the same as the Jersey Devil, and the circumstances are similar, but they’re not the same.”

“You mean aside from the fact that this is Florida, not New Jersey?”

-Detour

One of the OGs (I believe.) Her TXF: Scenes in Between series plucks one moment from each episode and builds upon it, providing a window into either Mulder's or Scully's psyches. She even tackles Mulder's (alleged) Season 7 brain disease. Her Ao3 is here.

If you want more fic recs, I have lists catalogued under my Collector's Edition tag. If you want even more fic recs, I wrote a fanfic resource post here. And if those aren't enough to appease your hunger, @lilydalexf and @fine-nephrit have pinned master posts that will probably have something for you.

Hope this helped~! And drop back in sometime-- let me know if you read something you enjoyed, or found fanfic still isn't your preference. :DDDD

[arealnowherewoman]

I ❤️ San Francisco