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syoddeye · 7 months

Text

the warren, part two

price x f!reader | 2.9k words

part one (prologue)

CW: blood (mentioned), dead animals, stalking

One bedroom. One bath. A screened-in porch. A carport. A woodshed. Fully furnished.

The old cabin in the woods is perfect.

No one answers the first call to the number on the ad, and the voicemail doesn't offer a clue as to who ought to answer. You leave a message anyway. After calling upwards of fifty places in the last week, you're desperate. The end of the month's coming up. Since you turned the motel manager down, he's wanted you out.

You fill out the rental application before hearing back, thank the gods there's no fee, and send it off with a sugary-sweet note and signature.

A woman calls back when you're in the middle of the supermarket. Congratulations, you want the place? You got it. It feels quick and surprising, but who are you to look a gift horse in the mouth? For the next four months, the cabin's yours. The landlady launches into details, forcing you to jot down directions on the back of your list. No GPS up here, she explained. The forest is too thick. Too many trees? Not a bad thing, in your opinion.

"Sure you're alright with sight unseen?"

"Yeah, I trust the pictures in the ad," You don't. "I'm itching to spend the summer in nature."

"Grouse Bay is a good spot for a getaway. You might not want to leave when the lease is up."

The sentiment makes you smile. "Sounds perfect."

There is no welcome sign for Grouse Bay. No indication you're close until you're right up on it, or rather, over it.

A thick quilt of pine, fir, and cedar hugs the gravel roadway. Asphalt disappeared some ten miles back, and you pray your car and its ancient tires stick out the descent into town. You're careful not to lean your full weight against the overlook's worn wooden fence. Below you, the road carves a series of switchbacks until it sweeps through a dozen or so lakeside structures. Thin tendrils of smoke curl up from more properties hidden by trees. With the blues of the lake and mountains on the horizon, it's a regular postcard.

Your teeth clatter, and the car shakes the whole way down. You pass a few gated forestry roads and private drives with quirky names before the road curves a final time and spits you out onto the main street. The only street.

We are not in Kansas anymore.

You don't miss a single building, crawling along at the posted speed of 15 MPH. There's a motel, a veterinary office, a grocer, and a water and sewer utility building, and where the road splits to continue along the lake or further up a hill into the woods is the Foxhole.

A rough-looking pub, your lip curls at the horrifically taxidermied fox in the window beside the door. You pull into a makeshift parking spot next to an old Ranger, collect yourself, and head inside.

Three heads swivel in your direction, two patrons and the barkeep. The men's expressions are unreadable, but the woman behind the counter offers a thin smile.

"Sit where you'd like."

The stale air smells like heat and cigarette smoke, and the ceiling fans do little to dissipate either. "I'm actually popping in to pick up a key? To a rental?" Your eyes flick to the men at the bar, not wanting to state precisely where you're staying in front of them.

The woman's smile turns knowing. "Right. We spoke on the phone. I'm Kate Laswell. I own the cabin."

"Owns half the town," One of the men snorts, pinching the neck of his bottle for a swig.

"Ignore him," Her hand disappears into her vest pocket and produces a carabiner with one key. "You got the check?"

"Yes," You pull out your billfold, carefully slide the folded paper slip out from between cards, and exchange it for the key.

Kate inspects it briefly, then dips her head. "Need me to wait to cash it?"

Your face heats at the implication. You hadn't listed employment on the application but assumed the bank's letter spoke for you. After all, she accepted you. "No. Cash it whenever you'd like."

"Alright then. Know where you're going?"

"Yes ma'am, I do."

"So polite," she chuckles, glancing at the men who grin at you. "Well then, enjoy. Call me if you need anything or have questions."

You hightail it out of the bar, and try to ignore the weight of three sets of eyes on your back.

The engine clicks as it cools, the only sound louder than the birdsong. Wedged between the open driver's door, you stand, feet firmly planted, yet feel like you could float. You made it.

The cabin is a deep red oxblood, faded by weather and time. The carport sags more than in the pictures, and the woodshed is nearly cleaned out, but it looks like a dream. Sunlight drapes over the front half of the structure, and a breeze catches a wooden wind chime over the exterior door of the porch.

Hauling your bags out of the backseat, you trek up the gravel drive. The key slots in easily, like the hardware's brand new. The door inches open, and the smell of musty, trapped air leaks out. Here we go.

You exhale a shaky breath. So far, so good. The pictures continue to match reality. The door opens to the dining and kitchen area with a honey oak table draped in a checkered runner, coordinating cabinetry, a towering glass-doored cabinet on the wall, and the back entrance dead ahead. To the left are a couch and armchair, with a low table and a padded woolen rug beneath. The door to the screened porch also sits to the left, with the entrances you presume leading to the bedroom and bathroom ahead.

Wood paneling lines every room. Others might think it tacky, but you find it charming and warm. It makes it a bonafide cabin, one you've pictured a thousand times. The bedroom is sparse, with a simple furniture set including a dresser, a nightstand, a lamp, and a vintage brass bed frame.

You make quick work of settling in. The space is tidy enough, though it's clear that Kate probably hasn't stopped in since you signed the lease. You open the windows for fresh air and do a little dusting. The dining table swiftly becomes the catch-all, with the miscellaneous other belongings you brought scattered over its surface, including the prehistoric laptop you handed a middle-aged woman a wad of cash for in the parking lot of a Walmart. You'd left in a hurry but planned meticulously. Aside from a few necessities and groceries, you have everything you need.

In the screened porch, you discover a glider and ottoman needing new upholstery and a lacquered wooden sign with lettering spelling out The Warrens. It rests on a windowsill, covered in a thin layer of grime. You think it must be from the former owners and leave it out of an odd sense of respect.

An hour later, the place aired out, you shut the windows, clip the car and cabin key together, and hesitate at the door. What's the protocol out here? You've never lived anywhere that didn't require multiple deadbolts. The town's simplicity and the woods' peacefulness - you can't even see the end of the property's driveway from the step - make you think it's probably okay…But then you think of the men in the bar. They didn't look bad, but the bad ones rarely did.

Mind made up, you lock the door.

The walk from the main thoroughfare to the cabin is ten, maybe fifteen minutes uphill. Sandals weren't the move, a reminder you tuck away for the next trip. Your focus stretches back to Grouse Grocery and its shopkeep, and you swallow hard at your naivete.

"Aw, I didn't know you could feed the deer like this."

"It's bait, sweetheart."

Lingering humiliation propels you up the slope to your newfound sanctuary. It doesn't help the grocer's handsome. His eyes are the same color as the lake, his face framed by a beard and mustache, punctuating the mountain man look. Tall with a broad chest and shoulders that taper into a trim waist. Burly arms dusted with hair, chest too, far as you could tell through the open uppermost buttons of his shirt. Your mind fills in the blanks of what his bootcut jeans and flannel covered. Something peculiar to him, though, and you can't put your finger on it.

I'm overthinking this. It's a small town. I'm not used to it, yet.

Not weird, just different.

The four words become your mantra when odd things start within days of your arrival.

As you told the good-looking grocer, you are an animal lover through and through. The child who toted frogs home from the playground pushed their nose to the glass outside pet stores and braked for ducklings. You dabbled with a vegetarian diet, failed, and overspent at farmers' markets in weak absolution. But you had never been a pet person. Life never allowed for it.

Which is why the cats are bewildering. Within the first week, three feral cats traipse about the property. By the end of week two, you count nine. Lounging in the woodpile, hiding beneath your car, or sitting on the step like they own the place. They skitter and hiss when you approach and don't touch the scraps of food you leave out to curry favor.

Then there are the 'gifts' they leave you. Headless birds, mice, and other small mammals. Entrails and viscera steaming on the cement step in the high noon sunlight. The Internet says it's normal, you say it's disgusting.

You read cats leave dead animals when they believe their human is helpless. That they see humans as big, furless, and inept hunters whose survival is in peril because they lack the innate ability to track, pursue, and kill.

Scraping the latest offering off their altar, you shrug off such notions. They're probably upset that their favorite place to squat is now occupied.

Then, the carcasses quadruple in size. One early morning, you decide to walk down to the lake to read with a cup of coffee, only to drop the mug and book into the dirt. A gutted doe is not fifteen feet from the front door beside your car. Black eyes lolled skyward, pinna flopped over its skull, and legs akimbo. After sprinting and vomiting into the kitchen sink, you call Kate.

"Sorry that's happened, I can send someone up to remove it in the next half hour. You ought to know that you might see more stuff like that, kid. Area's rich in wildlife - bears, cougars, bobcats, wolves, hell, even eagles drop half-eaten marmots from time to time."

You remain on the kitchen floor, repeating your new mantra, and not fifteen minutes later, tires on gravel announce someone's arrival. Mercifully, no one comes to the door. Whoever it is doesn't even kill the engine. You hear footsteps crunching on rock, the doe's body hitting the bed of a truck, the slam of a door, and the person pulling away.

Mustering the courage to stand, you stare from the front door, eyes transfixed on the blood left behind. You pray for rain.

It doesn't come.

The front light won't turn on. You swap the lightbulb with a spare from the cupboard and zip. Nothing. You call Kate, whose patience seems a deep well. She promises to send the local handyman and gets off the phone in a hurry. Annoyingly, you don't get a name or a time.

It's noon when a red pick-up arrives the next day. You're on your feet, off the glider and its ottoman on the porch, and barefoot when the door to the truck swings open. The practiced smile you wear falters a little when a familiar cut of a man steps out, sizes up the cabin in a glance, and then turns to grab a toolbox from the bed.

You meet him at the door.

"You're the handyman, too?"

The crow's feet by his eyes tighten with a smirk. "And the locksmith." His chin lifts to the sconce. "This it?"

"The one."

"Right, I'll get a stepladder and it'll be in working order within the hour. Mind shutting off the power in the meantime?"

"Of course. Need anything else from me?"

His smile's a waxing crescent, mouth twitching like he's got something clever to say. You've seen it before on the mugs of men trying to get fresh with you, but he keeps whatever it is locked behind his teeth.

"No. I'll let you know when you can turn the power on."

The hum of the refrigerator dies with the electricity, leaving the cabin completely quiet. You return to the glider and book, thumbing through to find your place. Convenient, the screened porch catches the fleeting hours of direct sunlight that hits the cabin. It also allows you a chance to watch and listen to him work.

"Name's John, by the way," He says after a while, voice clipped, meeting your eye through the screen when you look up. "You didn't ask."

It's off-putting, the way he speaks. It wasn't as if he conducted himself with overt kindness at his store, but you hadn't expected him - John - to take a tone with you, a stranger. A newcomer. Your smile is eager to smooth things over, a beat faster than any instinct to fight, always has been. "You're right, how rude of me."

His focus returns to the light, giving a slight roll of his shoulders as if your apology lifted a weight off his back. "S'alright, reckon you're learning how things work 'round here."

You want to return to Winterson in your lap, but the poorly disguised condescension fans a spark of annoyance. "You haven't asked for mine."

"I know yours," He responds, pulling a rag from a loop on his pants to wipe at something. "Kate talks."

The paperback spine creaks in your grip. "I suppose that comes with owning the watering hole."

He chuckles, exchanging the rag for a pair of pliers. "Something like that."

You don't ask. Handsome John may be, but he is definitely weird. Best to avoid the bad side of the nearest grocer, handyman, and locksmith. You return to reading, and another half hour slips past. You don't notice until the hum of the refrigerator restarts, practically jolting you out of the chair.

John stands washing his hands in your kitchen sink. You did not invite him in. His head turns, seemingly hearing how your breath stutters, and he nods at the switch beside the door.

"Give 'er a try," He says, wiping his hands on a dish towel.

The light works, and you flick it a few times to be sure. You stare up at the light, listening to its muted hum.

"Y'know," John murmurs, suddenly behind you in the doorway, leaning, supported by an arm, on the frame well above your head. "This is an old place. Doesn't get let often. Probably more repairs hiding around here. Already saw a few holes in the screen. I can take a walkthrough and fix what I can while I'm here."

Your head dips back, neck craning to meet his eye at this angle. It doesn't occur to you to move despite the whole of the front yard before you. You swallow. He's only trying to drum up business. A small-town entrepreneur. Trying to survive just like you. "Maybe another time."

John raps two knuckles on the frame and pushes off. "Alright, I'll gather my things." He brushes against you as he passes and collects his tools and stepladder.

You watch him from the entry and offer a weak smile when he returns, holding a notepad. He fishes a pencil out from a pocket, scribbling a moment, before he tears off a page and holds it out – an old-fashioned carbon invoice.

Not weird, just different.

"Pay when you can. You know where to find me."

You take the invoice. "Not afraid I'll skip town?" You joke, trying to gauge his sense of humor.

He grins and huffs a laugh. It sounds only a little forced. "Not at all. I know all the best spots from the bay to the mountains, for hiding or otherwise." He rubs the back of his neck.

Your brows creep up. "Or otherwise?"

John's eyes widen a fraction, and his hand slips from his neck in a gesture of surrender. "Don't mean anything by that. More like…for food. Dinner, maybe? A hike?"

The sheepishness of his tone does him credit. So what if he's a little awkward or indelicate? Probably as nervous as you are, though clearly for different reasons. In town for all of two weeks and already a local's taken interest. Inwardly, you preen.

"That sounds like a date."

"It does." He concedes.

You start to shut the door on him, stopping when his expression falls into absolute confusion. A laugh bubbles up, and you open the door again. "Well? You didn't ask," You playfully turn his words back on him.

"Smart one, aren't you. Alright then," He muses aloud, smiling. "Would you like to grab dinner later this week? Know a good spot within a half hour of here."

The way he looks at you, eyes crinkling with interest, you don't suppose it's a bad idea to get out, make friends, and immerse yourself in the community. "I'd like that, John."

There's a triumphant glint in his eyes. "I'll be in touch, sweetheart." He dips his head, returns to his truck, and flashes a wave when he pulls a u-turn and drives out.

That night, when you return from a walk to watch the sunset, you flip on the porch light, grinning, thinking about your date.

You do not notice the little red dot within the bulb.

#john price #price x you #price x reader #john price x you #john price x reader #john price x female reader #captain john price x you #john price x f!reader #x f!reader #price x female reader #cod fanfic #cod fic

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leiascully · 23 days

Note

Smutty fic prompt? Established MSR. Mulder and Scully are on a case, Mulder is being serious, Scully is amused but not convinced - and just wants to stay at the hotel and have sex for the week because the case is a total waste of time. Mulder telling her everything he wants to do to her but ultimately rebuffs all advances, and it’s all fun and games because Scully thinks he’d rather chase monsters than put his money where his mouth is. Anyway — he ends up being a man of his word which takes her by surprise

I think this fills your prompt, anon.

9000 words; M/E for sexual situations including pegging; good little agents don't consort while on assignment, but they really, really want to. (ao3 link)

“You’re serious.” She fixed him with a level gaze over the roof of the rental car.

“I’m always serious,” he said, and they both ignored the inherent fallacies in that statement. “Are you serious? You thought I brought you up here to play house?”

“What else was I supposed to think?” She gestured at the forest around them and the quaint bed and breakfast standing in the clearing. “That you brought me up to an adorable B&B on the wooded shores of Lake Champlain for a week to hunt another sea monster no one’s ever actually seen?”

“There have been over 300 eyewitness reports of a snake-like creature in the lake, dating back to the Iroquois,” Mulder told her. “That doesn’t even include the latest series of reports. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to investigate it.”

“First of all,” she said, “your last lake monster ate my dog.”

“It wasn’t my lake monster,” he muttered.

“Second of all,” she said, fixing him with a steely eye, “last time you took me on a trip that was so obviously a wild goose chase, we hadn’t yet escalated our relationship. So yes, Fox, I thought you brought me here to play house.”

He raised an eyebrow. “We’re back to Fox?”

“I think I’ve earned the right to use your first name now and again.” She smirked. “After all, I’ve been inside you.”

To her surprise, he blushed.

“How many rooms did you get?”

She heard his feet shuffle. He wouldn’t look at her. “Two.”

She sighed. “Lake monster.”

“Lake monster that’s been frightening tourists,” he said. He came around the car and stood a little too close to her, the way he always did. “The tourism bureau asked around. Someone told them we were the people to solve their problem.”

She leaned against the car and tipped her head back to look at him. “Two rooms.”

“Come on, Scully,” he said in a low voice that made her tingle. “You know the people in finance already share our expense reports around. I want to win the betting pool.”

“And what will you do with your thousands?” she teased.

He shifted even closer. She felt her lips part in anticipation as he leaned down, but he skimmed past her mouth to whisper in her ear: “Take you on a real vacation.”

She reached out past the loose lapels of his suit jacket and hooked her finger into the waist of his trousers. “You better.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He stepped back, taking her with him like they were dancing. They’d always been dancing, she thought. Two steps forward, three steps back, but rarely entirely out of sync. He reached behind him to pop the trunk and pulled out her suitcase, pretending to strain against the weight of it. “Maybe you won’t need this many clothes for our vacation.”

“Hmm,” she said, “maybe I’ll bring something less bulky than a suit.”

“You could wear one of those little t-shirts,” he suggested. “Some cutoff jean shorts.” He paused, clearly caught up in an intriguing possibility. “You could wear my boxers.”

She smiled at him. “Maybe even something more abbreviated than that.”

He dropped his voice even more. “Scully, are you holding out on me? Do you own lingerie I haven’t seen?”

She leaned into him, slipping her fingers further into his trousers to graze the elastic of his boxers under his shirttail. “I guess you’re not gonna find out this week.”

He groaned.

She gave her fingers one last wiggle and extracted them from his waistband. He heaved his own suitcase out of the trunk and closed it. They trundled their luggage along the brick path and up the stairs. She looked at him one last time as they stood on the porch in front of the lobby windows.

“Two rooms?”

“Don’t worry, Scully,” he murmured. “I’m sure I’ll be able to hear you through the wall.”

Heat flooded her body as he opened the door and ushered her in with one hand at the small of her back. This time, she didn’t mind that he’d gotten the last word.

+ + +

When they were checked in and settled, she went to his room and sat on the bed. All the furniture in the place seemed to be charmingly mismatched antiques. Mulder’s bed had four posters and it creaked picturesquely when she shifted her weight. “Tell me about our suspect.”

“Champ?”

She sighed and rubbed her hand over her face. “Of course it’s called Champ.”

“We’re dealing with a protected species here, Scully.” Mulder leaned against his dresser. He’d taken off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves. “The lake was declared a safe haven for its resident monster in 1981. In 1984, 58 different people claim to have seen Champ. Early reports declared it to resemble an enormous serpent with the head of a sea horse, a white star on its forehead, and a band of red around its extremely long neck.” He stepped forward to pass her a fuzzy copy of a photograph. She studied it. “This is the Mansi photograph. No one’s ever been able to debunk it, but Sandra Mansi destroyed the negative, so nobody’s ever been able to authenticate it either.”

“Naturally.” She got up and went to the window. The lake was visible as a blue glint through the trees. “And what crimes has Champ perpetrated?”

“Overturning small watercraft, biting fish off people’s lines, that kind of thing.” He joined her at the window. “No human casualties.”

She let her shoulder brush his chest. “So what are we doing here? It doesn’t sound like there’s anything for us to investigate. If anything, this level of activity would draw in tourists and benefit businesses like this one. The loss of a fish here and there seems negligible.”

“No human casualties yet,” he said, “but there have been reports of people feeling something large brush against them in an area where there was no underwater debris.”

“Are there fish in the lake?”

“Big ones,” he said. “Sturgeon and gar, for starters.”

She gestured. “Ta da. There’s your suspect.”

“Neither sturgeon nor gar are capable of disappearing multiple swimmers and boaters.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “You never lead with the most pertinent information.”

“Impertinence is my middle name.” His eyes twinkled as he grinned at her.

“I think I read that in your file.” She turned to face him. “So what are we supposed to do about it?”

“We do what we do. Dredge the truth up from the depths.”

She looked longingly at the bed. “Wouldn’t local law enforcement be better at this? We know nothing about the area.”

“Local law enforcement hasn’t turned up anything.” He sat on the bed and took her hands, drawing her close to stand between his knees. “Help them, Scully-Wan Kenobi. You’re their only hope.”

She softened, gazing down at him. By default, they’d become two of the foremost experts in American cryptozoology, and their solve rate on missing persons cases was the envy of the Bureau. Maybe it was Mulder’s intuition; maybe it was her eye for detail. She couldn’t deny that their expertise was unparalleled in cases like this, paranormal or not. “I want a nice vacation after this.”

“I promise.” He raised her hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles.

“And not to Loch Ness.”

He laughed, soft and low. “I promise that too.” He looked up at her and his eyes were like a forest fire. The blaze in them kindled an answering flame in her belly. “I’ll make it up to you.”

She pouted a little. “How?”

“Very, very slowly.” He licked his lips, making his meaning clear. Scully squirmed and he pressed his knees into her hips, pinning her there.

“Did we ever decide if we can consort during a case?”

“Go against the regulations?” He turned her hands over and rubbed his cheek with its incipient stubble over the soft skin of her wrist. “Why, Agent Scully, it’s like you don’t even know me.”

She curled her fingers around his jaw and ran her thumb over his lips. “And if we solve this thing tomorrow?”

He lifted one shoulder. “Then I guess I’m buying plane tickets and you’re buying lingerie.”

“This B&B could be haunted,” she suggested. “Then we’d have to stay and investigate.”

He squinted up at her fondly. “Why didn’t I know you were susceptible to the charms of creaky floors, Scully?”

“Maybe you don’t know me very well.” She tilted her head, challenging him to challenge the patent absurdity of the statement.

“Then I’d like to know you better,” he said in a voice like velvet. Damn him, he always understood exactly how to disarm her.

“Not until we solve this,” she scolded him, and stepped away. “I’m going to freshen up.”

“Hey, Scully?” he said from the bed.

“Hmm?” She turned in the doorway to face him.

“How big a box of condoms do you think the drugstore will sell me?”

She thought for a moment. “I don’t know, but buy two.”

She heard him exhale in a rush as she slipped out the door.

+ + +

As it turned out, they shared a bathroom. She’d been too distracted to think about the geography of it when she’d glimpsed the door in his room. The B&B was an old house with a lot of additions. She doubted there was a true angle in the place. But it was charming. There was a clawfoot bathtub that she was definitely going to get better acquainted with.

She freshened up and changed into her small-town uniform of jeans and a windbreaker. People in places like this often distrusted suits. She’d learned over the years that she needed all the credibility she could get. For some reason, showing up armed with federal credentials and factoids about cryptids didn’t garner much respect.

Mulder was also wearing jeans when she found him downstairs. Scully was suddenly glad he’d cut his hair. If he’d been looking like that with his hair falling over his forehead, she would have dragged him straight back upstairs, and let anyone missing stay missing. His ass, hugged by denim, was a more compelling force than anything previously discovered in her known universe.

Instead, she took the file folder he offered here and spent the drive to the local police station reviewing the details. Behind a thick stack of garbled reports of enormous, half-visible underwater shadows and unexpected friction, she found the reports. Most of the people who’d gone missing had been found a few hours or a day later, including a group of teens who’d been stranded when their boat ran out of gas. Fortunately, they’d been in shouting distance of Burton Island State Park, and someone had spotted them the next morning. There was the occasional death by drowning, but the bodies turned up with marks of predation that didn’t indicate anything bigger than fish. Frankly, Scully didn’t know why most of them were included. A nine-year-old who’d wandered away in search of ice cream and been rediscovered sleeping in his parents’ car didn’t deserve a missing persons report. But it was a small town. Maybe local PD didn’t have much else to do.

There were two people who had disappeared the previous week and hadn’t been found. Both women in their thirties. A place like this would need seasonal workers, but when Scully checked their addresses, they were both townies. Grown and raised here, graduates of the local high school (go Panthers). One worked in an antique shop (of course). One managed an ice cream parlor and its attendant roster of high school employees.

“Just these two actually missing persons?” she asked.

Mulder drummed on the steering wheel. “So far.”

“Mmhmm,” she said. “And you’re sure this isn’t a joke case? Something you dreamed up so we could dillydally on someone else’s dime?”

“This is a legitimate investigation,” he assured her. “Cassy Miller and Naomi Diaz are gone. No one’s seen or heard from them. They were fishing buddies. Their boat was found washed up on shore halfway across the lake with all their tackle in it.”

“I take it this was uncharacteristic behavior.”

He nodded as he flipped on the turn signal. “Neither of them’s missed a day of work in years without a doctor’s note. Never late. Reliable as the sunrise.”

She examined Naomi’s photo. A young-looking thirty-something with dark wavy hair. She was smiling in the photo, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “And now…what, devoured by a mythical creature?”

“It’s a possibility,” Mulder said. “However extreme. The boat wasn’t far from one of the areas where frequent sightings have occurred.”

Scully flipped the page and re-read the sparse details of Naomi’s life. “Allegedly.”

He dipped his head in acknowledgment. It was a familiar push and pull between them. No case would have felt complete without it.

They reached the edges of the town, and then, very quickly, the center. The police station was easy to find. When they walked in, Scully knew jeans had been the right choice. It wasn’t the kind of place a suit would garner any kind of respect.

“Gosh, we will be glad of the help,” said the police chief. Her name tag said Hughes. She seemed earnest enough. “We do stay busy around here during tourist season. Not just people going missing, but petty theft, the occasional fire, all that. A lotta DUIs, if I’m honest.”

“And you’re…experts?” Chief Hughes’ second-in-command was standing in the corner of the room, thumbs hooked into his pockets. “In…Champ?”

“We’ve done extensive work in cryptozoology,” Scully said coolly. “Champ, as you call it, is just one example of a larger clade of hypothetical marine reptiles. If these women were consumed by such a creature, we would be able to verify that predation occurred. If there are other, less fantastic explanations, we’ll find those.” She glanced at Mulder, who was lounging in his chair. “Isn’t that right, Agent Mulder.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth, Agent Scully.” He smiled at the police chief, who blinked back at him, her mouth open just slightly.

He was such a little shit sometimes.

+ + +

They spent the day on the lake. It might have been romantic, if it hadn’t been for the trio of deputies assigned to them. They kept looking at Mulder and Scully, nervous or envious or skeptical or some combination of all three. She was used to it. Big city feds in their sunglasses and windbreakers inspired a variety of interesting feelings in their less cosmopolitan counterparts. She’d seen it all.

“Bet I could bully them into letting me drive the boat,” Mulder whispered to Scully, leaning in so the deputies couldn’t hear them.

“You’d have to dump me in the lake first,” she whispered back.

“And let you get eaten by Champ?” His eyebrows crimped together under his sunglasses in an exaggerated expression of woe. “Scully. I would never.”

“I would,” she told him.

“I accept my fate.” He sat back, stretched his arms along the side of the boat.

The deputies showed them where the boat had been found, the boat, the intact tackle. Scully examined it all dutifully. Mulder examined it less dutifully, gazing out over the water. He had one hand on his hip, the other shading his already shaded eyes. He looked like a statue.

“Does he see something?” one of the deputies asked Scully. Her voice was hushed, almost worshipful.

“I’m sure if he does, he’ll let you know,” Scully told her.

The purported victims’ boat having yielded nothing, the deputies herded their federal charges back onto their own departmental boat. Scully peered into the depths, Mulder’s hand braced on her back. No serpents emerged. There wasn’t so much as the silver flicker of a fish, although that was telling, in its own way. But they’d disturbed the waters with the wake of their boat, coming and going. The fish had fled the limnetic zone because of the noise of the motor, not because of some primordial beast.

Still, it was nice: the sunshine on the water, the convivial throng of tourists on the beaches. She and Mulder talked to the assistant manager at Cassy’s ice cream parlor, a young man clearly flummoxed by his brevet promotion.

“I don’t know,” he said, bewildered. “She’s great. Runs this place - ran this place - really well. I mean it’s hard to deal with a bunch of kids sometimes, right? But she started working here when she was a kid and just never stopped. I don’t know. I don’t know.” He put his face in his hands. Scully patted him on the shoulder, a little gingerly.

Afterward, they got ice cream: strawberry for Scully, butter pecan for Mulder. They carried their windbreakers folded inside out over their arms to hide their credentials. They might have been anyone. They walked along the lake shore and he smiled down at her and they could have been an ordinary couple. The sunshine gleamed on his skin and brought out gold flecks in the green of his eyes. She couldn’t stop looking at his mouth.

“What?” He licked his lips exaggeratedly. “Ice cream?”

She shook her head.

“Then what?”

She squinted up at him. “You’re just really pretty sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

She smiled. “Sometimes.”

“Well, you’re really pretty all the time.” He bumped her with his arm. “And that’s my professional opinion, by the way. I’ve been working on your profile a long time. I don’t want to brag, but I’m known for my powers of observation.”

“That’s not what profiling is,” she said sternly.

He tilted his head at her. “Sometimes.”

She huffed: not a laugh, not a sigh, but happy. “Sometimes.”

+ + +

They got dinner at a little restaurant. The fish was fresh, the coleslaw was crisp, and the fries were hot. There was homemade pie on the menu and Scully indulged in that too. If she couldn’t have Mulder, she was going to treat herself in other ways. It had cooled off by the time they finished dinner. Scully shrugged her windbreaker on. On the drive back to the B&B, they rolled down the windows of the rental car.

“This is summer,” Mulder said with satisfaction. “T-shirts in the afternoon, sweaters in the evening.”

“Not like DC,” Scully said. She put her arm out the window and spread her fingers to feel the breeze push through them.

“Not like DC,” Mulder agreed. “Unless you like being wrapped in a wet wool blanket.”

Scully let her head loll over on the headrest, gazing at him. “I can think of other things I’d rather be wrapped in.”

Mulder flicked his eyes at her. “Or maybe you’d rather be unwrapped?”

“Maybe I would.” She tipped her hand so the breeze washed over it. “But someone put a note on me that says ‘Do not open until Christmas’.”

“Not until Christmas, Scully,” he said, amusement in his voice. “Just until we’ve wrapped the case.”

“Wrapping begets unwrapping. I see.”

“A little motivation for us,” he suggested.

“You know, I always thought that I’d be the one who insisted we separate work and play,” Scully mused.

He chuckled. “I did too. Turns out you’re not the good girl you play on tv, Agent Scully.”

She wished that didn’t send a little thrill through her. “Aren’t you glad I’m not?”

“Desperately,” he said, with a raspy edge to his voice that sent another frisson up her spine. He pulled into the little lot of the B&B and turned the car off, then slung his arm over the steering wheel and turned to her. “Don’t think I wouldn’t unwrap you right now, Scully.”

“Haven’t we paid enough cleaning fees to the rental agency?” she said, leaning toward him just a little. Mulder’s event horizon extended too far - she’d been pulled in unexpectedly so many times.

“Not for this.” His voice strummed a chord inside her. “Variety is the spice of life, Scully.”

“Uh huh.” She tipped her chin up. “And what would you do with me, if you unwrapped me in this rental car?”

“Obviously, I’d start with kissing,” Mulder told her. “I’m a gentleman. I’d never jump right in unless you asked for it.”

“Mmhmm,” Scully said.

“Oh, sorry, I misspoke,” Mulder said. His eyes glinted. “I meant I wouldn’t jump right in unless you begged for it.”

Scully licked her lips. “And under what circumstances do you think I’d beg for it?”

“If I kissed your neck for long enough, you might,” he said. She was staring at his mouth, half-hypnotized. “That spot behind your ear. If I put you on my lap and played with your tits and you could feel how much I wanted you.”

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I’ve always considered myself to be a stubborn person. I don’t think that would do it.”

“Maybe if I stretched you out in the backseat. Braced myself over you. Stroked my way up the inside of your thigh,” he suggested. “Never quite touching exactly where you wanted. I’d use my hands, my leg. Maybe my lips. Just teasing until you can’t stand it any longer.”

“Mulder.”

“Yeah?”

“Is that what you were doing for the past seven years?”

“Metaphorically,” he said, twinkling at her. His eyes were dark. “Are you ready to beg?”

She leaned forward, her lips nearly touching his. “Good night, Mulder.” She climbed out of the car and left him in the dark surrounded by the song of crickets.

+ + +

Later, in bed by herself, she touched herself just like he’d imagined, drawing her fingertips up the soft skin to brush her curls over and over until she was shivering with need. She didn’t stifle her cries. When she finally dragged her thumb over her clit, she said his name. She thought she heard a groan from the other side of the wall.

She was glad it was a small B&B. That meant fewer eavesdroppers. The other guests all seemed to be adults, at least. Maybe their vacations would be improved by this kind of soundtrack. It was her turn to be the one gasping in her tangled covers, even if she was doing it alone.

+ + +

The next day, she fell in the lake.

They’d borrowed the boat and the deputies again. Mulder was studying a map of the lake. It was all marked up with places of particular interest. Maybe that’s what he’d been doing while she was raking just the edges of her nails up the crease of her thigh.

“Right down there,” he said, peering over the gunwale. “There’s a deep spot. Maybe that’s where its den is.”

“Its den?” Scully said, joining him. “Doesn’t it have to breathe? Or is that part of the myth?”

“There could be pockets of air underwater,” Mulder said. “An intricate system of caves. Or maybe it can hold its breath.” He turned to look at her. Scully glanced over his shoulder. The deputies were watching them breathlessly. “Some whales can hold their breath for hours. Maybe Champ can too.”

“Maybe something cold-blooded needs less oxygen,” she said. “It might have a slower metabolism. And the red band around its neck - that could be a primitive system of gills. That could allow it to stay underwater, even in the benthic zone.”

“I love it when you come out to play,” he murmured, just quiet enough that the deputies couldn’t hear.

She opened her mouth to reply to him and then the boat rocked on a huge swell of water and she went over the gunwale before she could reach for the railing.

“Scully!” Mulder shouted, and grabbed for her, but she was past the point of no return and his grip on her ankle just meant she banged her side hard on the boat as she splashed into the water. It was cold in the lake. She was soaked instantly, water pouring into her shoes and down her collar. The current swirled, tugging at her, pulling at her until she couldn’t tell which way was up. Scully opened her eyes. She was deeper than she’d thought. The darkness under her rippled. She kicked toward the surface. Mulder was reaching toward her almost as soon as her head broke the water. He and one of the deputies hauled her into the boat while the other two braced themselves against the other gunwale.

“Are you okay?” he asked. A deputy passed him a towel and he blotted her face gently with it.

She spit out a bit of lake water and took the towel from him to squeeze water out of her hair. “I lost my sunglasses.”

“Tragic.” He took off his own and settled them on her nose. They were too big and slipped down, but she loved him for it all the same. She patted her pockets. She still had her badge and her wet brick of a phone and her wallet. Fortunately, Mulder had the keys to the rental car.

“Agent Mulder?” said one of the deputies. “What made the boat tip?”

“Heavy wake from another boat,” Scully said automatically. “A gust of wind that created an abnormally large wave. Unregistered seismic activity.”

“Or a lake monster,” Mulder said, still looking her over. Seemingly satisfied with what he found, he turned to the deputies. “What did you see?”

“Nothing,” said one.

“Not a boat big enough to pull that kind of wake,” said another. “You’d need a ferry.”

The last one shuffled her feet. “A shadow,” she said at last. “I think. Maybe nothing.”

Scully coughed. Mulder rubbed her back. He was pressed against her side. Her wet clothes were soaking him, but he didn’t move away. “Sorry to say, Deputy, you’re going to spend a lot of time investigating shadows if you stick with this job.”

The deputy’s brow was furrowed. “Do you think that’s what happened to Cassy and Naomi? A wave? But they could swim. Everyone here can swim.”

“All their gear was still in the boat,” Mulder pointed out. “They fell out and the tackle box didn’t?”

“I guess not.” The deputy looked troubled. “The lake’s too deep to dredge and too big to dive.”

“Then all we can do is our best,” Scully said. She shivered. The sunshine was bright, but the breeze ruffling the water kept it from warming her.

“Let’s get you somewhere where you can dry off,” Mulder said, and the deputies took the hint and powered up the engine.

+ + +

Scully ran a very hot bath in the clawfoot tub. Her clothes had dried a little in transit - they were definitely going to get a cleaning fee for the rental car, and not for any entertaining reasons - but she was still too wet and too cold to be comfortable. She peeled off her clothes and hung them on the towel bar with her damp towel from the boat underneath to catch drips. It was a relief to climb into the steaming foamy bath. She sighed, her whole body relaxing into the warmth as she tipped her head back to rinse her hair.

When she thought of the lake, she got fragments of memory. The breathless moment going overboard. The splash. The cold. The dark. It had only been an hour or two and yet it slipped away from her. She was glad she’d given a report before they’d come back to the B&B. Had there been something looming below her in the darkness? Even in the moment, she hadn’t been sure. Had she been brushed by a tangle of floating weeds? Had the water been agitated by cross-currents from boats speeding over the busy lake?

Had a monster tipped her into the water, or was it a silly mistake on a slippery deck?

She sighed again, sinking into the water up to her chin. For a while she drifted, eyes closed. The window was open for a crossbreeze and the smell of lake and pine mingled dreamily with the lavender scent of the bubble bath. She lay there, imagining the life of a prehistoric creature trapped in the modern world. If there were a monster, what had it seen? How much did it understand about the changes in its habitat? Did it long for the past? Had it eaten Cassy Miller and Naomi Diaz? Had there been other victims?

The adjoining door creaked open. Mulder walked in and knelt by the tub, pillowing his arms on the side.

She opened one eye. “I thought we weren’t consorting while on assignment.”

“We’re not consorting.” He brushed a wet strand of hair off her forehead and resettled his chin on his arms. “We’re conferring.”

She made a skeptical noise. “How collegial of us.” Most of the bubbles had popped, and what remained didn’t provide much modesty. They’d had less-clothed conversations about work, but not many.

“What happened at the lake?” she asked.

“You tell me.” He gazed at her. “You were the one in the drink.”

She pushed herself up a little in the tub so they were face to face. His eyes dropped predictably to her breasts and dragged back up to her face. “A larger-than-average wave rocked the boat. I fell in. There was some kind of current that pulled me further under than would usually result from a fall of such a short distance. I can’t speak to its origin. During my brief time under the water, I thought I saw movement below me, but it could have been anything, Mulder. A shadow. A log.”

“An ancient reptile.” The sun had shifted and the bathroom was draped in shade. What light there was reflected patchily off the bathwater to dapple Mulder’s face. She wondered if there had been a time in her life when she hadn’t known how beautiful he was. She couldn’t remember that either. Her life before Mulder felt somehow insignificant.

“What did you see?” she asked him.

“I only had eyes for you,” he said.

“You’re losing your touch,” she said lightly.

“I’m all right with that.” His eyes searched hers. “As long as you’re all right.”

“I’m fine. I’ve been wet before.” Her lips quirked. “You of all people should know that.”

“I had a suspicion.” He tipped his cheek onto his bicep.

“I have a suspicion of my own,” she said. He raised his eyebrows, inviting her to continue. “Cassy Miller and Naomi Diaz ran away or disappeared through otherwise un-supernatural circumstances.”

“Going out on a limb there, Agent,” Mulder told her. “I don’t know if I can present that kind of wild theory to Skinner.”

“If, and I stress if, there were a mysterious reptile that had been inhabiting this lake for centuries if not millennia, I don’t think it would target humans. We’re too noisy, too fast. Increased activity on the lake would likely drive it deeper, not provoke it.”

“Unless it were desperate,” Mulder said. “A drop in the population of fish. Rising temperatures in the lake.”

“A species would take generations to adapt to the changes that have occurred in the local environment, but this is one hypothetical individual, Mulder. One organism can alter its behavior on a timescale far more rapid.”

He nodded against his arm, just a little. “They were last seen in a boat.”

“So the report says,” Scully said. “But Cassy Miller’s car is missing.”

“There are actually a surprising number of car thefts for a town this size,” Mulder told her. “Something about teens and tourists.”

Scully opened her palm above the water. Her fingers were pruny. “That’s my theory.”

“I respect it,” Mulder said. “But I haven’t decided yet whether I agree.”

“Why am I not surprised.” She cupped water in her hand, let it pour over her breasts. The bubbles sluiced down the slope of her chest, pearling around her nipples. She watched Mulder watch her. His breath caught a little and his pupils darkened. “Are we still conferring, or have we moved on to consorting?”

“You know there’s nothing I want more than to climb into that tub with you,” he said in a low voice.

“I can recommend against wet denim,” she said. “The chafing ruins the mood.” She thought of straddling his lap, feeling the friction of the sodden fabric against her skin, and rubbed her thighs together in anticipation. Up until the chafing, it would be delicious.

“I think I learned my lesson today,” he told her. “No clothes. Just you on top of me, skin on skin. You could take your time. I’d worship your tits.”

“I think your vision ends up with water all over the bathroom floor.” She let her hand drift down her body.

“Worth it.” Hunger flickered in his eyes.

“Is it consorting if I’m pursuing solitary pleasures while we’re discussing a case?” she asked.

He laughed. “If so, we’ve been consorting for years.”

“I knew it,” she said. Her fingers wandered down her belly, strayed lower.

“Fuck, Scully,” he said roughly. “You know I can withstand anything except temptation.”

She toyed with her curls, imagining the slow swell of his erection. He shifted a little on his heels as she pushed her fingers between her folds and stroked slowly. She let her head loll against the porcelain. Her other hand rose to stroke her breast. Mulder took a deep breath and let it out in a slow hiss.

“You know there’s nothing but your own conscience stopping you from getting into this tub.” She arched her back, pushing her breasts out of the water.

“I told you,” he said. “I’m trying to take this seriously. I take you seriously. Everything we’re doing deserves our full attention, Scully. The work. This.” He gestured between them. “Whatever you think about my lake monster theory, there are two women missing. People are worried about them.”

“I know that,” she said, an edge creeping into her voice. Her hands slipped away from their pleasant tasks.

“We crossed a line together,” he said. “I don’t regret it. I’ll never, ever regret it. But there are other lines we shouldn’t cross.”

“You’re the one who keeps telling me all the things we’d be doing if we weren’t working,” she snapped.

“And I mean every word of it.” It sounded like a vow. “When we’re done here, I’m going to fuck you until you can’t remember your name. But we’re not finished.”

“I’m finished.” She toed the stopper out of the train and hauled herself up out of the water, too cranky to finish what she’d started. He rocked back on his heels, looking wounded. “With this bath, Mulder. I’m tired. I’m going to take a nap. Wake me up for dinner.”

“I will,” he said. He handed her an enormous fluffy towel and helped her out of the tub.

“Scully,” he said as she opened the door to her room, and she turned just enough to indicate she was listening. “I’ll make it up to you.”

She went back to her room, dried off, rolled naked into the bed. She was too keyed up to sleep. She rolled onto her stomach and thrust against the ridge of her hand until pleasure spiraled tight within her. She moaned into the pillow, suddenly boneless as release hit her, and drifted into sleep.

+ + +

The rest of their investigation yielded nothing. They dutifully went in each day to work with local law enforcement. They searched a few other areas of the lake. The deputies made Scully wear a life jacket, but there weren’t any other mysterious waves. They followed leads to dead ends. Wherever the women were, they weren’t using credit cards. Cassy Miller’s car was found a few miles away. It wasn’t far from a bus station, Scully noted, but she kept her thoughts to herself. Subsequent trips to the lake produced no evidence of a lake monster or any foul play. No bodies. No torn clothes.

“We’ll keep following up,” Mulder assured the chief of police. “I’ve added their names to our list. If anyone turns up matching their descriptions, we’ll let you know.”

“I appreciate your help.” Chief Hughes shook their hands.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t help more,” Scully told her.

“We’re grateful anyone showed up,” Chief Hughes said. “Not a lot of feds would care about our small-town problems. But two of our own disappear, that’s something we feel here. Like a missing tooth.”

Mulder looked away. Scully clasped Chief Hughes’ hand. “We won’t stop looking.”

Chief Hughes’ smile was watery. “Neither will we.”

+ + +

“I thought the breakfast at the B&B was excellent,” Mulder said as they walked to their gate at the airport. “Those scones were homemade.”

“The beds were also excellent.” Scully glanced up at him. “At least, mine was. I can’t speak to the quality of any other accommodations.”

“I’d stay there again,” he said. “Recreationally.”

“Oh? Are you seeing someone?”

He stopped suddenly in the middle of the passageway. She stopped too and looked at him curiously. He took her face between his hands and kissed her. It was profound. It was passionate. It was making her weak in the knees in the middle of a fucking airport. She put her hands on his waist to steady herself.

“It wasn’t because this is a secret, Scully,” he said. “I’d get your name tattooed in five inch letters on my ass tomorrow if that’s what you wanted.”

“I know.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I know. The work matters. It was just weird not to be on the same page.”

“It was,” he agreed. His eyes searched her face and he smiled at whatever he saw there. “Should we go home?”

“Are you conferring with me in a professional context, Agent Mulder?”

He shook his head, the smile turning into a grin. “I’m not interested in your professional opinion at this time, Agent Scully.”

“Then yes, we should go home.”

He slung his arm around her shoulders as they walked and she leaned into him.

+ + +

In the DC airport, Scully caught a glimpse of curly hair and a familiar profile. “Naomi,” she said quietly to herself, and then louder. “Naomi!”

The woman turned, blanched, tried to push through a crowd. Scully swore. It was the suits. It was always the suits. Scully pursued, Mulder at her heels.

“Naomi! You’re not in trouble. We just want to talk.”

Naomi turned at last, eyes bright but her chin held high. She was clutching the hand of a blonde woman Scully had seen in a dozen photographs.

“Naomi Diaz,” Mulder drawled. “Cassy Miller.”

“How do you know our names?” Naomi demanded.

“We’ve been looking for you.” Scully showed them her badge. “Police Chief Hughes called the Bureau to follow up on a missing persons report.”

“And here you are, remarkably unmissing,” Mulder said. He was enjoying himself too much for someone who had been completely wrong, Scully thought.

“We shouldn’t have left the way we did,” Naomi said. Her mouth trembled. “I know that. But we couldn’t stay.”

“Why not?” Scully asked, and then looked again at the women’s clasped hands and understood.

Cassy stepped in front of Naomi without letting go. “It’s a small town, ma’am. Everybody knows everybody there. The kids at my store, I watched them grow up. I babysat half of them. Their parents are the older siblings of the kids I went to high school with. If I changed shampoo brands, the whole town would know by the end of the week.”

“I see.” Scully put her hands in her pockets. A week looking for two women and no one had mentioned they were lovers. The picture drew itself.

“I have loved this woman for a decade and everyone pretends they don’t know that,” Cassy said fiercely. “They just look right past me. It’s almost worse than if they were hateful.”

“It was like we were already dead,” Naomi put in. “We can’t get married. Landlords kept losing our application when we tried to get an apartment together. So it seemed easy. Everybody knows that people get drunk and stupid on the lake and nobody ever sees them again.”

“We read the reports,” Mulder told them. “Nobody in that town thought either of you would be drunk or stupid.”

“It was better than staying,” Cassy said in a firm voice. “Now we can start over. We can have a life that’s real. I’m thirty-two years old. I can’t spend the rest of my life playing pretend. Not about her.”

“They think you were eaten by the lake monster,” Scully told them.

Cassy laughed. “Champ? That’s just a legend.”

“No, it’s not,” Naomi muttered.

Scully exchanged a look with Mulder. “Regardless,” Scully said smoothly, “I think in this case, we can file a report saying that all evidence was inconclusive.” She paused. “Being eaten by a lake monster isn’t the worst way to go.”

Mulder was scribbling on a piece of paper. He passed it to Cassy. “Go to this address. The attendant in the Metro can show you the best stop. Tell them Mulder sent you. They’re weird guys, but they’ll help you.”

“And that’s it?” Naomi asked. “You’re not going to turn us in?”

“Leaving town isn’t a crime,” Scully told her. She started to turn away, and then turned back. “This may sound strange but…it’s never too late to start living the life you want. For what it’s worth, I think you’re both brave.”

“Thank you,” Cassy said.

Scully nodded and walked away with Mulder at her shoulder. They were quiet as they picked up their backs at the luggage carousel. She said nothing as they got into Mulder’s car. She waited until they had exited the airport road and merged onto the highway.

“Mulder?”

“Hmm?”

“I told you so.”

+ + +

He parked in front of her apartment and carried her bag in for her. “What a gentleman,” she started to say, but before she could get the words out, he was pressing her into the door, his hot mouth descending on hers. She tugged at his lip with her teeth and then surrendered, opening her mouth to the insistent slide of his tongue. Their hands tangled trying to get to each other’s buttons. But finally, fucking finally, his hands were on her bare tits and she was digging her nails into his back. She could feel his erection against her belly. She cupped it with her palm and he groaned.

“Fuck, Scully.”

She dragged his head down and nipped at his ear. “Time to put your money where your very active mouth is, Mulder.”

“Anything you want,” he promised.

“Tease me,” she said. “Worship me.”

He pressed his body into hers, fumbling at the closure of her skirt. After a moment he gave up and just pushed it over her hips. His hands ghosted over her skin, barely touching, until her nerves crackled and fizzed like a plasma globe. By the time his thumb traced up the damp gusset of her underwear, she was almost panting.

“What do you want, Scully?” he whispered, his tongue flicking at the shell of her ear.

“I want to give it to you,” she gasped. His hips jolted against her and she moaned.

He bit gently at her shoulder. “I’m confused but very turned on.” His thumb grazed her underwear again and she arched into the touch for a moment. It was difficult to wriggle out from between his body and the door, but she had the fuel of a week’s worth of frustration. He followed her, shedding his pants as they slid off his hips.

She dragged her suitcase into the bedroom and tipped it onto the floor. She unzipped it and pulled out a bundle of straps wrapped around a slender purple dildo.

“That was in your suitcase the whole time?” he said from the doorway.

“I thought it was a different kind of trip,” she told him. She shook out the straps; they resolved into a harness. The dildo fit neatly into it. She’d practiced assembling it. There was no fumbling here. She shed her skirt but didn’t bother with her underwear, stepping into the harness and buckling it tight.

“I thought you were going to be the one begging,” he said, sauntering closer. “Looks like you’ve turned the tables on me again.”

“Say ‘please’,” she told him.

He knelt in front of her, gazing up her body. As she looked down at him, he lapped slowly at the head of the dildo. She shuddered at the way his eyes closed in pleasure. He opened them again and stared up at her. “Please.”

“Clothes off. Get on the bed.” She ducked into the bathroom and grabbed a towel. He caught it when she tossed it and spread it under his hips. “You’ve done this before?”

“Not in a while,” he admitted. “I didn’t know if you’d be into it.”

“It’s got more reach than my fingers,” she said. “And honestly, Mulder, I’ve wanted to fuck you speechless for years.”

“Is that a challenge?” His eyes gleamed.

“It’s a promise,” she said, pulling a latex glove out of her suitcase and snapping it on.

She took her time preparing him. A single finger up his ass in the heat of passion was different from the dildo, even if it was the smallest of the set she’d bought. He lay on his belly on the bed. She knelt between his legs, pushing his thighs wide with her knees. The marks of her nails were pink half-moons up and down his back. She liked seeing them: proof he was hers.

She worked him open slowly, slicking him with lube until he was dripping, rubbing her fingers up and down and up and down between his ass cheeks. One finger, slow and steady. Her pussy throbbed under the base of the dildo, aching for him. Two fingers and he was groaning, lifting his hips toward her. Three fingers - that was probably the same girth as the dildo, and he rocked against her eagerly.

“Are you ready?”

“God, Scully, please.”

“Turn over,” she commanded. “I want to watch you while I fuck you.”

He flipped himself over with a surprising amount of grace. She gestured and he tossed her one of the pillows. She dragged the towel over it and helped him wedge it under his hips. He looked so vulnerable like this, splayed out before her. His cock banged his belly and she couldn’t resist dragging her tongue up it to taste the salt. Her thumb stroked the tender skin under his balls, sliding back and back to push inside him. More lube. More pressure at his entrance. She circled it with her thumb, slicked the dildo with yet more lube, let the head of it rest against him.

“Scully, please,” he said in an urgent hush.

“Please what?”

“Pretty please,” he said. “Pretty please, please fuck me.”

She checked her watch. “It’s only 4:58 p.m., Mulder. Are you sure we’re off the clock?”

“Please,” he said. “I swear we’ll talk about it next time we take a case that looks like a vacation.”

“In that case,” she said, and pushed into him oh so slowly. He took the toy an inch at a time. She would have sworn his eyes got greener the deeper she pushed. He made a noise like she’d touched his soul. When she started to pull out, he whimpered. The naked need on his face floored her.

“I’m not done,” she assured him, and thrust again. Fuck, it was hard not to just snap her hips into his. She wanted to fuck him rough. Maybe once he had graduated to something bigger, she’d bend him over her couch. Maybe she’d pull out her most indulgent dildo, the one that was almost too big, and let him gag on it. Not tonight, but maybe if he pulled a stunt like that again.

For now she fucked him slowly. The base of the dildo ground against her pubis, not quite the contact she needed, but good. And his face while she fucked him, God - she could have come just from the way he looked at her.

“Enough,” he gasped when she was so on edge she was gritting her teeth to keep going. “Fuck, Scully, enough.”

She pulled out of him and he reached for her and dragged her up the bed. He undid the buckles on one side of the harness and she undid the other side and the straps fell away. She tossed the dildo to one side. And then she was straddling him and his beautiful fucking cock was pressing against her and how was she already this goddamn close? She was seeing stars and he’d barely touched her yet.

Mulder wrapped his hand around his cock and rubbed it against the wet cotton that separated her skin from his. She reached down and pushed it aside and moaned. His shaft slid between her folds. Fuck, yes, that was what she’d needed. She wasn’t waiting any longer. She cupped her hand over his and used her other hand to pull her underwear away and then she was sinking down onto his cock.

“Not yet,” he said. His hands grabbed her hips, urging her higher until she was sitting on his face. Her underwear had slipped back into place, but that didn’t seem to bother Mulder. He licked at her through the fabric, lips and tongue working together. The cotton blunted the edges of his teeth when he scraped them over her clit. She moaned, a high urgent sound, and he pulled her down hard and sucked her clit until she saw stars.

“Mulder, yes,” she was saying, over and over. Her legs shook. He lessened the pressure, then swirled his tongue in rapid circles until she was coming again, grabbing at the headboard. He slid out from under her and pressed up against her back, his big hands on her tits, thumbing at her nipples until she was almost coming again. She turned her head to kiss him hungrily as his fingers slipped lower, spreading her folds so that he could push two fingers inside her. His thumb circled her clit and she came again, a warm wave of pleasure that surprised her.

“I think these need to come off,” he said, and helped her wriggle out of her panties.

“Now will you fuck me?” she panted.

“However many orgasms that was wasn’t enough for you?” He grinned.

“It’s different,” she said. “It was good - it was fantastic - but I need you inside me, Mulder.”

He didn’t have anything to say to that. He surged up behind her again, nudging her knees apart roughly, and pushed into her, filling her pussy in a way that immediately soothed the ache inside her and made it worse all at the same time. His arm locked over her shoulders as he heaved up into her, holding her in place on his cock. She whimpered and sank her teeth into the corded muscle of his forearm. She was clinging to the bars of her headboard. The motion of his hips rocked her up and down. His other hand was braced next to hers, his fingers curling over her fist. She leaned her head against his shoulder. Fuck, she loved him.

The pressure of him inside her made her desperate. She freed one hand, touched herself with trembling fingers. She was coming undone, again, her muscles clutching around him. He moaned and pulled out of her. She cried out in protest, still shuddering, but he put his back against the headboard and hauled into his lap, thrusting up into her like he’d never stopped. She braced her knees wide and took him as deep as she could, grinding against him. His thighs were tensing under hers. She was amazed he hadn’t come yet, and grateful, and determined.

“I want you to come inside me,” she whispered, and his whole body shivered. “I’ve been so good, Mulder, please.”

He bent forward and took her nipples into his mouth, first one, then the other, his mouth hot and desperate. She kissed his forehead, scraping her fingers through his hair as he squeezed her tits. And there, so unexpected, another orgasm building inside her. She rubbed herself against him in a frenzy. She’d never come this many times in a row, with a partner or a toy, but a week’s tension had wound her tight.

“I’m close,” he warned her. He rubbed his cheek over her nipple and the friction of his stubble made her gasp. “Scully.”

“I’m coming,” she said, and it was true. Sparks burst behind her eyelids and he held her hips down and pounded up into her and she could feel him inside her, the wet heat of his pleasure. It seemed to last forever as he surged into her and then finally, finally, she was back in her body, wrapped in his arms. When he eventually pulled out of her, it felt like a loss.

“I want to lick you clean,” he said. His voice was shaking.

“Next time,” she promised, wincing just a little. She was too sensitive everywhere, but it had been worth it. Fuck, it had all been worth it. They eased down together. Mulder flopped on his belly, ass in the air.

“Did I make it up to you?” he asked.

“I believe I got the rewards I was promised,” she said.

“If I’d known you’d brought your own equipment, I don’t think my conscience would have won,” he told her. “It was hard enough seeing you in that bath, all flushed and damp.”

She patted his ass. “You took it like a champ.”

He huffed a laugh into the crumpled sheets. “I would have absolutely bought a novelty t-shirt that said that.”

“I know,” she said.

He pushed up on one elbow and gazed at her. “And you would have stolen it to wear to bed.”

“With no underwear underneath,” she agreed.

He swore under his breath. “We could go back.”

“Let’s go somewhere else,” she suggested. “I don’t want you getting distracted by the local legends. Do you think I can find you a t-shirt that says ‘Rode Hard And Put Away Wet’?”

“We’ll have to get matching ones,” he said.

“We can do that.” She smiled at him. “You can wear it to work.”

“I think that would leave Skinner with some questions.”

She shook her head, yawning. “I think that would answer most of his questions.”

“You’re probably right,” he said.

“Mulder?”

“Hmm?”

“I changed my mind,” she told him. “Lick me clean.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and settled between her legs like it was his job. His mouth was gentle on her tender skin. His eyes were closed like he was praying. She pushed her hands through his hair and let herself drift into a dream of a life where they could do this anytime they wanted, forever and ever, amen.

#my fic #leiascully fic #msr fic #xfiles fanfic #pure unadulterated smut #thanks for the prompt!#this is too long for tumblr tbh

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romantichopelessly · 12 days

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been a while without the energy to blog (tragic) so I am back with a long-awaited TRC poll.

#there are so many cars in this series that this poll may need a part 2 #i think i got all the most memorable ones #but let me know if there is smth i missed #trc #the raven cycle #the dreamer trilogy #td3 #cdtheu #gansey #richard campbell gansey iii #ronan lynch #adam parrish #blue sargent #noah czerny #henry cheng #declan lynch #i kept trying to think of cars for hennessey or jordan but im pretty sure they just steal random cars so.

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muldermuse · 10 months

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Plus One (Fox Mulder X Reader)

This is based on an ask I recieved <333 thank u for sending it through

Scully is unable to attend an event so Fox asks you to be his plus one.

“It means a lot that you’re coming tonight, I’ll uh- I’ll pick you up at your apartment at 6? Have a chat about the mission in the car and then go from there…I’m looking forward to seeing you…Scully said your dress looks good and you know that she knows more about that stuff than me *laughs*. Um, okay well this is a long voicemail so uh-right, I’ll see you in a few hours. Oh! This is Fox by the way.”

It definitely was not your usual practice to have a glass of red wine before getting ready for a mission but you had to admit that you felt nervous about tonight. It was standard for Mulder and Scully to do something like this. To get intel about a case, they’d dress up and rub shoulders with people unknowingly involved in an X File. Sometimes they’d pose as a couple and other times they would pose as two singles trying to seek out a partner for the evening. They would collect as much intel as possible and within the following weeks; the case would undoubtedly be solved.

This was a huge case so Scully was in another state, sleeping in her car to avoid the bed bug-ridden motel that Skinner had put her up in. Fox was too nervous to ask you so you got a call from Scully late last night. The key contact Fox had been trying to speak to about this case was attending a Gala in Washington. The contact was old school, any guest to the Gala had to have a date for the evening, and of course; it was a black tie event. You were reluctant and Scully knew you would be. “Listen, if you want to fly out and take my place in this crappy rental car, which stinks of fries for some reason- I would thank you for it. But, you’ll have a great time and I know you have that black dress that you’re looking for an excuse to wear…”.

So here you are, pouring a large glass of red wine and listening to the Spice Girls as you try to focus all your nervous energy into applying your make up and curling your hair. You slip your dress on at quarter to 5. The dress was expensive and it looks it. It’s black and shimmering under the fairy lights strung over your bookshelf. It’s hugging your curves, it’s hiding any insecurities and you have to admit- you look amazing. The remaining wine in the glass slides down your throat and gives a final rush of adrenaline. Fox knocks at the door at exactly 6 o’clock.

***

He's wearing his glasses. That’s the first thing that you recognize. Not the bouquet of flowers tightly clutched in his fist, not the perfectly tailored suit or the nervous expression covering his face.

“You’re wearing glasses, I’ve never seen you wear them outside of the office.” You smile at him and he smiles back but he seems distracted. He doesn’t reply for a few seconds and as the awkward energy fills the air; he thrusts the flowers towards your hands.

“Yeah, I think they make me look smarter” He awkwardly laughs. “These are for you...obviously…you usually have peonies at your desk on special occasions so I thought you’d like them.”

“They’re beautiful, I didn’t realise that you noticed stuff like that. Maybe you’re a better agent than I suspected Fox” you wink as you go back into your apartment and place the flowers in the sink with some water. You take the moment with the faucet running to compose yourself.

God.

He looks so fucking good.

The nerves that have slowly dissipated over the past hour are suddenly back without warning. He looks so good- do you look alright? Oh god, are you not dressed up enough? Does he think you look okay? I bet he wishes that Scully was here right now, you could potentially jeopardise this entire case and you know how hard they’re both working on it.

You’re too lost in your own thoughts to hear Fox cross the room and place a warm hand against your lower back. The tension zapping through your body streams out with a deep exhale.

“I have a car waiting downstairs, we should probably go”. He holds his arm out for you with a grin and he guides you downstairs. He holds the car door open for you. Whilst you have a moment alone; you whisper to yourself an affirmation that tonight will go well.

You have no idea that Fox is doing the same thing.

***

Fox has liked you for a while and he suspects that this occasion is all Scully’s doing. There was no real reason for her to travel to Wyoming, it was some anonymous call which Fox completely doubts the validity of. When it comes to the X Files and his career, Fox is a ‘do-er.’ He wants to get out there, prove the importance of his work and save lives.

However, when it comes to his relationships. At the minute, Fox is less active.

The moment he saw you smiling; you had never been far from his thoughts. Scully struck up a friendship with you through a mutual love of the same sandwich served a local deli. Fox would sit in on your lunch dates together, he’d always try and make you laugh- feeling an immense sense of pride when he did.

Scully had disclosed to him her feelings on your boyfriend, Jason. You had so much love to give and he seemed to be the opposite. Closed off and cold. Scully told Fox you’d been arguing more and were getting close to breaking up. When you did, Fox watched from afar as your usual bright smile never reached your eyes.

***

The car ride is filled with idle chat. The tension in the air seems to mount as you both try desperately to ignore it. Fox tells you about the Gala and what to expect. It’s more of an occasion to scope out the group rather than to gather intel on a specific target.

You don’t realise that as the car drives closer to your destination that your knee begins to bounce and your fingers fidget with the tassle on your handbag. Fox rests his hand on your knee and his thumb rubs calming small circles on your soft skin.

“You look amazing, thanks again for doing this.”

Before you can thank him or compliment him back, the car pulls to a stop and the door opens.

***

The room is grand and glamourous. It’s a decadent affair with rich red velvet curtains and carpets decorating each room. The different perfumes and aftershaves blend together to create a sweet floral scent that lingers as every person passes. It’s a crowd of black tuxedos and billowing ballgowns, everyone smiling politely with a clear hint of judgement to every passerby. The sound of the band is lost over the exchanging of pleasantries and the distinctive pop of champagne corks, followed by a polite cheer.

It's completely unlike anywhere else you have ever been or anywhere you are likely to ever go.

“I think I’m the poorest person in here by about three million dollars, Fox”

“Oh no, it’ll be way more than that,” Fox says with a wink as he hands you a glass of champagne. He moves in close enough to whisper to you and you try to ignore the sensation of his breath fanning your neck.

“See that guy over there with the red suit, he has a huge interest in extraterrestrials. It’s massive so much so that he spends around five and a half million dollars a year trying to prove they’re real. He’s got that much money it’s basically a game.”

The bubbles of champagne trickle down your throat as you move closer into Fox’s hold. He holds your waist and rotates you to look at another corner of the room. His breath remains hot on your neck and you’re not sure if it’s the alcohol coursing through your veins or his presence that is making your head feel fuzzy.

“That lady over there with the huge hat, like, ridiculously big hat.” You nod at Fox without taking your eyes off her. “The Lone Gunman guys suspect that she gets all her money from selling UFOs that crash, on the black market. She only leaves her guarded house three times a year and this is one of the occasions.”

“Suspect? So it could be something completely different.” You smirk up at Fox, he grabs another two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and hands one to you. “Who knows, maybe she makes her money selling really big hats.”

“Or maybe, the reason her hat is so big is because it’s broadcasting a message to a UFO flying over Washington”. His grin matches yours.

You clink the glasses together and without the other knowing, both of you acknowledge the butterflies fluttering in your stomachs.

***

Neither of you speak to anyone else, you find a quiet corner tucked away in the hall room and chat. You sip on a glass of wine and Fox holds a tumbler of whiskey but both drinks go warm as you get lose in the conversation with each other.

It dawns on you that before tonight, you’ve never really spoken to Fox as it’s usually a group environment or a passing hi-goodbye as you both make your way home at the end of the day.

He tells you about his family, he tells you about his favourite cases and more importantly than all of the things he’s saying to you- he’s present with you the entire time. Conversations with your ex were one sided and that was something that took months to admit. You realized your relationship with Jason was over during a conversation. You’d just got the promotion that you’d spent months working on and he asked one simple question that felt like a knife to your pumping heart.

“When were you going to tell me about that promotion?”

You had told him; of course you had. You’d told him when you first heard about it, you’d told him the planning you’d spent weeks organizing and you told him the morning of the interview.

He hadn’t heard any of it.

You’d been together over a year. You had met each other’s family, met each other’s friends, you’d fallen in love and within that conversation; you realized how far from love you both had fallen.

The big band music was gradually playing louder and louder. You’d both been straining to shout over it to keep the conversation going. Eventually, you realized a way you would be able to hear Fox better, you grabbed his hand and pulled him onto the dance floor.

***

The music was soft, flowing through the air as the lights began to dim slowly and the illuminated table decorations filled in the dark spaces. You placed your arms around Fox’s shoulders as his large hands slid down to your waist. Your heart was beating the steadiest that it had all night.

“How did you know about the peonies? I’ve never told you or Scully about that.” Your hands remained interlocked around his neck as you fought the urge to run your fingers through his hair.

“Well, I know your birthday and you had peonies on that date. When you got that promotion, you had peonies, and when uh…yeah, you have peonies.” A nervous look flashes across his face. You know what he was going to say.

“When I broke up with Jason, someone in the office got me peonies and left them on my desk. It was the only thing that made me smile that week”. The memory still makes you emotional, the week was relentless sleepless nights and non-stop crying. On the last day of the week, there was a gorgeous bunch of peonies in a vase on your desk. No note, no name- nothing.

His hands tighten around your waist as he rests his forehead against yours, “I’m glad you liked them…it was hard to see you look so sad”.

Of course it was him.

It always was.

It always is.

Before you can carry on speaking or stop the tears trying to fill your eyes. He tilts your chin to meet your eyeline with his thumb and forefinger.

“I don’t think I’ve told you how beautiful you look tonight or thanked you for this…I mean thanked you properly."

You place your head against his chest and wrap your arms around his waist, continuing to sway to the music; you hear him take a breath before carrying on.

"I've liked you for a while and god, does that sound childish to say. This means a lot to me and you being here means even more. I'd like to take you out, I can't always promise it will be this fancy...actually, I can guarantee it never will be but I want to spend time with you. In any setting, I possibly can."

He doesn't look at you and you don't look at him. It felt like a confession he needed to make but perhaps didn't have the confidence to say it to your face. Which is amazing to you because Fox Mulder doesn't strike you as someone who struggles with anxieties.

"I think this place is a bit too fancy for me, maybe we can chat more at the 24 hour diner near my apartment? I think we'll look a bit different from the usual patrons" You gesture at your black gown and his tuxedo. He smiles as he takes your hand and leads you to the exit.

Before you get back into the car, you press a kiss to his lips and thank him for the evening. For the entire journey to the diner; you hold each other's hands tightly.

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kaitsawamura · 4 months

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🪞 🔮 🍅 🧺 🍯 🌱 The Farmer & The Wizard

PART 1: IN WHICH YOU UNEXPECTEDLY GET THE DEED TO A FARM

❦ STATS ❦ | all other information on this fic including additional warnings can be found on the masterlist

chapter rating: e for everyone, complete fic has an 18+ MDNI rating

chapter warnings: mention of the death of an estranged grandparent (no details)

chapter tags: semi-canon divergent, red thread of fate

chapter word count: 3.2K

This chapter and the rest of this fic are part of this blog's contribution to Fics for Gaza.

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My Dear Little Bug,

If you’re reading this, you must be in dire need of a change.

The same thing happened to me long ago. I’d lost sight of what mattered most in life… real connections with other people and nature. So I dropped everything and moved to the place I truly belong.

I’ve enclosed the deed to that place… my pride and joy: Fox Hollow Farm. It’s located in Stardew Valley, on the southern coast. It’s the perfect place to start your new life.

This was my most precious gift of all, and now it’s yours. I know you’ll honor the family name, Little Bug. Good luck.

Love, Grandpa

Honor the family name? What a load of bullshit. There was no family left to honor. You were an only child and your parents had stopped talking to your grandpa on your dad’s side so long ago, you didn’t have any memories of him. Except for a blurry one, so void of detail it was as if it was a dream or a dream of a dream. In that memory, you could recall the thrill of seeing autumn leaves blustering in a flurry across a gravel drive, the creak of an old door, the smell of dirt, coffee, and aftershave. A pair of strong warm arms. That’s about it.

Now, your parents were divorced and the three of you were estranged. You were a singular island floating in a lonely, tumultuous sea. Things had been stressful at work and in your personal life. That must be why you even considered checking your Grandpa’s place out. The southern coast… that was practically out in the boonies. Scratch that, it was in the middle of nowhere. Zuzu City was the closest big town and even that would be small by your adult standards. You didn’t know if you had the gumption to do what it would take to fix the place up.

Still, although you had no idea why your grandfather had chosen you to take over the place most important to him, it would be a welcome distraction. The words in his letter… you were, in fact, in dire need of a change. How this all came to be at the time you needed it most was beyond your understanding. It was better to leave some things to the unknown, even if you did feel a strange pull to this place you’d been to once as a very young child.

You read the letter a final time before glancing at the attached legal papers. Suddenly it seemed as if the space you’d so meticulously curated to be yours was a touch too sterile. The apartment on the expensive side of town. The new, reliable car. The dinner parties, the expensive alcohol. The shiny executive position to go with it. You’d worked hard for it but also had privilege that so many didn’t. You were grateful for it. Even so, you couldn’t ignore that something was missing.

Perhaps long days and even longer nights, clean air, and more sky than infrastructure were the puzzle pieces you hadn’t found yet.

❦ 2 WEEKS LATER ❦

Your apartment was turnkey on the market and already had three solid offers.

In the end, you decided on saving the expense of a rental car, but doing so meant the closest you could get to Stardew Valley was Zuzu City and from there, you had to take a bus. The whole thing felt spectacularly contrived, much to your chagrin. It was spring and while the city was filled with smog, the moment you hit the long highway out of Zuzu towards your new home it was as if the heavens parted to shine a light on your way. Not a single cloud remained in the sky. Well, maybe one little puff that looked way too much like a pastry waaaay out in the distance.

It was a two hour drive on a four lane highway that somehow turned into a two lane without you noticing. For a long while there was nothing but the music playing in your headphones and stretches of field so green and wide open, you could easily get lost in daydreaming. Rolling hills, green grass, and sometimes a fence. Clair de Lune played in your ears and with the surprisingly comfortable position you’d found leaning your head on the window, it didn’t take much for you to drift off.

The bus jolting to a stop is what wakes you on a sharp, snorting breath as your eyes snap open. For a moment, you’re disoriented, unaware of where you are or if you are, in fact, a real person. A headache has begun throbbing at the base of your neck and your mouth is dry. Late afternoon sun streams in the bus window and the driver, a little graying man in a smart blue uniform is standing over you.

“There you are, I was beginning to think I couldn’t wake you. We’ve reached the end of the line. I’ll give you a moment while I open the cargo hold. I have a schedule I have to keep to though!” He says it brightly, smiling as big as can be, the expression crinkling his eyes shut above his rosy cheeks. You nod as he turns and spryly makes his way down the middle of the bus and out the doors.

You do take a moment, but only a small one, to stare out the window. It’s a small bus station, barely even a station at all really. There’s a small awning under a tree that houses an automatic ticket printer. It seems both too modern and too ancient, a monolith, to be here in Stardew Valley. There’s a wooden bench and a cobbled pathway that looks as if at one time there was a lot of foot traffic that has since dwindled. In the distance a wooden fence, fallen into disrepair.

Still, you take a breath and even within the confines of the vehicle, you can taste the crisp freshness in the air. On top of that, there’s green everywhere. In the trees, in the grass, in the wildflowers. In the button-up shirt on the other little old man standing expectantly outside the bus looking in. He’s wearing a brown newsboy cap and overalls, with a golden yellow tie. That must be the mayor. Mayor… Lee? Lemony? Lewis? That’s it, Mayor Lewis.

The mayor had been good friends with your grandfather. He had said as much over the phone when he called to confirm you had gotten the letter and legal papers in the mail. Mail didn’t get lost in Stardew Valley, it was too small but he didn’t known how things worked in the big modern city. He had told you he would meet you to take you to your grandfather’s, well, your farm when you got into town. That was two weeks ago and if you were being completely honest with yourself, you had forgotten that little detail. It was just as well because your fancy cellphone with “unparalleled” service had one little tiny bar; no pulling up Maps here.

Uncertainty roiled in your gut, truly the first bit of apprehension you’d felt since you’d started this process. Maybe this was literally the most foolish thing you’d done in your life, more foolish than breaking into the public pool after hours with your friends your senior year of high school and getting caught by the cops. That had been your last hurrah the summer before you all went to college. Perhaps this was a last hurrah as well. Except, there was no scholarship money waiting in the mail for you this time around. This would be all on you and while you were comfortable with what you had access to for the ball to get rolling, it was different spending your own money than money given to you. Money given to you didn’t count, it wasn’t real.

There was no time like the present. You grabbed your carry on, the one you’d had since high school with the fraying handles and the faded One Direction key chain, and stepped out into the later afternoon. Lewis, who was rocking on his heels with his arms clasped behind him, loosed a beaming smile in your direction. You smiled back, determined to make the most of this first impression.

“Mayor Lewis?” You made it a question even though you were certain it was unnecessary. He nodded enthusiastically and you shook hands. The driver had unloaded your singular suitcase from the hold and gave a mock salute to the two of you as he stepped back in the bus. The doors closed with a wheeze and a loud click before the idling engine was idle no longer and the wheels began rolling the bus back out of town. The mayor broke the amicable silence first.

“You must be exhausted so I’ll walk you straight to the farm and leave you to get settled in! Can I help ya with any of your bags?” You were inclined to let him assist so you handed him your carry on and grabbed your rolling suitcase; a fine film of pollen already collected over its surface. Thank god you’d brought antihistamines. You had an annoying feeling that your allergies would be acting up.

“Uh, Mayor—” he held up a hand.

“Please, call me Lewis. Your grandpa and I were much too close for you to be calling me by a title instead of my Yoba-given name.” Yoba. You hadn’t heard or thought of that name in a very long time. So the mayor was at least somewhat religious, you decided to assume.

“Oh, yes, all right. Lewis it is then. Can I clarify, did you say walk?” Another huge smile broke out across his face, bringing crows feet and laugh lines prominently to the surface. It was humanizing in such a way that you already felt a pang of endearing familiarity towards him. He did remind you vaguely of your grandpa, or what you could remember of him.

“Yes! It’s really not far, just down this dirt road here. I took the liberty of assuming that you would want to stretch your legs a little after that long drive. Your grandpa rode his horse until the very end but I’m sure we could fix ya up with somebody’s old truck if you’d rather use that for transportation from now on.” Your eyebrows shot up your forehead. The mayor must have seen the look of confusion because he rambled on, “Magpie’s a sturdy little gelding, but if he’s too much for you to keep, I’m sure I could help you find him a good home.”

There was so much to consider. You had told Lewis that you planned on fixing the place up but you still hadn’t answered the question that lingered heavily on your mind about what came after that. Did you really plan on uprooting your whole life permanently? Crickets chirped in the hedges lining the pathway. The sun sparkled through the trees as it set in the west. The air smelled heavily of daffodils and lilac. Even without seeing the farm, you already felt a strange pull behind your ribcage, like a string was tied around your heart and was tugging. In what direction, you couldn’t quite tell.

It really didn’t take any time to reach the farm at all. You’d been so wrapped up in further conversation with Lewis that you hadn’t noticed it was a twenty minute walk and sure enough your stiff hips and back welcomed the light exercise. He reminded you that there were a couple chickens that had already been locked up in their coop for the day but as sunny weather was predicted, you’d want to let them out in their run the following morning. The main living structure, a small cabin with a single room and kitchenette, still had utilities running. There was a little toilet room inside as well and a small bathhouse out back for any of your bathing needs. If the pipes groaned when you turned the water on, well, it really wasn’t a problem but if any issues arose from it, he could recommend a handy man to you.

You passed the mailbox and took a mental note that it was one of the first things you’d be fixing; it was leaning so precariously on a rotten wooden post you were surprised it was still standing. When the little cabin came into view as the two of you opened and shut the entrance gate behind you, you felt a tightness begin to unravel in your body. There was an apricot tree hanging over the tiny covered patio. Frogs chirped in the distance from the creek that ran around the far edges of the property. The chicken coop sat close to a bend of that creek next to another west facing entrance. You could also see the overgrown mini forest of trees you had as well as an overabundance of grass and weeds and stone that would need to be cleared.

“Well, here it is, Fox Hollow Farm! I don’t want to overstay my welcome so you let me know if there’s anything you need but otherwise, I’ll let you get settled in for the night.” You assured him as long as there was hot water in that bathhouse and a made bed to collapse into, you think you’d make it through the night. “Good. Robin and I’ll check back in on ya tomorrow morning!” You couldn’t remember exactly who he’d said Robin was but if they were as welcoming as Lewis, it didn’t really matter.

After Lewis had unlocked the cabin and handed you the key, it was very apparent that you weren’t even in the mood for a shower. You waved at him as he left, exhaustion settling deep in your bones. The place smelled dusty already, even though it had only been vacant for three weeks. The wooden floor groaned beneath your feet, but only slightly, as you dropped your duffle bag to the ground and rolled your suitcase just inside the door. You walked to the sink, wiping a hand over the dirty window to look out back. There was a wooden structure with floor to ceiling glass windows making up its four walls. That must be the bathhouse. There was an old coffee maker on the bit of counter space and a singular wooden mug. It was expertly carved and worn down from years of use. You wondered absently if someone local had crafted it.

There was a little basket on the table that was pushed up along the southern wall of the house. You sighed in relief when you realized there was a bag of fresh ground coffee, a loaf of bread wrapped in a cloth, a few clean carrots, a block of hard cheese wrapped in beeswax, a stick of butter in the same fabric, an aged roll of salami, six chicken eggs, and a glass mason jar labeled “Fig Jam” in looping cursive. When you opened the fridge there was an even bigger jar full of milk. You had a sandwich on the drive but you couldn’t resist digging straight into the loaf of bread, cracking it open with your fingers and tearing a hunk off to stuff in your mouth.

The outer layer was perfectly crusty while the inside was fluffy and practically melted in your mouth. You couldn’t wait to eat some of it with the butter and jam and cheese and eggs for breakfast.

After a bit more exploring from which you discovered adequate cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink and a perfectly made bed with an old soft patchwork quilt, you slipped off your shoes and unpacked pajamas from your suitcase. Sliding into bed here somehow felt a thousand times better than it had in your apartment for months. You fluffed the pillows behind you and pulled out your laptop, choosing not to solve the bed conundrum the first night here. Unsurprisingly there was no internet and your phone was definitely not going to be a good hotspot whatsoever. It was apparent you weren’t going to get any work done.

It was so peculiar; you knew you had been here once but… you really had no memory of the place. You didn’t didn’t think you should feel a kinship to it like you were. There was a small wooden nightstand next to the bed and on it there was an old dog eared copy of The Wizard of Oz. Your own books wouldn’t be here until tomorrow or the day after so you decided to crack it open.

For Jack: We always did love this book, even when we were kids. I saw it the other day on a shelf in a little book store on my trip a few towns over. Hope you like it.

The note scribbled in the inside cover was signed “Lew”. As in Lewis? Your grandpa and Lewis really were old friends then. He must be taking this harder than you would have guessed. You would make sure to invite him over for coffee and offer your condolences. Yes, Jack was your grandfather but you didn’t really know him. The light on the nightstand didn’t provide much light but you flipped to the first page of the book and read:

"Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife."

No sooner had you read two pages than your eyes fluttered shut. You tried to keep them open but to no avail so you flipped the light back out and snuggled into the sheets, completely forgetting to turn the white noise on your phone. It had been a necessary portion of your sleep routine for years and years and years.

But tonight, you fell asleep without it, the song of the night filtering in the window you’d left open next to the bed.

Gojo Satoru woke from a deep slumber, sat upright, and squinted his eyes to look about his room. There was nothing out of place. His tower window was open; it always had to be when he slept, except for some days in autumn and for most of the winter season.

He strained to listen, thinking a nocturnal animal must have disturbed his sleep. Again, nothing amiss. He could hear the crickets and the frogs, and in the very far distance, the notes of a mockingbird’s song trilled to him over the cool spring air.

He laid back down, the moonlight shining in the window spilling over his bare chest and illuminating his white hair. If he just breathed slow enough to also slow the sudden rapid beating of his heart, he could go back to sleep. Meditation was something he did often so it didn’t take much. But he couldn’t stop the tugging sensation somewhere behind his ribcage. Strange.

Something had changed in Stardew Valley and he was going to find out what.

This work and its digital elements (credit for pixel art to ConcernedApe) are © Kait of @kaitsawamura 2020-PRESENT. I do not own any rights to Stardew Valley and any subsequent settings/characters, but this work is heavily inspired by that amazing game. Please do not alter or copy this work. Please do not repost this work to other platforms without my express permission.

#gojo satoru x reader #gojo x reader #gojo satoru #satoru gojo #satoru gojo x reader #stardew valley #stardew valley au #fics for gaza #fic: the farmer and the wizard #kait writes

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otdiaftg · 8 months

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The rest of the Foxes don't find out until Monday morning that Andrew has replaced his wrecked car. Nicky trails Neil across the parking lot, yammering away about a project he should have finished by today but is only halfway done with. When Andrew stops walking, Nicky does too, but since Nicky didn't see the rental car he keeps talking. He stops when Andrew opens the driver's door. Nicky looks, does a double-take, and nearly fell down when he jumped back. "No way!"

His yelp got the others' attention, and Matt was predictably the next to react. He bolted past Neil to stare at the car. "What are you doing with a Maserati?" "Driving it," Andrew said, like it should be obvious, and got in the driver's seat. Matt reached for the hood with both hands but didn't touch it, like he thought his fingerprints might ruin the perfect exterior. The blatant awe on his face had Neil looking to Andrew. Andrew met his gaze through the windshield but didn't hold it for long. He reached for the door to close it, but Matt darted around and put his hand in the way. He leaned over to look inside, owl eyed and rapturous. Nicky had fewer reservations about putting his hands all over the new ride and he made a slack-jawed lap of the car. "But when—?" Matt asked. "And how—?" Allison was less tactful. "Did he steal it?" Dan hissed at her to keep her voice down, but Allison shrugged her off. Matt beckoned to Andrew. "Start it up! Let me hear it." Andrew twisted the key in the ignition, and the car came to life with a quiet roar. Matt threw his hands up and spun away like he was orchestrating a symphony. Andrew closed his door, so Matt wheeled back to Dan, sputtering facts and statistics that went way over Neil's head. Neil glanced at Aaron to gauge his reaction. Aaron looked torn, as if he wanted to be awed by the prestigious ride but couldn't let go of his resentment enough to be excited. Kevin was rarely impressed by wealth thanks to his upbringing, and he'd been there when Andrew bought the car. He didn't have the patience to put up with his teammates' antics and he swept them all with an annoyed look. "Don't make us late for practice." "Whatever!" Nicky said, but he scrambled into the backseat.

Day: Monday, January 22nd Time: 5:45 AM EST

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lilydalexf · 6 months

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👽 April Fools' Day X-Files Fic Recs

No joke, here are some very good X-Files fics involving April Fools' Day. Enjoy! April Fool's Day Series by GirlGone OK, someone challenged me to write a story that wasn't an X-File, a serial killer study, a girlfriend story or a mushy Scully-Mulder romance. I thought about it for awhile and this is what I came up with. April Fools? by A. Dean Written in response to Deb's picture challenge from the US magazine. April Revolution by Foxie Meg "The streets of Paris are burning once more." bad ideas in bed by @wtfmulder Drabble; R; fluff, smut; Scully x Reyes; Prompt: “It’s called a prank.” Bloody Hell by @baronessblixen Happy April Fools’ Day! Mulder is just trying to pull a little prank on Scully... it doesn't go well. Fifth Day in Paradise part 1, part 2 by Kate Rickman En route to the scene of an X-File, Mulder and Scully are stranded in the snowy wilderness after their rental car breaks down on a deserted road. Instead of finding their way back to civilization, they stumble into a treacherous plot that could cost them their lives. Through it all, Scully struggles to accept her deepening relationship with Mulder. Folly by @rivkat Starts in early Season Four; after TFWID, Season Four doesn't happen; instead we take a strange journey into conspiracy, experimentation, and speculation. Leave A Message by Amanda Finch and Tim Scott Our favorite agents' terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day or "When Good Pranks Go Bad". (Check your local FOX listings.) The Man Without A Trace by @syntax6 Insanity Outrunning Moirae by Jennifer Oksana and FirePhile Mulder gets his usual vague information from an informant. It leads him across the country into unbelievable government mischief. Meanwhile, as Scully tracks the case from DC, she starts to question everything, including her own identity. Set around season 5. Wrapped in the Wind Series by RocketMan This is a Romance with Mulder and Scully and a little baby girl. Much like The Emilys, if you liked those.

#fic rec #roundup #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #holiday #april fools' day #new post

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mrsmoose54 · 1 year

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Road Trip September 23

Research and Planning – Nearly time go! The countdown has begun to my latest Road Trip. I came across some curve balls during the final details and did get a result due to a change in my flight confirmation. The itinerary is busy but I can’t stress enough, the importance of planning and research to manage your expectations. Obviously in this day and age results are not far from your…

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#Altoona #American Airlines #British Airways #Buc&039;ees #Chicago #Chicago O&039;Hare #Europcar #Fox Car Rental #Illinois #Iowa #Iowa 80 Truckstop #Kenosha #Milwaukee #Moline #Nebraska #Omaha #Wisconsin

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postmodernbeliever · 5 months

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Thoroughfare- Fox Mulder x Female Reader

Chapter Three: Two’s Company, Three’s a Crime Scene

table of contents <3

if you’d prefer my ao3 | word count: 4,317

TW: mentions of a body at a crime scene, some graphic description.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡𖦹 ⋆｡°✩

“No comments from the peanut gallery!”

“I’m simply saying that if you’d let me handle the directions, maybe we’d get there faster!”

You sighed as Fox screwed with the gigantic spiral-bound map he found shoved between the bench of your rental truck. When the two of you landed, you discovered something new about your fellow agent- he liked being in charge of not only picking but driving the rental car. You knew the Bureau provided money for the vehicle, but you had no idea it was within your purview to choose which. You might’ve picked something a little sleeker and smaller, like an understated sedan, but the man with the pen did not share your taste, so this time you didn’t get to exercise the privilege. Fox teased you as he signed the papers for an old Chevy pickup, saying, “Seniority, Piglet.” And now he was refusing to let you control the map while he drove the two of you straight into bumblefuck Kansas as if he had a foolproof inner compass.

“Seriously, Fox, come on. It’s dangerous to drive like this, just let me help.”

“I’ve survived every case this way, you know,” he grumbled.

“Yeah, alone! You’ve got me here now, and I’m not gonna let you crash the damn car while I’m inside!” You resolved, tearing the map from his hand and ripping it at the corner of the page. All you tore was the map scale, but he still shot you a dirty look.

“Nice going–”

“Enough!”

You wanted to believe you didn’t enjoy the way he bickered with you, but it kept the endless drive of dying grass and grey sky interesting. Fox had to double-check every direction you gave him on the way into Marysville, Kansas, at whose name you of course rolled your eyes. The snarky driver learned to stop doubting you about an hour in when he disregarded your order to make a right-hand turn and went left. It took him ten minutes to admit he was wrong and turn around. You graciously accepted his apology, but not before sticking your tongue out in juvenile triumph. Nearly three hours later with the late afternoon sun preparing to set, the rickety truck pulled past a sign that greeted Welcome to Marysville! and you found yourself in the middle of a quaint little place, seemingly empty, with rows of colonial buildings and businesses. You rolled the window down and felt the muggy spring air stick to your face as you poked your head out, admiring the center of town. You could feel your hair frizzing up, and you hoped you’d have time to fix it before you had to do any work. This was not the time to look anything other than prepared.

Fox piped up, “Don’t get too comfortable. I’m gonna make a pitstop at the police station before the motel.”

You huffed and fell back into the seat, and the man let out a soft chuckle. You combatted, “What now?”

“You’re like a little kid.”

“Am not!”

Fox quirked an eyebrow at you, silently proving his point, and your face melted into a playful smile. You stopped complaining and he turned his attention back to the road, where he surveyed for a police department sign. He found it on the corner of a block, but he nearly missed it- if he wasn’t paying attention, he might’ve mistaken it for just another shop. There were stately stone steps out front and two swinging doors that were reminiscent of a saloon, so you made note of the entrance for the next time it camouflaged into the rest of the town. Fox pulled up to the curb and turned off the engine, which sputtered a bit, and you made a nervous face.

“Don’t worry,” Fox smiled, “I can just hotwire something if we need to.” When you made a face, he added, “Come on, I’m kidding!”

All you gave in return was a skeptical, “We’ll see.”

As he moved to open his door, he paused, noticing how you sat still. “Everything okay?”

In your head, you weren’t sure how to answer his question. One thing has been irking you since you landed in the Midwest, and that was how badly you wanted to nail introducing yourself; you’d thought over exactly how to pull your badge from your pocket, and how you’d assert your new title, but every vision ended with you screwing it up. You’d done this at your old job in New York so often it became second nature, but somehow this was different. This was bigger. You had so much more power with a federal badge. You wondered how Fox did it every time; if he was stern, or positive, or something in between. You almost wished you’d practiced it in the mirror, but that felt stupid to entertain.Yet now that it was time to establish yourself as the overarching authority, a beacon of hope to the people of this town and the families who have lost daughters, you were afraid to make a fool of yourself by either overdoing it or not doing it right at all. For God’s sake, you dropped your passport in front of the flight attendant- what made you think you wouldn’t blurt out FBI too loud in front of the sheriff? What would the citizens of Marysville think if the government sent them a detective who couldn’t even get her name out without stuttering?

Fox wished he could read your mind, but all he could do was watch your eyes glaze over. He reached out and touched your shoulder. “Anybody home?”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“You’re nervous.”

“Kind of,” you huffed, “There’s a lot I’m nervous about, you know that.”

“About the case?”

“Yeah, the case. And about doing well. Proving myself. Not letting you down,” you added at the end, to which he broke into an appreciative grin. “I don’t know. It’s a lot of pressure.”

“You’re lucky you have me then. I’m practically a diamond,” Fox winked, “Relax. I’ll take the lead.”

Fox might be a pain in the ass, but he was somewhat of a gentleman; after promising he’d lead you through things, he held the door to the station open for you, and you went inside first. There wasn’t much of a lobby. It was more like walking straight into a bullpen, and a calm one, at that. You saw three officers sitting at their desks; two working diligently on what seemed to be simple paperwork, and another with his feet kicked up on the desk and a newspaper over his head, snoring loudly. A faulty fan was whirring exhaustedly in the corner next to an open window. It was mundane everywhere you looked- dusty bookshelves, tidy filing cabinets, dust floating in the light beams spilling through the blinds. An aging woman was working the counter with fat librarian glasses perched on her hook nose and a frizzy, box-blonde French twist. Fox nudged your elbow politely, and you stepped aside to let him approach her first.

“Good afternoon, ma’am. Special Agent Fox Mulder. This is my partner.”

You watched him carefully as you fished your badge out of your jacket pocket and flipped it open. He held his own up briefly, barely long enough for anyone to know if it was real. You took it he never ran into that issue. His voice in introduction wasn’t stiff, but it was still assertive. There was a warmth in the way he spoke to her, and you thought maybe he was always gentler with older women, or possibly with everyone- he certainly spoke that way with you. You would’ve kept thinking about it if he didn’t keep going.

“I talked on the phone with a Sheriff Hale, he requested my partner and I come down and take a look at a string of murders?”

The woman smiled with all her teeth, and you could tell by the way her eyes sparkled that she liked him. Just like the lady at the airport. You wouldn’t have pegged him as a ladies’ man, but it made sense. He did have a unique charm about him.

“Oh, yes! Well, Sheriff Hale is out on a house call, ‘ya see, but he’s bound to be back in soon. I can send a call out for ‘im, if you like.” Her country accent was thick as molasses, and just as sweet.

“That’d be great, ma’am, thank you.”

“Oh, please, call me Mary!”

Fox laughed and confirmed, “Mary from Marysville, huh?”

Mary cackled like an obnoxious schoolgirl, and you had to bite back a laugh yourself. Fox stepped away with you as the woman hopped on the phone to speak with the sheriff, throwing glances his way all the while.

“Flirting on the job, Fox?”

“What can I say? I’ve got game, Piglet.”

A part of you wanted to know more, but there wasn’t enough time to try between his teasing comment and the interruption of frazzled Mary: “Excuse, Mr. Agent Mulder, sir?”

“Yes?”

“The- the sheriff says he needs you down at the Church of Saint Peter the Apostle as soon as you can, sir, down on the corner. There’s been another murder, dear Lord…”

Fox defaulted to you, and despite your apprehension, you were the first to head for the door. He called back to the woman with a rushed, “Thank you, tell him we’re on our way!” and the two of you hurried to the old pickup parked out front. He got it up and running and rushed off, and there wasn’t one complaint when you reached for the map and turned to the page with a closer view of Marysville, and told him where to go.

“Up on the corner, she said, but which corner?” You wondered aloud, and Fox kept his eyes on the road. You were just about to tell him to make a left when a beater came barreling through a stop sign at the intersection, wholly ignoring your right of way, causing Fox to slam on the breaks. You lurched forward in the seat and caught yourself by slamming the map against the glovebox. You flushed, feeling like an idiot for forgetting your seatbelt.

“Are you hurt?” Fox blurted. His hand reached out to brush some hair away from your forehead, checking for a bruise or blood, but all you could think about was how softly his fingertips ghosted against your temple. You didn’t feel any pain, but you sure were shaken up.

“Y-yeah, I’m okay. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about me.” He dropped his hand and looked in the direction of the tin can that nearly killed you both, seeing its tire marks trailing down the road. “Where do you think he was going, driving like that?… Dick.”

He tried to let the insult slip under his breath, but you heard it loud and clear. You giggled, and he smirked at you, noting that you liked a slip-up here and there. You began to say something, but two more cars came hurtling down the street in front of the truck, laying on the horn at you for being stopped a quarter of the way into the intersection. Both loosely followed the tire tracks and made screeching turns a few blocks to the right. You looked to Fox for an explanation, who stared back with just as much confusion as you, and he took off, chasing the commotion. You clicked your seatbelt in hurriedly, holding onto the door handle. You weren’t one for speed, but you didn’t feel as unsafe as you would’ve expected yourself to. Fox knew the car well. He knew the dimensions, he knew how fast it could go, and he clearly felt comfortable in the driver’s seat because he was plowing through town like he was the one being chased. You saw a wild grin creep up on his cheeks, and your face felt warm. It was fun, going fast.

Just up the road, you saw red lights flashing in alarm, and a mass of cars pulled up in disarray outside a little church, including the three trucks that nearly killed you. It had to be smaller than the police station- it was wooden, with a weathered steeple that was shadowed by the falling dusk, and moss grew unabated over the windowsills. Teenagers and parents were prowling by the sheriff’s car, which Fox parked right beside.

“Holy shit!”

“Lord, that’s disgusting!”

“Lemme in, lemme see!”

The two of you hopped out and hurried through the hollering crowd of townspeople, right up to the ambulance that blocked them out, but didn’t hide their view. Kids peeked past the authorities with sick looks. Two paramedics met you at the yellow tape and passed some rubber gloves off, which you took gratefully, already feeling your stomach drop at the exclamations of the onlookers. When you finally got past the ambulance, you gasped at the crime scene which one deputy and the supposed Sheriff Hale were rushing to cover with tarps and close off. Fox held up the tape for you to duck beneath, and he followed as you stepped onto the scene.

“Sheriff Hale?” You inquired. “We’re with the FBI, you called for us?”

The older of the two men looked up. He had a beet-red face, which could’ve been from the intensity of the Kansas sun or stress; his eyebrows were bushy as beaver tails, and his stocky build made it hard to believe he did much more than paperwork. But nonetheless, he stood up and shook your hands as he greeted, “Thanks for getting down here so quick, agents. I reckon this is the fourth victim, she, uh… well, how about y’all take a look?”

You and Fox stood on the little dirt path that led to the steps of the church, lined with painted rocks. It looked like a children’s effort, a community project. There was a large crucifix marking where the peak of the building met the steeple, and a giant translucent sheet covered the steps; on the tall double doors, there were thick splatters of oxidizing blood and splintered wood. You knelt beside the younger officer, who was taking photographs of the scene, and made yourself known.

“What do we have here?”

“Looks like another murder, ma’am,” he frowned. You noticed his name embroidered into his uniform pocket: Deputy H. Jones. He was tall and skinny as a twig, with an endearing gap between his two front teeth. He looked too young to be a college student, let alone a police deputy. “A real shame.”

“Did you know the victim, Deputy Jones?”

“Sure I did, knew ‘em all. Lots… lots of ‘em went to school with me. This girl here, though, she was a good friend of my lil’ sister. Liane Jacobs. Real sweet girl. It, uh, it’s a rough thing to see, ma’am.”

Your heart sank at the thought of what it must feel like to be him. You reached to peel back the tarp, and it took less than a second for you to lay it right back down. You weren’t prepared for the sight, and had to choke down a gag. “Jesus Christ.”

“You ask me, Jesus ain’t got nothin’ to do with this, agent. Not a thing.”

Deputy Jones’s face fell pale as he walked away, leaving you to examine the victim. You slowly lifted the tarp again, careful not to reveal anything to the crowd gathering outside the confines of the caution tape. Despite the breakfast you had rumbling like rocks inside your gut, you took a mental note of the girl lying before you, gutted like a pig. She looked far worse than the photos in Fox’s file. Her entire chest cavity was splayed open as if her ribs had been ripped out all at once. The tissue of her dermis and lungs was a mixture of chop meat, all littering the jagged edges of her vertebrae, which were missing bones in all the spots the X-rays had in common. Her lower body was littered with bruises and cuts, especially around the hips and lower abdomen, yet her face was left untouched- not even a spot of blood was present to interrupt the porcelain appearance. She looked supremely calm, in contrast to her violent disposition; relaxed eyelids, perfectly tinted lips, flawless teenage skin. Her dark hair fell in Hollywood ringlets across her shoulders, manicured, well-placed, well-planned. You gazed up at the cross she sat rotting beneath, and you wondered what God would do, had he the choice to help you understand. You only stopped contemplating when a hand tapped the crown of your head, and you saw your partner looking down at you.

“Her name is Liane Jacobs,” you sighed, “The deputy knew her personally.”

“Seems like everyone did. Seventeen years old, grew up a mile out from here. She worked at the library as a part-time bookkeep and spent her weekends volunteering at this very church,” Fox informed. “The sheriff, deputy, and her parents all swore she was a good girl, a good friend. Devoted to her faith.”

“Look what it got her. So much for being devoted,” you grumbled, tugging Fox down to take a closer look.

A short-lived expression of shock crossed the man’s face, and then he was all business; he knelt over the body, close enough to give you the creeps, and studied the girl’s lacerations. You leaned back on the heels of your boots and glanced around, finding the bystanders terrified of how Fox seemed to dole over the dead body. You squirmed uncomfortably, realizing they must think you had a screw loose, too.

“We’re gonna need an autopsy on the body, but a lot of these mutilations match the other victims just from a visual deduction. The missing ribs, the bruising around the waist and legs. But this is way more aggressive. This is like the other deaths on steroids. The killer didn’t take nearly the same care removing the bones from her chest cavity– I mean, the last murders weren’t surgical by any means, but this? This is violent. Might as well have torn her apart by hand. Somebody is really angry. Maybe even crying out for help. It’s hard to tell.”

“Well, however they’re feeling, they clearly had something against this girl. I mean, they desecrated her, Fox. Her body is completely destroyed. I can’t even fathom what would possess someone to- to ruin a young girl like this.”

Fox nodded curtly, furrowing his eyebrows in agreement. Then his neck craned down, and he mumbled, “Hey, look at this.”

You watched Fox’s glove-clad hand dig into poor Liane’s jeans pocket, tugging out a thin string of wooden beads. It was uneven with little plastic beads between the wood bits, which told you it was homemade. The rosary looked almost charred, and the cross dangling at the bottom was splintered.

“Do you think it’s hers?”

Fox laid the chain in your palm and pointed to the little metal tag that conjoined the sides, where three initials were stamped: LMJ.

“Liane Michelle Jacobs,” he confirmed, “Seems like the type our guy would pick, don’t you think? Looks-wise. Even if she died differently, still fits the profile.”

You moved to drape the tarp back over the body, but not before taking one last look at her face. Liane looked like she didn’t have a care in the world. Her family couldn’t hold an open casket, and everyone would live with how she was found, discarded like roadkill on the local church steps, but she was still beautiful, and that was eating at you.

“I feel horrible.”

“This isn’t really the best first case to work on,” Fox admitted, “I wish it was something different for you.”

You wouldn’t have expected to be so moved by a dead girl. In all your years at college studying the world’s most prolific cases, learning how to compartmentalize, and doing fieldwork in New York, you had a stomach of steel. You could take any case, see any death, and solve it. But you’d never had the feeling you have now, as you see the fourth victim surrendered at the foot of a carpenter. Something dark surrounded her, something that nailed you to the steps. There was a force at work you’d never known before. Something was wrong. You couldn’t be sure if Fox felt it, too, but it was making it near impossible to separate your empathy from your logic. You just wanted to cover Liane, and hope that she didn’t feel any pain, and if everyone might turn their backs to you, maybe you could cry for a moment at the loss of an innocent girl to a monster.

Fox could see you fighting with yourself by the way you chewed at your bottom lip, eyes locked on the girl’s still face. He wasn’t sure what to say, but he had to say something.

“I know this is hard for you. Especially with all the pressure you’re feeling. But I also know having you here will help save other girls like Liane. You’re more than well-equipped for this. If anyone can do the job, it’s you.”

You tipped your head back to blink away a few tears that poked your eyes, and you let the plastic cover the body. Fox cleared his throat and said, “Come on, let’s go. Let the coroner take her.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

Offering you a hand, Fox got you back on your feet and you followed him down the walkway towards the street. Two men shuffled over to scoop up the mess on the steps, and you had to tune out all the crying and commentary coming from the townspeople. The colors on the ground were distracting. Every rock was a different shape and size, all probably appealing to the child who chose them; there were paintings of houses and dogs, butterflies and crosses, mothers and fathers holding hands. Kids always seemed to draw what they knew best, even if their imagination took them to so many other places. You stopped short in your gawking and bent down, picking up one of the rocks lining the path; it was red, with a faded painting of a donkey looking up at a lopsided star. You turned the stone over in your hand, feeling the smooth texture, and found a neatly printed name on the back: Liane J. 3rd Grade. You pocketed the rock with no good reason and hurried to catch up with your partner who was waiting by the passenger door of the rental truck, lost in his head. When you reached him, he opened the door for you, and you slipped inside, suddenly deflated.

“I don’t think there’s much else to do tonight until we hear back from Sherriff Hale or the county morgue, so I guess we should head to the motel. I could use a second to settle in. I bet you could, too.”

“Yes, please. Thank you.” You muttered.

Fox began to shut the door on you, but paused, eyes grazing over your face. You weren’t nervous anymore, but were something else. There wasn’t a touch of color in your cheeks, but your skin was still soft-looking, like your eyes. He didn’t like the softness of them, actually, since it seemed more like fragility, or frailty, than gentle. Sitting in the truck he’d picked, on his case you were unlucky enough to be placed on, you looked young and worn, eager and tired, your hair just sweet fuzz framing the face of a girl unaware of what she agreed to. That might be the worst part, how you looked, along with how he imagined you felt. It made his chest ache.

“Hey, uh, are you hungry? I know, bad time to think about eating, but I haven’t since before the flight this morning.”

You scrunched your nose and thought about the last time you ate. You recalled grabbing a power bar on the way out of the house in the morning, but you also seemed to recall passing it to Fox at the airport gate when he complained about being starving. So, you haven’t eaten at all. The nerves kept you full.

“Well, a little, I guess. I probably should have something.”

“How about I stop and grab us a bite on the way over? Sound good?”

You felt the shadow of a smile on your lips, and you nodded your head. Fox made up for the grin you couldn’t muster with all his teeth and shut the car door swiftly, jogging around the front of the truck to get in the driver’s seat. Without another word, he started the engine and backed away from the scene, leaving the Marysville authorities to pack Liane up and ship her off to the morgue. You watched the crowd watch, and you wondered how a town so small and close-knit as this one appeared could stand around and ogle a dead girl they claimed to cherish. You replayed the whole thing in your head- how you froze, how you almost cried, how Fox had to get you out. You were more than embarrassed at how you acted, but you couldn’t change it. You were just lucky he was the only one paying attention.

Blowing out a slow, sleepy breath, you flipped the map open to look for the motel, but Fox laid his hand on it and said, “It’s okay. I got directions from the Sheriff. He said there’s a burger joint on the way, too. You take it easy for now, okay?”

Unwilling to protest, you sat quietly in the seat and let him drive down the pothole-riddled road. You obsessed over the weight of the rock in your pocket, and it felt the way you did back with Liane’s body– dark, unnatural. You left it there and hoped no one would notice it was gone.

#fox mulder #x files #spooky mulder #the x files #fox mulder x reader #fox mulder x you #soft fox mulder #fox mulder x reader fluff #fox mulder fluff #txf #catholiscism #tw religious themes #religious symbolism

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sophie1973 · 6 months

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WIP Wednesday

Thank you so much to my beloved @stellarm and @onthewaytosomewhere for the tags

Since I posted a big chapter for Bloodstream yesterday (here) I took a break for 24 hrs and focused on my other (small town/lake house) WIP

Story : Henry is a hotelier in London, but his life has become unbearable, so he flees to Texas, where he inherited a house from his aunt (yes I gave Arthur Fox a sister).

I promise I'm working on a better summary. Also, this is a first draft.

The view of the lake is stunning.

Henry puts his messenger bag on the kitchen counter, taking in the inside of the house. There is a spacious cottage-style kitchen with all the modern appliances. A couple of steps lead to a cozy living room with a stonewall fireplace and comfortable couches. There’s a gigantic bookshelf filled to the brim with books, and he smiles for the first time in weeks.

He knows his aunt Marjorie shared the same taste in books as he does, so it’s good to know he’s covered for a while, mainly since most of his own, aside from a few favorites, remained in England.

And he’s not going back for a long, long while.

He needed to get his suitcase out of the rental car, but his priority was to get David out after the one-hour-and-a-half drive from Austin so he could do his business—directly on the car's tire, no less- and get into the house.

This house left to him by his aunt, who probably saved his life by doing so.

He can still hear Pez’s voice in his head (“Just go, Hazza. Fuck that Wicked Witch of the West. I’ll miss you, but I prefer you alive.) and Bea softly smiling at him because she knows. She understands.

That same smile looks at him from the picture on the kitchen counter, a teenage Bea with her arm around him, always the protective big sister. He stares at his own face, a young boy with a big smile, and wonders how it all went so wrong.

Next to that picture is another one of Marjorie and Arthur. They are in their mid-twenties, looking young and beautiful. She never followed in her brother’s footsteps, choosing a quiet life away from the media, but unlike him, she had the chance to grow old and live a fulfilling life.

His father remains eternally young, his face and smile frozen in time in family pictures and film pellicles.

A sudden wave of grief grips Henry’s chest, making him stumble, and he sits down on the steps, trying to catch his breath. He hasn’t had one in a while, probably because he was too busy packing his stuff and leaving everything behind.

His job, which he loves, but he can’t bear the toxic environment created by his grandmother anymore.

His family, even though he will only truly miss Bea. They have promised each other to keep in touch several times a week despite the time difference, and she will come to see him soon.

London, where he lived all his life.

So here he is, 5000 miles from home in Small Town, Texas (otherwise known as Horseshoe Bay), where he doesn’t know anyone and has no idea what the Bloody Hell he will do with his life.

It is terrifying. Part of him knows he should find it exhilarating, but he is having trouble connecting with his optimistic self right now.

He doesn’t even know where to start.

Henry feels a wet nudge at his arm. He looks down, sees David looking at him with his big puppy eyes, and laughs through tears he hadn’t realized were falling. The beagle puts its paw on his arm and tries to lick his face, and he pulls the dog against him, pressing a kiss and nuzzling his nose in its soft fur.

“We’ll be alright, my darling. We’ll be alright.”.

No pressure tag, and sorry if you already did it and I missed it : @hgejfmw-hgejhsf @piratefalls@anincompletelist@itsmaybitheway @tintagel-or-cockleshells@orchidscript@happiness-of-the-pursuit@pridepages

#red white and royal blue #firstprince #alex claremont diaz #henry fox mountchristen windsor #Henry the Burnt out Hotelier #Alex the Charming Veterinarian #rwrb fic #Sophie1973

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beardedmrbean · 3 months

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A Florida family is no longer sending their teen to a California college after their car was "bipped" when they moved their son into his dorm on Saturday, costing them thousands of dollars in lost belongings and important personal documents.

Rhomel Crossman had just graduated from a Florida high school and was slated to attend Lincoln University in downtown Oakland this fall — but after his family was robbed, they told KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco they intend to rescind his enrollment.

"In Oakland, California, you just gotta be careful," Crossman's mother, Nerissa Murray Watson, told the outlet. "Everything is totally gone."

Crossman's family flew to Oakland on Saturday and rented a car with Thrifty, the mother said. After registering their son, the family left their rental car parked a block away from Lincoln University on the corner of 15th and Franklin Street to pick up food at a Jamaican restaurant nearby.

When they returned 15 minutes later, the windows of the rented white Nissan Rogue were broken and their five suitcases stolen.

Among their contents were "three thousand dollars in a bag my husband put under the seat with three passports, social security cards, and my son’s high school diploma and birth certificate," Watson said.

The family also lost a sleep apnea machine that they said they'd left in the car, per KTVU.

"Bipping" is a slang term that comes from the police language "burglary in progress" and refers to smash-and-grab robberies from unattended cars, according to the San Francisco Standard. Thieves commonly use a "bipping hammer," a small, easily concealed tool used to easily and quietly break car windows without much force.

Witnesses told the family they saw masked men driving in a car without a license plate in broad daylight, KTVU reported. "I didn't know that these things happen in America, so it's really strange to me," the Florida mother said. "To me, it's lawless because we even called the police station three times and they said they can't come," she said, telling the outlet that their family was told to file a police report at the station. "I have to bring my son to Florida because it's not safe here," Watson told KTVU.

KTVU and Fox News Digital did not hear back from Lincoln University at press time. UC Berkley told the California outlet that they warn students not to leave belongings in their cars and educate them about safety practices during orientation.

The city of Oakland has recently reported lower crime rates, KTVU reported, touting a violent crime rate that is 30% lower than in 2023 and a burglary rate reduced by 60%.

#nunyas news

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wrinkledparchment · 2 years

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the absence of everything (iii)

Summary: Based on 1x22 | 2x1 - After your trip to Vegas was rudely interrupted by a suspicious manila envelope being delivered to your hotel room, you and Spencer have to cut your vacation short to go back to Quantico. Although you and Spencer try to resume your professional relationship after sharing a bed, Spencer realizes just how much you mean to him, and can finally put a name on what he feels, once and for all.

Word Count: 6,030 words

Author’s Note: So... I’ve been gone for so long but this series is probably the main thing I still receive praise for in my notes. I’m currently focusing more on writing for HL but I’ve had this in my drafts forever and I decided to feed you guys!! I hope you like it... upon rereading it, some of my favorite fluffy lines I’ve ever written are in here. How did I manage that.

Content Warnings: Your general criminal minds ish, death, stuff like that. Some fluff content for you guys!!

Series Taglist: @liviasaugusta @l0ve-0f-my-life @imsuperawkward @nxstalgicnxbxdy @marciscaspar @april-14-blog @sweetreid @essenceproxima @sammypotato67 @idkanymore-05 @slep-slop @squirrellover1967 @irjuejjsaa @yomama-umbridge @holybatflapexpert @rosignoelle @ladyravenclaw @yours-truly-r @spenciepoo338 @masieofthevalley @throughparisallthroughrome @afuckingshituniverse @ladyravenclaw @irjuejjsaa @danandphilfan6 @yasminwashere @mayempress @kys-things

the abscence of everything: i | ii | . . .

“It is me. I am his madness. For years he’s been looking for something to put his madness into. And he found me.” – John Fowles, The Collector

. . .

The coffee table in your Vegas hotel room had cluttered manila envelopes, the key and note given to Spencer, and a piece of missing evidence from your father’s murder scene. Rage bubbled in your stomach, so as Spencer called Gideon on the hotel room phone, quickly putting it on speaker, you paced around, unable to stop seeing your dad’s case files and his dead, mutilated body over and over again.

“Gideon, [Name] and I both got a package, I got a key and a note reading ‘She will die unless you save her, Doctor Reid. Call Gideon. He knows.’ She got two binded pieces of paper from a book her father was binding and repairing when he died.”

Gideon finally let out a sigh, “Yeah, I got a Nellie Fox baseball card from 1963 and a head in a box. Everyone on the team got something, but Elle was hit hard. She was framed for murder in Montego Bay, Hotch and Morgan went down to get her released and bring her back to Quantico.”

You walked closer to the phone and stopped chewing on your nails, rage bubbling inside your chest. “Gideon, whoever the hell this was had access to missing evidence from my father’s murder investigation. Meaning, this son of a bitch is the guy who robbed and killed my father. This is personal.”

“Don’t worry, [Name]. We’re going to find him. Get on the closest flight back here and Garcia will tell you where we are, we’re going to get this guy as soon as we can.” Right after he finished, Gideon hung up, leaving you and Spencer to race to get to the airport in time.

You left your rental car at the airport kiosk, signing it out and rushing after Spencer to get on the flight back home. It was all a blur, blended together to create your perfect disaster. You were stressed, overworked, and ill-prepared. This was the case you’d joined for—to find your father’s murderer and lock the bastard up.

You’d searched and searched and searched, and the criminal found you. Just as you’d eased out of work mode, just as something besides work and murder and blood filled your mind, he stole you away. Because of course he did. Because he was looking.

Spencer was a mess, but not for the same reason. You were obviously under duress, but you were so scattered that he felt like he couldn’t do anything. He did his best, carrying your bags for you, getting you iced chai while waiting for boarding. When you did get on the plane, he immediately lifted the armrest between you back, and pulling out Dante’ Inferno, handing his leather-bound copy over to you.

Your fingers ran over the spine of the book, feeling the indents where the title was, the smooth texture everywhere else. Fine craftsmanship, it must’ve been from a passionate, talented individual bookstore owner with a knowledge of binding. It reminded you of yourself, the care and attention devoted in the craft.

“You’ve got a fine copy here, Spence,” you smiled, as much as you could. “My dad would’ve loved it.”

“Do you think you can still bind books well?” he asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

“I’ll never forget.”

He nodded, smiling something bittersweet, “We’ll find your dad’s old book. And you’re going to fix it.” You smiled again, a little more genuine, and flicked open Spencer’s copy of Dante’s Inferno.

“I’ve got supplies in a closet somewhere,” you recalled, voice soft and quiet in case it suddenly broke. You didn’t want to cry, and you shouldn’t, not here, but it was becoming harder to not be vulnerable with Spencer. “I dream about him every night.”

Reid nods, moving his hand to rest on your knee, moving his thumb gently, allowing you to continue. “I’ve been waiting for a lead, since before I was even in the FBI academy. I’ve been waiting for 8 years and now that I’ve finally got it… just when I was happy, too.” You pause for a minute, letting one tear roll down your face but holding the rest in. “I see his body everywhere I go, can’t stop remembering how the blood felt on my hands, how lifeless he looked. I miss him, even after all this time, and now that I’ve finally got a chance to figure out who did it, I don’t want to.”

Spencer pulled you closer, looking out the small window to see the bright blue sky and all the clouds. Your breathing was still erratic, your heart still broken. And he hated how in the moment you needed him most, he couldn’t figure out what to say. “I’m here,” he murmured, over and over again until he was sure you knew what he meant.

. . .

Even though Garcia’s explanation was rushed, you vaguely understood what was happening. She refused to look you in the eye, too, possibly because Gideon had told the team about what you’d found and how it was connected to you personally. It didn’t matter though, because you’d just pulled up to a possible unsub’s apartment.

The alleyway in which all the cars were parked was also crowded by other FBI members, all unguarded, meaning the unsub wasn’t there. The local police, and an extra car were also there, you assumed some sort of medical examiner, and there was probably a body.

You and Reid were authorized to enter after flashing your badges, and neither of you were asked to put on vests. Walking in, the both of you grabbed gloves, Spencer just holding them while you slid them on and followed him over to the crime scene.

It wasn’t overly graphic, compared to other things you’ve seen, but it was traditional to become emotionally numb in the job. No matter what, someone had died here, an ‘unrepentant bad man’ or not. The bed, and with it, the man named Frank Giles, was lying in the center of the room, a sword plunged into his chest and sticking upright.

Elle, Hotch, Morgan and Gideon all stood in the room, Hotch reading something written on the sword out loud to the rest of the team. “To learn of what should next be done, leave the blade til’ the hour be none.”

Spencer stepped closer, watching as Hotch asked Elle to step back. “The bed’s in the middle of the room,” Hotch began, Morgan interrupting for a second, “And maybe the light from here casts a shadow and points to something.”

Derek quickly began explaining his theory, “Well midnight is 00:00 hours in 24-hour time. Would that be none?” Hotch dismissed this quickly, stating that there would be no shadow at midnight, until Reid finally spoke up.

“3pm.” Everyone turned to him first, then you, then back to him. Obviously, Gideon did tell everyone that this was connected to your father’s death. And surprisingly, you looked very calm for someone about to embark on their quite literal personal case, the one you’d joined for. “Hey guys, Garcia told us where to find you.”

Hotch nodded at you, barely acknowledging how personal of a situation this was for you, but quickly dismissed it, listening to Spencer talk about medieval terms for hours of the day, then asking for lighting equipment so he could replicate the 3pm sun.

While people walked in and out with various standing lights, Gideon finally walked up to you. You turned to him, offering a quick nod and smile before quickly dropping it when he mentioned your dad. “You know you can’t let your past affect this case,” he states, and you nod. “It’s obviously personal, and I know this person is targeting you, but you can’t allow yourself to make mistakes because of your past with the unsub.”

Sighing, you agreed with Gideon, instead moving next to the shadow as Reid adjusted it, and you knocked on the wall until you heard a hollow sound, ripping away the wallpaper without need for Hotch’s command. Underneath all the wallpaper was a box, and you immediately grabbed it.

Reid stopped you, “Are we sure it’s safe?”

Hotch quickly dismissed him and allowed you to examine it. You played with the lock for only a few seconds before looking back up at Reid. “Give me the key.” Without hesitation, he handed it over and you shoved it in, and to nobody’s surprise, it fit perfectly. You lifted the lid, and familiar music had began to play, one that Reid had played for you during the classical music quiz.

“Forellenquintett,” you and Reid murmured in unison, the rest of the team looking up at each other before shrugging it off. Reid reached inside to grab the note from the music box, reading it out loud to the rest of the team.

Never would it be night, but always clear day to any man’s sight.

Elle scoffed, walking off, “Well, that was worth it.”

Gideon ignored her, speaking right afterwards. “The lid. Little tab right under the lock.”

You quickly fiddled with it, revealing a CD and a lock of hair that nearly perfectly matched yours. You hummed under your breath in disapproval and disgust, Derek and Elle working together to put the lock of hair in an evidence back and grab the CD for review.

After heading back to the table room, you and Reid sat next to each other, which was your usual spot. For some reason the team seemed to eye the both of you, suspicious about what had happened in Vegas and why you two were still together when you should’ve left before that.

You carefully watched the TV after someone slid in the CD. A dimly lit desk with cluttered items all around it, and a very large throne behind it. A man wobbled into frame, clearly injured by something, which the team noted.

“I assure you, you’ll all understand in the end why it must be this way. You might even thank me. You know now you’re on a quest; a young girl’s life depends on the successful completion of it. As you can see, she’s quite beautiful . . . and in distress.”

You clenched your fists when you saw the girl come into frame, screaming at the camera, begging for something. You wondered if everyone on the team recognized just how much, even from the little they all saw, how she looked like you.

“Now please listen closely for there is one rule, and this rule must be followed. The one rule is only the members of your team may participate in the quest.” He began to list your names, and displayed pictures of each of you in the video, you and Reid in the same frame taken during one of the previous cases. “A quest must be completed in a proper way, or it isn’t a quest, is it? That’s it. One rule. Simple.

“Now, you will be receiving an item soon that will hold the final clue you’ll need to finish the quest. You will find you also need a book which has inspired many an adventure like mine. Believe me when I tell you, I truly hope to see you all soon. It will mean a successful end to this adventure for all of us, but especially [Name].”

With that, the clip was over and all that was left was static. Reid had tensed after he’d mentioned you by name, and it didn’t fly over the heads of any of your coworkers either. The unsub knows you so well, doesn’t he? Pictures of you and Reid together, knowledge of just how to tick you off, and additionally, he knows what happened to your father the last night he was alive and is plunging that knife of knowledge right into your heart and twisting it. Involving all your coworkers in it, making it clear that all of this, it’s all for you.

You were the subject of madness, the main target of all of this. You were the ‘protagonist’, he was the villain, and everyone else—the dead, your coworkers, the girl he’d kidnapped—were all side characters in the story. But Reid, standing right next to you in the picture while everyone else was photographed individually, that said something to you. He knew about whatever was happening between the two of you, so much so that it was terrifying because he probably knew better than either of you.

Suddenly, the team was active. “This guy’s got pictures of us?” Elle exclaims.

Reid fiddled with the pen in his hand, “What do we do now?”

Hotch eyed you, noting how tense you seemed when only just minutes ago, even with a dead body in front of you, you were eerily calm. “The lock of hair’s being analyzed for DNA. There might be something on file.” JJ walked out, vowing to figure out who the girl is. Hotch nodded, “Let’s get the clues up on the board. Maybe we can make some sense of something.”

Elle immediately objected, “Wait, we’re going to play this guy’s game?”

Reid sighed, glancing at you for a few moments, “Do we have a choice?”

Everybody stayed silent, Spencer’s words lingering in the air while Gideon and Hotch went to a different room. You began quietly pinning the clues in the evidence bags to the board, not saying a single word to anybody else in the room. Elle found the soft crumple of the evidence bags relaxing, eyes closing softly until Hotch interrupted her nap and sent Anderson to take her home.

Soon enough, yet another piece of evidence, a list of number sets in a strict pattern, though it may not seem like it without a keen eye. Just as Spencer opened his mouth, you beat him to the punch. “Sets of numbers, page number, line number, word number. It’s a cipher based on a book which he expects us to know.”

Derek stares back at you, Spencer’s mouth opening and closing like a fish. Sure, you were quicker sometimes than he was, but you seemed so rigid, it was odd to them. “Yeah but what book?”

“Well, this ‘quest’ is clearly meant to be personal to you, [Name],” Derek proposed, “Meaning this is a book he expects you to know.” Spencer sighed, walking over to grab the ripped pages the unsub had sent you and examines them, reading the words hoping he’d remember reading this book at some point but he doesn’t.

“Dante’s Inferno?” Reid questioned, even though he obviously knew it wasn’t.

“Both of us would recognize it. Whatever book my dad was fixing that night, it was that book. Specifically, a first edition. Let’s see… that was eight years ago. Do you think memory recall would work?”

Elle and Derek simply stood off to the side while you and Reid debated each other, glancing at each other occasionally. Yet, the body language was the same as it always was, and maybe what had changed was the way Elle and Derek read the situation.

“When you got there, the book was gone; how would you know which one he was supposed to be working on?” Spencer rebutted.

“I was closing, I must’ve—” you stammered, “I must’ve known what book he was working on, I have to!” Soon, you were pacing around the room, muttering things underneath your breath and attempting to retrace your steps from 8 years ago that also occurred across the country.

Derek set his hands on your shoulders, holding you in place and stopping your pacing. “Okay, [Name], calm down, we can always try memory recall, and if not, the clues should be in the evidence—this guy is meticulous, I’m sure he’s accounted for this.”

Suddenly, Gideon walked back into the room, looking at the four of you. Spencer was still staring at the evidence board, Hotch leaning back in his chair, and Derek and you standing in the middle of the room. “[Name], you don’t have to relive that memory if it’s not necessary. How would we proceed if we didn’t have all these clues? What’s the first thing we’d look at?”

“Victimology,” you swallowed, both thankful and displeased that Gideon was looking out for your wellbeing. Everybody was watching you so closely, especially because this was a personal case to you, as if they expected you to break down at any moment.

“And we have a victim, Rebecca Bryant. Hotch and I will follow the mailman lead. Derek, take JJ and find out everything you can about Rebecca. Reid, [Name], stay here and find the book. If anybody can do it, it’s you two.”

Everyone else left the room, Reid and you staying. Sure, Gideon didn’t want you to relive the worst moments of your entire life, but you were so close. So you shut the door to the roundtable room and turned back to Reid. “I want to do memory recall.”

. . .

The chair you were sitting on was soft and sturdy, so you let yourself lean back, and you closed your eyes. You breathed, waiting for Reid to begin. You tried to calm yourself, enough to the point where your anger flooded away and all you could do was think. See your memories in a clear light.

“I’m going to try and calm down first, can you guide me?”

Spencer nodded, breathing along with you. “What is your favorite memory?”

You focused in on the word, smiling; favorite. You could hear Spencer’s giddy laugh echoing in your ears, bright city lights clouding your vision. The hood of your black rental car from Vegas reflected them, the smaller model of the Eiffel tower standing tall, neon signs and main strip casino windows. The cool, night breeze in your hair. You could still feel Reid’s lingering presence in the passenger’s seat, the way he looked at you with those doe-y, hazel eyes. His pupils were inflated, shrinking again when he turned away to change the stereo.

You could feel the pain in your toe when you stubbed it on the hotel bedframe, you could feel the newly replaced bedsheets of the hotel against your legs, and you could see Spencer standing over you, smiling so widely when you laughed. The way his warm skin felt against yours, how gentle he was with his arms around you.

You imagined the pool water as he splashed it back at you, the water droplets against his skin and the way he slicked back his wet hair. His laugh and shy smile after you told him he still looked like a rat when he was wet. The understanding look when he listened to your struggles with the BAU, your life story, the interest in your past and your hobbies.

After all the memories you’d made yesterday had flashed through your head in a matter of seconds, you registered what it meant. When you thought of happy, you thought of him. Some of your favorite moments in life were with him, being around him, watching him. Him, him, him. This feeling—it was consuming you, and it felt so delightful. You wanted it to devour you, and you let it.

“Yesterday,” you whispered after a minute of reliving the best day of your life. You didn’t open your eyes, but you could hear Reid shift in his chair and you smiled, assuming he was blushing. Profiler or not, he knew what that meant.

He sighed, “Are you ready to go back?” You nodded. “It was eight years ago. How old were you?”

“I was sixteen, and about to graduate high school.” You still remember how frustrated and overwhelmed you were. The night before you discovered your dad, you had the closing shift along with a massive pile of homework and colleges to apply to. You sat behind the wooden counter, combing through your homework as fast as you could, eager for your father to come and take an overnight shift in working with the books.

“What time was it?”

“It was five minutes until the clock struck 11,” you said, which was the beginning of your father’s shift at the bookstore. You were packing up your homework and college applications back into your bookbag, noting on a stray piece of paper all the leftover homework and applications you had to pour over in the morning. You were so tired, but you wanted to thank your father for taking the shift tonight and letting you rest.

“My father is coming in,” you tell Spencer, reliving the last moment you saw him alive. The door rang, signaling his entrance. His hair and shoulders were wet from the rain outside, something you didn’t remember about the scene until now. He smiled, asking you how your day went.

“Okay, sweetpea,” he had begun, “are you ready to go home?” You nodded to him, but not before helping him with his bags. He looked at you, smiling while you followed him down to the book storage, an icy cold basement.

You watched, setting out his materials for him while he brought out the book, which was partially bound but tattered still, especially the cover, and you had to take a double take, pausing and hearing Reid’s voice. You weren’t listening, but rather going through the evidence in your head.

JJ’s butterfly, Reid’s key, and a lock of hair all on top of a piece of bloodied parchment. You could see the dainty, cursive letters, shocked as to how you’d not remember the cover when you worked at a bookstore. You gasped, nearly crying as you remembered the last thing you’d seen your father doing alive.

You tried to shake it all out of your head, the unsub wanted to get to you. This quest was curated for you and him, a chess game, and you needed to have a level head to win. Sitting straight up, your eyes shot open and you and Reid shared a glance, him smiling proudly. You handled yourself so well.

“The Collector, by John Fawkes,” you stated, rushing over to the board where all the evidence was pinned. You took off the butterfly, the lock of hair, the key and the bloodied paper and set them in front of Reid.

“These are all on the first edition front cover, a bloodied piece of paper as a background, the key, the lock of hair and the butterfly all on top. Not only do they have a personal significance to us, but to the book. I should’ve known sooner,” you berated yourself, explaining quickly before walking off, ready to call the nearest library for their first edition copy of The Collector.

. . .

Reid, Garcia, and you had all stood around, them solving the cipher and writing the message on the board. Elle had been sent home earlier, so you were a team member short, but you were closer than you’d ever been on solving your dad’s murder. So close you could almost imagine him, smiling down at you and telling you that you were doing a good job. That’s all the encouragement you needed.

Hotch had berated Anderson for only dropping Elle off rather than staying at her house, stating that the unsub had all of your personal information. You begged Hotch to let you go to her house and stay, but he said he had needed you too much because of your connection to the case.

Instead, you watched as Reid and Garcia went over the cipher with the librarian. You walked away from the team when Hotch called you. “Yes sir?”

“Elle was shot at her house, I’m at the hospital now, I need you and Reid to keep working on those clues. I’ll update you when she’s out of surgery.”

Your stomach twisted, wondering why in all hell the unsub took Elle. This was your quest, the team were all there to aid you. Why would he hurt Elle instead of you? Instead of your family or someone you were close to? You nearly cried out as you broke into tears—this team, the BAU, is your family. And you’ve brought all of them into danger just by being here.

When you walked back into the room, you’d discovered that Reid had called his mom to be flown into Quantico by the federal agents there, and that you’d be meeting his mom for the first time. She was involved in this case now too, and you wondered if you should stick around after this. If all of this, if Elle’s shooting was your fault.

. . .

You leaned against Reid’s desk as he fiddled with the evidence bag that the poem was in. “Your mom’s safe,” you said, “agents just picked her up and she’s flying over here now. Garcia told me.”

Reid didn’t even dare to meet your gaze, staring at the poem still. “I forgot she always used to read me this poem,” he started. “And I realized that nobody knows things like the fact that JJ collects butterflies except for me. People tell me their secrets all the time, and I think it’s because they know I don’t have anyone to betray them to… except for my mother. I tell her pretty much everything in my letters. Did you know that I write her everyday?”

You smiled, leaning forward, “I did, Reid. And I know that you feel guilty about not seeing her two days ago. That you write all of those letters to make up for the fact that you think you don’t visit her enough.”

He looked up at you, a clear question in his eyes. How do you know?

“Reid, during my memory recall, when you asked what my favorite memory was… I’ve been alive for twenty-four years, and out of any memory—the ones with my best friend, the good days here, my childhood—I chose Las Vegas. Not because of the beautiful city lights, or the fancy car, but because you were there with me, just us.

“I told you about my father not because you don’t have anyone to betray me to, but because I want you to know. Because I trust you whole-heartedly, and if anybody in this world should know me best, it’s you.”

Spencer finally held his eye contact with you, swallowing hard. You let your words hang in the air before putting your hand on his shoulder and squeezing, allowing it to linger there for a few seconds before walking back to Garcia’s lair, wanting to soak up all the information she might have.

You heard the signature ‘beep’ of Garcia hanging up on someone, and shut her door gently before striding over to her desk. “What’s going on so far?”

She didn’t lift up her eyes to look at you, typing furiously on her computer, “I’m searching for Rebecca Bryant’s biological family, turns out she was adopted by the Bryant family and her real last name is Garner.”

Penelope filled you in further on the details, actively working to unseal her adoption papers and find out what happened to the original family; after all, the victimology is the first thing you look at.

Could you consider yourself a victim? He’d been taunting and tormenting you and your entire team, he was most likely the man who had killed your father, or at least knew what happened or was involved somehow. Your father had been murdered prior to Rebecca’s disappearance, and you considered why this man would have been involved with your father’s murder and Rebecca’s disappearance.

Were you actually a target?

You went to sit back at your desk, looking at your old piece of parchment paper with your favorite canto of Dante’s Inferno written in cursive, the fifth, the canto of Francesca. The most famous line written in bold and in the original Italian, “Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona,” or “Love, that excempts no beloved from loving in return.”

The bullpen was a shuffle of people, other agents you didn’t interact with that much, that didn’t come with you on cases, and tons of other people rushing around, going through files, making phone calls. Spencer strided over from the small kitchenette to sit at his desk, which was connected to yours, sitting across from you with a small wall of transparent glass in between.

He smiled at you, a warm, small smile that frequently was exchanged between the two of you. Sometime in between your talk at his desk and the hour or so you went without seeing each other, there was a microscopic layer of tension between you, beginning right where your desks separated.

The shuffling of the bullpen dulled the ache of the tension, and so did your eyes slowly closing to rest for just a few minutes as Reid spent his time half-dozing off while reading a printed out version of The Collector. Reid finally broke this silence when your head began to tilt to the side as you fell into a tiny cat nap. He called for you, with no response, so he got out of his chair and poked you in the forearm.

You wiggled a bit in your sleep, shifting around trying to find some semblance of comfort in your uncomfortable office chair. He takes a moment to stare just for a bit at your face. Looking at your eyes gently closed, your face peaceful even in this painful position, his mind fogged with the soft midnight laughter you traded with each other in the Vegas hotel room. He imagined the weight of your head on his chest, your arm laid over his stomach, your face and warm breath against the crook of his neck.

He realized quickly the words that came along with the happy memories made along with you. The constricting yet freeing feeling stuck in his throat and squeezed around his heart, the sort of euphoria you associate with the warm feeling of sun on your skin and driving a convertible along the coast. That beautiful, powerful, devouring feeling of knowing that someone has you. You’re theirs, completely and utterly.

The feeling of pure joy when you stop daydreaming and start remembering memories instead. When the words to describe this feeling escape you because all you can think about is that one, special person who has altered the course of your life forever. When you can no longer write romance because none of the words you put onto a page can do this feeling--this love--justice.

He was in love with you. He felt it in everywhere he looked, everything he did, and every moment he lived.

Spencer took a quick look around the office, and gently prodded at your sleeping form again until you open your eyes just a little, squinting against the bright lights of the bullpen. He held out his hand, which you, in your sleepy, half-awake state, took with no hesitation as he guided you into the conference room and turned off most of the lights.

He showed you to the couch, sitting on the far end, leaving you room to lay down and take the rest of it while the two of you rested and waited for Spencer’s mother to arrive. The crown of your head was just barely touching the side of his thigh, and eventually, moving and wiggling around in your sleep made you lay your head straight in his lap.

He felt the sudden movement and then the weight, and stared down at your side profile, admiring the way the dim lights highlighted your face perfectly. He brushed hair out of your face and tucked it behind your ear, and he swear he saw a ghost of a smile on your face. He fell asleep, fingers still intertwined and resting in your hair.

Spencer dreamt of city lights and midnight laughter and Vegas hotel rooms. He dreamt of walking up behind you while you made pancakes in the morning and piling kisses all along the side of your neck and face, arms wrapped around your waist and the way your body would be decorated in stripes by the morning sun.

He was woken up by the distribution of weight changing, your head shifting to stare up at him, hair surrounding your face in a pile on his lap. The sleepy smile that graces your face twists his stomach into knots and melts his heart.

You seem to not mind the fact that your head had wound up in his lap, and instead, you muttered a small, sleepy, single word. “Coffee?”

He almost laughed, just stunned by how natural the domesticity and comfortability between you two felt. Like the wall that had built between you--separating your pinkies from intertwining, separating your fates from inexplicably linking--had suddenly vanished. There was a mutual understanding there--you make me feel safe, you make me happy, you are mine.

He slid out from underneath your head, turning around just before he reached the exit to look at you, splayed across the couch comfortably, the dim 5:00 am moonlight gleaming through the windows, and your eyes, shining even brighter back at him with a giant smile on your face.

In the small kitchenette, he tidies himself up as much as possible, fussing with his hair while coffee brewed, and just as he finished pouring the both of you a cup, a group of FBI agents gathered around the entrance with a blonde, tall and pale woman that was Spencer’s mother.

“That’s why you’re so skinny, you know,” Spencer’s mother, Diana Reid stated only a few seconds after walking into the bullpen. Spencer turned his head, setting down the pot of coffee. His mother’s eyes were sunken just a bit, dark circles underneath, worry lines accenting her face. “Too much coffee.”

Her frame was cramped up, shoulders tightened and her body looking even more frail by the minute. Her short pixie cut looked untamed, and Spencer wondered how stressed she had been. He knows that she hates planes, and the government, and basically anything else where somebody might be watching her.

Schizophrenia tends to do that to a person. Even the smartest people get unlucky, get ill in a time where there isn’t much help or refuse it themselves. Spencer lives every day wondering about his mother’s happiness and well-being, but knows she is taken care of in her facility. He writes her everyday, and thinks about his childhood memories, about his father and mother and how he wanted a relationship that was nearly the opposite of that.

They loved each other at one point. Enough to have him and raise him together for a few years, and all he can think about is how much he would love and cherish his wife, his children with her, and how no matter what got in the way, he couldn’t see himself ever letting go.

All these thoughts, worry for his mother, himself, his future, his children float through his head and pass by in a few seconds. The next few seconds consist of you, whether his mother would approve of you and just how much she might adore you for seeing you make her son so happy.

Finally coming back to reality, he nodded at the FBI agents who had brought her here. “Thanks a lot guys, I’ve got her.” Walking forward, he looks at the horrified look on his mother’s face, eyebrows raised and hand coming to cover her mouth, glancing around the FBI bullpen, clearly unnerved by where she was.

Once the FBI agents have disappeared around the corner of the hallway into the bullpen and Spencer takes a few more steps towards her, she lets her hand drop from her face. “You know I’m terrified of flying,” she states, shaking her head for emphasis.

Spencer gives a small, fake smile. “I know mom, I’m sorry.”

Spencer glances over his mom’s shoulder, seeing you come out of the roundtable room and begin walking over to where he and his mom were standing. Still obviously upset, his mom continues, “Well then why did you have those fascists arrest me?”

He can hear your footsteps echoing throughout the mostly quiet bullpen, and he tries to calm his mom down before you arrive here, to introduce yourself.

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