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skelavender · 1 year ago

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“Do you know what today is, Scully?” Mulder says at the click of her heels entering the office, sat at his desk the same as always. “Leap day.” She says dryly. Same as it has been. “You know, Scully, there are all kinds of traditions about this stuff that vary from culture to culture–” “I know. St. Matthias, leaplings, unhappy marriages.” She sighs, and her voice turns slightly bitter. “And Leap Day Lovers.” Mulder blinks at her, slightly resembling a fish. “How did you–” “I’ve heard you say it so many times, Mulder.” She throws her arms to the side dramatically with a sigh of resignation. “I’m in a time loop.” OR If you add a time loop plot to your desk sex, its suddenly an elevated piece of literature

read X-File #02291996 on ao3, or below the cut!

Scully

Dana Scully has a routine. 6:30, wake up. It doesn’t matter if she has an alarm clock or not; at 6:30, she is awake. Flip the coffee pot on, get dressed while it heats up. Pour a cup into one of her mismatched mugs, fix her hair while it cools to a reasonable temperature. She makes toast, maybe eggs, maybe cereal, always some sort of protein. Breakfast, although she hates sounding like a med school cliche, is the most important meal of the day.

Thursday February 29th, 1996, is no different from any other morning. She wakes up at 6:32.

Coffee pot on.

Her chest is killing her, a product of yesterday’s ill-fitting bra and a too-tight bulletproof vest. She forgoes the wretched garment today, instead pulling a slightly stiffer blouse and blazer that will make sure no other agents are any wiser about her wardrobe choices. She isn’t planning on leaving the office today anyway, and it’s not like Mulder hasn’t seen her without a bra before. This is not her first day with post-Kevlar chest pain.

Paper retrieved.

Coffee poured.

Hair arranged into neat copper swoops.

Toast with peanut butter.

Scully has a routine.

She wouldn’t have even known it was a leap year if Mulder hadn’t mentioned it, flipping that stupid fun facts page-a-day calendar around at her as soon as she entered the basement office.

“Do you know what today is, Scully?” Mulder greets, his voice laced with enthusiasm that only ever precedes the most ridiculous of X-files.

“Thursday?” She suggests dryly.

“Thursday, February 29th.” He says, “Happy leap day, Scully.”

“Thrilling,” she rolls her eyes and settles into her desk and flips open the files from the Modell case.

“You know, Scully, there are all kinds of traditions about this stuff that vary from culture to culture. Leap year changes the feast day of St. Matthias; in Taiwan, people make their parents a specific noodle dish because it is believed that they are more likely to die on a leap day; those born on leap day – called ‘leaplings’, by the way – are chronically unlucky, people who get married on leap days are cursed with unhappy marriages.” This factoid is followed by a dramatic office-chair turn, “Which brings me to this.” He tosses a file in her direction. “The Leap Day Lovers.”

“Leap Day Lovers?” Scully echoes with a skeptical expression, one eyebrow raised.

“There are a number of couples who have reported getting caught in a time loop on leap day. They weren’t together when the loop started, but they were by the time it ended. There are a couple gaps, but not everyone is going to go public with that kind of story.”

“Mulder, this is ridiculous. Leap years are a concept invented by Julius Caesar to reconcile our imperfect calendar system with the way we understand and structure time. There is no naturally occurring scientific difference between leap days and any other day of the year.”

“But what if there is?”

“There’s not! It’s a social construct! There’s nothing to study here.”

“But Scully, listen. Their stories match. None of them were aware of the Leap Day Lovers before it happened to them.”

“It’s ridiculous.”

“C’mon, you don’t think it’s a little romantic? Time warps around them until they can figure themselves out. It’s like the universe is rooting for them!”

“I don’t believe in the universe, Mulder.”

“You believe in God.”

“I also believe in science, which has not proven time capable of looping, or even being harnessed by the power of man to be able to travel through it.”

“Not time travel, either? Scully, you’re gonna start hurting my feelings.”

She rolls her eyes. “It’s not a case, Mulder. Just a bunch of whack jobs who end up dating and bouncing their crazy off of one another. Now we have a heap of paperwork to do on the Modell case, so let's get on that.”

“Fine, but when one of the Leap Day Lovers of past years responds to my emails or we have a new time distortion report on March 1st, I reserve the right to gloat.” He sets the file on top of his precarious tower of cases he wants to investigate, and takes the blank paperwork from her.

The day that passes is… boring, to say the least. One of the blandest days she’s had since she joined the X-Files department. Mulder leaves just before 10:00 to get coffee, and returns with a cup from the cafe across the street from the Hoover building. She eats her salad for lunch. Mulder does not get a response from any of his so-called Leap Day Lovers.

She goes home at the end of standard working hours, content with the headway they’ve made on their paperwork. It’s unusual, being home in time to cook a proper dinner, but she’s happy to be able to do it today. She settles into bed with a cup of chamomile tea and a book, an honest to god book that she’s been trying to read for months and taken on many plane rides but never gotten through. At a perfectly reasonable 10:00 PM, she turns her lamp off and settles in to sleep.

In the morning, Scully wakes at 6:32. She gets her paper and her coffee, does her hair, eats her toast. She goes to work.

Mulder stands in the exact spot he did yesterday. When he flips around the page a day calendar, it once again reads February 29th.

“Oh, very funny, Mulder.” She says before he can launch the rant about leap day superstitions that she’s sure was about to ensue.

“What?”

“Save me the leap day prank, it’s not going to work.”

Mulder looks at her blankly. “What?”

“What.”

“It’s February 29th.”

“No, it’s March 1st. Yesterday was February 29th.”

“No, yesterday was February 28th.”

“Mulder–”

“It was! Look at the computer!” He leads her across the room, and once it boots up, it does display the date as 02/29/96.

“Okay, so you planned to try to prank me, and came in early to set it back. It’s not going to work, Mulder.”

He looks at her sideways before shaking his head and opening the file on his desk. “It’s fine, we all get days mixed up sometimes. Remember when I missed my own birthday because I got two pages of the calendar stuck together? Anyway, I wanted to show you this,” he turns the file toward her. “There are all kinds of traditions about this stuff that vary from culture to culture. Leap year changes the feast day of St. Matthias; in Taiwan, people make their parents a specific noodle dish because it is believed that they are more likely to die on a leap day–”

“You… Mulder, you already told me all of this.”

“When?”

“When? It– yesterday, Mulder! 24 hours ago, almost exactly.”

“I didn’t even know about most of this until this morning.”

“You’re about to tell me about the Leap Day Lovers.”

Mulder’s lip firms a mock pout. “Way to ruin the climax, Scully. Did you pull their files yesterday or something?”

Scully slides a hand across her eyes in resignation. “If I let you tell me about them, can we get to work on finishing our paperwork?”

“I don’t have high hopes of finishing the paperwork today, but yes. The Leap Day Lovers…”

Mulder’s lecture is the same as it had been yesterday. He must have been planning this for a while, in order to memorize his spiel well enough to deliver it line-by-line like this. If Scully weren’t annoyed, she would be impressed. He even sneezes at the same time, in the same cadence.

She does finally badger him into doing paperwork, but when she opens her briefcase to retrieve the paperwork she had started yesterday, she can’t find it. And it isn’t at her workstation, either.

“Mulder, did you take my report?”

“No?”

“Dammit, Mulder, this isn’t funny! That took all day!”

“Scully neither of us have started our reports yet.” He looks at her curiously, concerned and suspicious of her confusion. “Are you alright, Scully?”

“I just don’t want to have to redo the whole thing.”

“You seem pretty sure of this.” His eyes narrow. “Scully, are you in a time loop?”

“No.” She answers quickly and decisively. She can’t be, because such an idea is ridiculous. “I must just be getting my cases confused.”

“Uh huh.” Mulder does not seem convinced, but turns to his own report anyways, leaving Scully to rewrite the report she knows she already started.

Something is up, that’s for sure, but it certainly isn’t something as preposterous as a time loop.

***

It’s her 15th February 29th, and Scully is getting tired of Mulder’s bullshit. She’s going to kill him.

He’s on his fifteenth rant about an X-file that isn’t an X-file. Or, at least, it wasn’t an X-file fourteen February 29ths ago.

“– those born on leap day – called ‘leaplings’, by the way, isn’t that adorable–”

She can’t take it anymore. She needs him to shut up or she is going to spontaneously combust, which would probably just result in her name ending up in another goddamn X-file. She thinks she may be slowly losing her mind. That is what she’ll blame it on if she wakes up on Thursday again. She reaches over the table and grabs that stupid ugly goddamn paisley tie. Whatever off-the-wall theory he was about to suggest turns into an incredibly dignified “Mmmf?” before she cuts him off.

The kiss is not quite hard enough for their teeth to click together, but it’s a near thing. Mulder freezes for a moment, though it feels like an eternity, before melting into her.

“Oh, ok,” he whispers against her lips, pulling back slightly. She’s about to respond, say something about the time loop, apologize for kissing him like that. Instead, the room starts fading.

When she opens her eyes, the clock reads 6:32.

***

Mulder

Mulder gets to the office around 5:30 AM, unable to sleep and with his brain hooked on the idea of a leap day. He hadn’t even realized it was a leap year until he booted his home computer up to check his email, and had noticed the 02/29/96 in the corner. So instead of trying to find a case on the web or through newsletters, he digs into the history and superstitions of leap years. Once a vaguely reasonable time to go to the office rolls around, he hops on the Metro to the Hoover building and scours the filing cabinets for anything to do with leap days. This is when he finds the fascinating phenomena of the Leap Day Lovers.

When Scully shows up, he’s a few cups of coffee deep and excited to share with her what he’s found. She’s going to try to refute it of course, but he still enjoys sharing it with her. Her “Mulder, you’re off your rocker” face is, frankly, adorable.

She, as always, looks perfectly put together as she steps into the room, accompanied by the click click click of her heels. Her hair is perfectly in place, her blazer neatly buttoned. She’s gorgeous. He flips his fact-a-day calendar around to take her attention off his face, which he’s sure shows how he’s taking her in.

He walks her through what he’s found. The Leap Day Lovers, he saves for the grand finale. It’s by far the most interesting file related to the date, and the fact that Scully always gets a little fidgety when he brings up any sort of romance-adjacent file doesn’t hurt.

“Leap Day Lovers?” Scully echoes with a skeptical expression, one eyebrow raised.

He would normally be irritated by someone poking holes in an X-File like this. If it were anyone else poking holes in his theories like this, it would piss Mulder off. But the way Scully approaches it, with exasperation, yes, but also with the desire for an intellectual debate on the subject, he doesn't mind. Plus, she's pretty when she's proving him wrong.

“But what if there is?”

“There’s not! It’s a social construct! There’s nothing to study here.”

“But Scully, listen. Their stories match. None of them were aware of the Leap Day Lovers before it happened to them.”

“It’s ridiculous.”

They bicker, as they always do, about the difference between God and a universal power, about the science behind temporal anomalies. It’s comforting, to Mulder, how Scully consistently rebuts his theories. How she is able to bring him back down to earth when his head is floating in space.

“Sure, fine, but when we have a new time distortion report on March 1st, I reserve the right to gloat.” He shuffles the files back into a neat (or as neat as he ever is) stack, leaving the Leap Day Lovers file on top. Scully rolls her eyes so hard he thinks she may have pulled a muscle.

Though he resigns to paperwork, his eyes are hurting by 10AM and he needs a break. He announces to Scully that he’s doing a coffee run, but she declines his offer to pick something up for her.

On his way back, as he approaches the intersection next to the entrance of the Hoover building. This intersection is the home to Mulder’s favorite part of DC, something he loves more than the Air and Space Museum, more than any monument. At this intersection stands a defaced street sign. It’s supposed to instruct turning bicycles to use crosswalks, but a single “u” has been removed by an unknown yet brilliant vandal, resulting in a sign that says “se x-walks.” There is a sign that says “sex walks” right outside the national headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mulder laughs every time he passes it.

Apparently, he’s not the only one. A man walking a three-legged dog crosses the street towards him, and when the owner glances up at the sign, he bursts out laughing. The hilarity of the sign tickles him so much that he’s still laughing when he reaches the curb of the sidewalk, and he trips. The dog, displeased with his owner’s clumsiness, seems to glare at the giggling man.

Mulder snorts at the ordeal, and continues inside to allow the sludge of paperwork to consume him once again.

Scully leaves at 5:00 on the dot, but Mulder chooses to stay a little longer. She might not want to investigate the Leap Day Lovers, but he’s fascinated by the phenomenon, and decided to read a couple more accounts that he had emailed himself in the morning. He falls asleep facedown on the desk.

Mulder wakes up on his couch at 4AM with a vague feeling of anticipation. He blinks his eyes open to see his living room, lit only by his fish tank. This is unusual, considering that he doesn’t remember coming home. He could have sworn he fell asleep at the office. His watch matches the time displayed by his clock, so he hasn’t lost time, so no aliens. And this would not be the first time he had no memory of his commute home.

He shuffles, still half asleep, to his desk and drops into the chair before fumbling to flip his computer on. Might as well get a start on the day, especially if he wants to find any reports of Leap Day Lovers, or any leap day related phenomena before they can be covered up. As the screen finishes its start-up paces, he freezes. There, in tiny, digital numerals, “02/29/96” stares back at him. Surely, this is just a cruel ironic trick of the universe. It always loves to play those on him. His computer must have had some error, a glitch, power outage. Something. But no, his email has the same 4 unread messages from various co-workers he doesn’t want to respond to. But that could still be chalked up to a computer error. He’s trying to be rational. He’s trying to think like Scully.

He gets dressed in a hurry, pulling his left shoe on as he locks his door. If this was just a computer error, he could check the office computers. The newspapers. The train schedule. He can’t rush into this blind. The train, as it was the last morning, is two minutes late. He makes a mental note. He nearly runs through security at the Hoover Building and narrowly avoids breaking his neck on the stairs to the basement office.

He’s nearly bouncing on the stool as he watches the computer boot up. When it comes to life, the corner reads 02/29/29. Fuck.

Could be a coincidence. A suspiciously Scully-like voice echoes through his head.

Mulder needs more to confirm his suspicions. He thinks back to what he had done yesterday, searching for anything odd enough it would be unlikely to repeat. Around 10, he had gone out for coffee at the cafe a couple blocks over, and had laughed at a three-legged dog glaring at their clumsy owner. Even if the guy walks his dog at the exact same time every day along the exact same route, he won’t trip at the exact same spot as he had yesterday. At least not if he’s not in a time loop. A glance at the clock tells him that he still has hours until then, so he hunkers down and gathers as much information as possible on temporal anomalies.

He hardly even notices when Scully arrives, absorbed in his research. She tries to get him to work on the mountain of paperwork and reports they should be working on, the stuff they had completed yesterday but had magically been undone, but he brushes her off. He can feel her gaze, equally concerned and pissed off at his apparent distraction, but ignores it. If he’s right, she won't even remember it tomorrow.

Mulder stands suddenly a few minutes before 10AM. “I’m going to go get coffee,” He explains. Scully waves him out without a word, and Mulder whisks down the basement hallway, coat billowing behind him.

Mulder makes it to the corner of 10th and Pennsylvania at 9:58 by his watch, and leans against a large planter adorning the sidewalk. Sure enough, at exactly 10:14, a balding man crosses 10th Street, then Pennsylvania Avenue. Sure enough, when he passes the sign that reads se x-walks, the man guffaws loudly. When he makes it to the curb, he’s still laughing at the hilarity that is that sign, which is fair considering that Mulder himself often laughs when passing it, and trips up onto the sidewalk. The pug glares up at his owner from the end of the leash, as if exhausted by the regular occurrence of the man getting so distracted by immature vandalism that he makes them both look like fools.

And that is what really seals it all in for Mulder. He’s in a time loop. An honest to god fucking time loop. He doesn’t know if he’s excited or horrified.

***

On his 3rd time living through leap day, Mulder is a goddamn disaster. He almost dies on the stairs down to the basement again, and when he makes it safely into the office, he immediately stubs his toe on the desk. He gets a papercut, he spills his coffee, then gets another papercut. And that’s all before Scully arrives.

“Jesus, Mulder, what happened to you?” Is what she chooses to greet him with. It’s fair, he knows he looks a mess with a coffee stain on his shirt and two bandaged fingers.

“I’m having a bad day. A series of bad days, as a matter of fact.”

He doesn’t see her stepping closer as he rises from his desk chair. When he does look up, she’s right in front of him. Caught off-guard, he stumbles. With the help of the universe and the worst timing known to mankind, he commits his most dangerous clumsy move yet.

His lips land on hers.

Mulder wakes up on the couch.

***

Scully

Scully wakes up at 6:32.

Coffee pot on.

Her chest is killing her. Her lips are tingling. She has the bone-deep sensation that a significant amount of time has passed.

Scully diverges from her routine and grabs the newspaper before getting dressed. Closing her robe tight around her, she takes a shaky breath and hopes, hopes, hopes that the paper will read March 1st, 1996, with something other than “JUDICIAL RACES TURN LIVELY” splashed across the front page.

It does not. The paper reads February 29th, 1996. The front article is dry as ever. Scully grunts and thunks her head into the doorframe in frustration.

She goes to work. Mulder rambles. She goes to bed.

***

She wakes up at 6:32. Coffee on. Get dressed. Retrieve newspaper. Pour coffee. Do hair. Eat breakfast. Go to work. Mulder rambles. Go to bed.

***

6:32. Coffee. Dressed. Newspaper. Coffee. Hair. Breakfast. Mulder. Bed.

***

6:32. Work. Mulder. Bed.

***

6:32. Bed. Bed. Mulder, concerned. Bed.

***

6:32.

***

6:32.

***

6:32.

She gives up. This is not an elaborate prank. This is a stupid goddamn X-file.

Scully plays with the idea of calling Mulder over to her apartment but decides instead to meet him in the office. Maybe there is some substance in the file he’s presented to her fifteen times now.

“Do you know what today is, Scully?” Mulder says at the click of her heels entering the office, sat at his desk the same as always.

“Leap day.” She says dryly. Same as it has been.

“You know, Scully, there are all kinds of traditions about this stuff that vary from culture to culture–”

“I know. St. Matthias, leaplings, unhappy marriages.” She sighs, and her voice turns slightly bitter. “And Leap Day Lovers.”

Mulder blinks at her, slightly resembling a fish. “How did you–”

“I’ve heard you say it so many times, Mulder.” She throws her arms to the side dramatically with a sigh of resignation. “I’m in a time loop.”

Mulder blinks at her. “What.”

“Don’t make me say it again.”

“You’re– really? You aren’t making fun of me?”

“Nope.”

“How... Jesus, how many times?”

“Thirty-four.”

“How many times have you told me?”

Scully’s quiet for a second, fiddling with the cuff of her blazer.

“Scully?”

“I haven’t, okay!” She bursts.

“You’ve lived today thirty-four times without even telling me?”

“Well, at first I thought it was some elaborate prank, and I then didn’t want you to be right about today being… whatever.”

Mulder runs his hands through his hair. “Well, most time loops have something you have to stop to kick it out of place, right? Have you figured out what that is yet?”

“Nope. And don’t try me with that Leap Day Lover crap, Mulder.”

“No? Are you sure?”

Her mouth forms a thin line. “If that were the case it would… already be resolved.”

Mulder gives her a sideways glance, but thankfully, doesn’t follow that line of inquiry any further. “Have there been any days that were notably different?”

Scully’s mind latches immediately to the sensation of Mulder’s lips disappearing from hers, and waking suddenly at home. “There was one that was… odd.”

Mulder gestures expectantly, “Well?”

“Normally, the day doesn’t restart until I go to sleep or midnight comes around. But there was one day where it reset in the middle of the day.”

“Any idea what caused it?”

“I have… some.”

“...Well? C’mon, Scully, don’t make me waterboard it outta you.”

“I… kissed someone.”

“Really?” Mulder’s tone is now teasing, prepared to elicit information on Scully’s dating life she would normally not provide. “Is this why you’re so sure it’s not the Lovers? Who was it?”

“Yes, and that’s… not relevant.”

“Scullyyyy,” he whines, “You’re living an X-file and you won’t even give me the details?”

“Only the relevant ones.”

“Fine.”

“So then do you think the day will restart whenever you kiss anyone?”

“I– I don’t know. It’s possible. It’s only happened the once, so I have no proof otherwise.”

“Alright,” he stands and strides towards her, “Then test it. Kiss me.”

“What?”

“Kiss me, and if you restart immediately, you’ll know for sure that’s what made it happen. Then when you wake up ‘tomorrow,’” he wiggles his fingers in air quotes, “You can tell me all of this again and we can work from there.”

Scully knows that there is no point to this. She knows that it will not prove what Mulder thinks it will, because Mulder is under the impression that she had kissed someone else previously. But he put it out there, and she’s not one to say no to affection from him.

“Okay.” She holds her chin up, dignified, and takes the last step toward him. When she’s in his proximity, he rests his hands on her hips. She wraps a hand around the back of his neck and guides his face down towards her own.

The kiss is softer than the previous one, but no less wonderful. She drags her fingernails up Mulder’s neck and into his hair, making his breath hitch and his grip tighten on her hips, pulling her closer, closer, closer and she’s so completely caught up in him. The kiss is a dream.

But it’s gone, and she wakes up at 6:32 in her bed.

***

Mulder

Something has been different about the past few February 29ths. When he woke up 13 days ago – if you could call them days, considering it’s the same day over and over – it felt like time had passed. And the last day had cut off as soon as he had accidentally kissed Scully. In every other iteration, he had gone to sleep and woken up with it being the same day. Never had the day rebooted while he was still at the office, or while he was awake at all.

Clearly, it must be aliens.

He’s missing time. He goes into the office on the 17th February 29th and instead of pulling X-files about leap day, he goes for the abduction reports. He can’t even count the number that reference missing time, but there are only a couple that reference repeating days. None of them for as long as Mulder has experienced, but they might still hold clues to what’s happening.

He’s settling into his chair with a meager five relevant files when Scully comes through the door.

“Morning, Mulder.” She greets.

“Hey.” he replies absently, flipping through the pages.

Her brows scrunch, “What’s going on? You’re lacking your usual morning X-file enthusiasm.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” He sounds resigned, but can anyone blame him? It’s not like Scully would jump on the idea.

“Try me.” She leans forward and places her hands on the desk, challenging him.

He finally glances up at her, considering his course of action. After a moment of contemplation, he puts the file on the top of the stack in front of him and stands. “Come with me.” She follows closely behind him as he walks up the stairs and out the front doors of the Hoover building. They cross Pennsylvania Avenue diagonally, past Mulder’s favorite sign in all of DC.

He guides her, with a hand on her back, to a spot in the shade behind the large flower pots.

“Wait here a minute, he’ll be here soon.” Mulder says, checking his watch. He’s only seen what he’s about to point out a couple times, when getting to work later or leaving to grab breakfast for Scully before she arrives, but he’s pretty sure what he’s waiting to happen will occur shortly.

“Who will, Mudler? An informant?”

“No.” He leans down to talk lowly, right into her ear, “A man with a three legged dog is about to pass us. He’ll walk past the Hoover building, cross 10th, cross Pennsylvania, and laugh at the sex sign very loudly. He’s going to trip on the sidewalk, and the three legged dog is going to glare at him.”

She leans back to look at him with her ‘Mulder, you’re nuts’ look. He expected this. He receives it often. She doesn’t say anything yet, but turns back to the road to observe. Sure enough, a man with a three-legged pug crosses 10th St NW, then Pennsylvania Ave, laughs so hard at the sex walks sign that he trips on the curb and the dog looks at him disapprovingly.

“How did you know that would happen?” Scully asks.

Mulder takes a deep breath and places his hands on her shoulders. He leans down a little to lessen their high difference ever so slightly. “Scully, I’m in a time loop.”

Scully blinks at him for a moment. Her brow furrows. She lifts a hand to his face, and rests the back against it. “Well you don’t have a fever.”

“I’m not sick, Scully. I’m stuck.”

She hums, unconvinced, and continues checking him out. She examines his pupils, his pulse, everything she can think to do without her med bag.

“I have a hypothesis.” He offers hesitantly.

“Which is?”

“Well there’s only been one loop that’s been different.”

“Uh huh.” She’s still hesitant; still doesn’t believe him.

“One time that the day restarted in the middle of it, instead of while I was asleep. I think I know what triggered it, but I can’t be sure, I could be completely off-base–”

“Mulder.” She interrupts, making him look back at her. “What is it?”

“We kissed. On accident, I mean. I miscalculated our proximity. Totally unintentional. But as soon as we, uh, stopped, I woke up in my bed and it was the morning again, instead of resetting when I went to sleep.”

“So you’re asking to kiss me to… test this theory?”

“Yes?”

“If I say yes, and it doesn’t work, will you let me take you to a doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, Mulder. Lay one on me.”

He sucks in a breath and takes a step toward her. One hand goes to her hip, drawing her body in, and the other slides around the contour of her cheek.

This is his first time intentionally kissing her on the mouth, their first real kiss, and she won’t even remember it. She won't remember the small gasp she let out as their lips touched, won’t remember tangling her fingers in his hair to keep him right where he is, won’t remember the press or the pull or the small bites or anything else.

But Mulder will.

Mulder will carry this with him forever. From the second his lips press intentionally against hers, he knows he’s irreparably changed. There’s no going back.

Except there is. Mulder does go back. Back to that morning, stretched across his couch, bathed in the glow of his fish tank. He’s there before the kiss even breaks.

***

Scully

On Scully’s 38th iteration of February 29th, she wears her pajamas into the office. She takes the elevator down to the basement, receiving more than a few weird looks. She enters the office without a word, and before Mulder can inquire about her attire or launch into his rant about leap year traditions and superstitions, she grabs him by the arm and drags him right out the door, up the elevator, and out the Hoover building. He says her name multiple times, asks what’s going on, but she doesn’t respond until they’re seated in their usual spots at the diner down the road.

“Scully, what’s going on?” Mulder’s voice is laced with concern.

“A waffle and two scrambled eggs, please.” Scully says to the approaching waiter. Mulder is still staring at her like she’s grown a second head. That might be an easier X-file to solve. “Order.” She instructs.

He does so without taking his eyes off of her, requesting his usual omelet. Scully smiles at the waiter and finally turns to her partner.

“I’m in a time loop.”

“Scully, I know we’ve been doing the boring 9-5 paperwork and office stuff recently, but there are people with more boring jobs than us who would call it a routine, not a time loop. And most of them don’t show up to work in pajamas.

“No, Mulder, I’m really, truly, in a time loop. It’s been Thursday for the past 37 days.”

“Oh.” He blinks at her stupidly. “And you’re at the ‘giving up’ stage of time loop grief?”

“More or less. We’re playing hooky today, Mulder. We’re going to the museums I’ve been meaning to go to since I moved here but haven’t gotten around to. Did you know I’ve never even seen the Declaration of Independence? I’ve lived in DC for five years, and the DMV for four more in undergrad, and I’ve never seen the Declaration of Independence.”

“Neither have I,” Mulder says absently, still taken aback by the Un-Scullylikeness of this whole day. The waiter places their food in front of them, and Scully thanks him.

“Eat.” She orders through a bite of waffle, seeing that Mulder hasn’t even picked up his fork yet.

He doesn’t move.“Are you okay?”

“No. I’m losing my mind a little bit, and I want to have a day that doesn’t feel like the one I’ve been living over and over. You’re going to eat your omelet, I’m going to go see our nation’s founding document in my pajamas, and who knows, maybe we’ll stop by the tidal basin and take out one of those–” she motions vaguely with her hands, “What’re they called, the swans?”

“A pedal boat?”

“Yes. We’re going to take out a pedal boat.”

“Isn’t it a bit cold for that?”

“Maybe. But we're going to do it anyway.”

Mulder looks at her, shoveling syrup-soaked waffle into her face with a lack of grace she doesn’t usually exhibit unless she’s at home or eating barbecue.

Mulder knows Scully pretty well, three years into their partnership. Though her eyes don’t show it, her tone of voice tells him just how wrung dry she is. “Okay.” he picks up his fork.

“Wonderful, thank you.”

***

Mulder might’ve had the right idea about February being too cold for pedal boating. She’s trying not to shiver through her thin pajamas, but she thinks Mulder is starting to notice. They’re in the middle of the tidal basin, facing the Jefferson Memorial when a gust of wind makes Scully’s teeth chatter.

Silently, without an I told you so, Mulder divests himself of his own long coat and wraps it around Scully’s shoulders. In an instant, she’s warm and surrounded by the feeling of Mulder. It’s not quite a scent, barely even a physical sensation, but a specific air of safety and home that his proximity provides.

She stops pedaling and turns toward him.

“What? Are we turning?” He asks.

Scully just shakes her head, and leans in to kiss him. Because what else is she supposed to do? Mulder has believed her, trusted her, and given her the day she said she needed. He has kept her warm, he has kept her safe. Not just today, but always.

As she leans towards him the boat shifts. For a moment, she’s concerned they’re about to capsize into the tidal basin, but all of her concerns go out the window when he starts to kiss her back. And he’s eager, not just giving her what she wants when she’s feeling bad. He wants this, wants it like she does. His hands are in her hair and he’s pulling her in towards him. Her brain comes back on when he pulls her into his lap, distributing their weight even more unevenly and they’re tipping, tipping, and she’s so sure they’re about to be shocked apart by winter-chilled water.

Instead, she opens her eyes to see her 39th 6:32.

***

Mulder

Mulder is facedown on the desk on his 47th February 29th, and doesn’t even realize Scully has entered the office until her briefcase lands on the chair across the desk with some force. She’s a couple minutes earlier than usual.

“You’re early.” He remarks with surprise.

“Barely. I just got lucky and hit the lights right.” She shrugs her coat off. “When I passed the women’s room down the hall, I think I heard someone moaning.”

“Hm. Sex moaning or ghost moaning.”

“Sex moaning,” Scully answers simply, like it’s a perfectly normal question. Which, for the X-files division, it is.

“Wheeew,” Mulder leans back in his chair. “That’s bold.”

“What,” Scully says with a smirk and a sideways glance from where she’s settled by her computer and microscope, “You’ve never had sex in a semi-public space?”

This makes his eyebrows shoot to his hairline, “And you have?” Scully’s face immediately goes a bright red. “Oh my god, you have.”

“No!” She answers too quickly.

“Scully, you dog!” Mulder teases. “C’mon, where was it? Lover’s lane? Between the stacks? Don’t tell me it was in a morgue.”

“Not… quite.”

“Not quite?”

“It might’ve been in a lab setting.”

“Oh my god. You blew someone in a lab?” Her face gets redder. “You got fucked in a lab?”

Scully presses a hand across her mouth and mumbles something only half distinguishable into it.

“I’m sorry, it almost sounded like you just said you fucked him in the lab.”

“Yes.” She says. “I bent him over the lab bench. I had the key because I was working with the professor that semester, and we went in after hours.”

“Scully!”

“Oh, please, Mulder. I’m sure you have some equally ridiculous sex story from college.”

A specific memory washes over him. He tries his best not to let it show, but Scully can read him too well. She gets a look of victory on her face. “You do!”

“Um.”

“What is it?”

“It was an… award I received in my third year at Oxford.”

“An award, Mulder? Really?” She scoffs, “For what?”

“Most orgasms.”

“Most orgasms?” She echoes in her signature disbelieving tone, the same one she dons when he suggests ghosts or zombies or bigfoot. “Right. Giving or receiving.”

“Giving. The girl ended up telling some of her friends about it, and one of those girls told her boyfriend, who was a part of this party house which was about as close to a frat as you get in England. They were… impressed.”

“How impressed?”

“They offered me a room. To live with them. It was a rare offer.”

“And did you?”

“No.”

“Huh.” She’s quiet for a moment, considering. “How–” She stops herself, unwilling to ask what she really wants to know.

“How many?” He finishes the question for her. She nods, curious. “Twenty-seven. But she was particularly sensitive.”

Scully gawks, then lets out a disbelieving laugh. “No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did!”

“How?”

“With my mouth, mostly.”

Scully rolls her eyes. “Oh, please, Mulder. No one is that good with their tongue. No man, anyway.”

“You think I’m not good at oral? You have no frame of reference!”

Scully stands from her seat at her little science station across the room. She approaches where he sits at their desk.

Now, Scully leaning against or sitting on the desk isn’t particularly unusual. It’s the most convenient place for her to be when they’re debating something, or looking at a file together. But sitting directly in the middle, right on top of the file he’s referencing, with one heeled foot dangling on either side and thighs spread as far as her pencil skirt will allow, with the tops of her thigh-highs peeking out, is not, in fact, standard fare.

She looks down at him with a shine in her eyes, glistening with a dare. “Prove it.”

There’s no way this is happening. Monkeys on typewriters, laws of large numbers, divine intervention, there’s no way. For once in his life, the universe is working in his favor.

But he won’t get to keep it. He better make use of the opportunity in front of him.

Without breaking eye contact, Mulder pushes his chair back and kneels in front of his partner. His thumbs work her pencil skirt up as he breathes in the scent of her.

When her skirt is pushed up far enough to see her red underwear, he rubs a thumb up her center, and oh god. Oh GOD. She’s soaked through them. He’s hardly even touched her. She’s wet enough just from talking to soak through her underwear. Fuck.

Mulder hooks two fingers into her underwear and pushes them to the side, skimming across her bare cunt. She’s so close to him that he’s shaking. So is she.

Finally, Mulder leans in and his tongue makes contact with her clit. She shudders, and her hands fall to his hair. His eyes don’t leave her face, hers bore into the ceiling as her head falls back in pleasure with a groan.

When she looks back down at him her ever flawless hair has fallen over her face. Her cheeks are flushed and pupils blown out. God how he wishes this wouldn’t be gone tomorrow, living on only in his memory.

He licks at her again, then removes his tongue to kiss her clit with just his lips, light and teasing. Her hands tighten on him, all but shoving his face further into her. Mulder whimpers.

How many times has he sat at this desk fantasizing about this? About her thighs around his head and her hands in his hair, about her, her, always her. How many times has he felt guilty for thinking about her like this, his partner moaning his name like it’s gospel? Her hand at the back of his head, both gentle and commanding, holding him against her. It’s not like he would want to be anywhere else.

She takes one hand away to work at her tits. Mulder tries to take over, batting her hand away to touch her there instead. She grabs his wrist sharply and makes direct eye contact.

“Not so fast, you already have a job to do.” She pushes his hand back to its position pressing her knees apart. She unbuttons her top herself, revealing nothing but skin. He’s going to have to live this day over and over, knowing that she’s not wearing a bra. He doesn’t know how he’ll survive it.

Scully’s foot flexes and her heel tumbles to the ground. She doesn’t seem to notice. She’s close, Mulder can tell. Her thighs are twitching. Suddenly, she swings her shoeless foot up to the chair behind him for leverage and grinds her clit onto his tongue.

Mulder whines.

Mulder fucking comes.

He hadn’t even been aware of his own body, of how hard or how close he was. He certainly hadn’t touched himself, far too focused on Scully’s taste, the minute twitching and pulsing of her vulva beneath his lips and tongue. His own pleasure hadn’t even been relevant, but Scully chasing orgasm, Scully using him, pushes him over the edge. Only for her. Always her, her, her. He sees stars, not the ones he’s spent so many hours staring at in frustration but what he imagines heaven might look like. Through the endorphin fog, he is vaguely glad for the time loop. He and his pants are ruined. He has never wanted to be anything else.

His name rolls off her lips over and over like a mantra. A prayer, a plea. Like she needs him. She tastes like salvation on his lips, his tongue, his chin. Scully’s still grinding her clit on his tongue like he’s her own personal sex toy when she lets out a high-pitched grunt, wraps her raised leg around his neck, and her body stiffens as she comes. Hard.

She catches her breath, riding out her orgasm on his face. Through the aftershocks, he keeps his mouth on her, just to keep her warm, really. She settles back on the desk and looks back down again with a demand on her tongue and in her eyes, “Again. Fingers this time.”

And who is he to deny her?

He releases her cunt from his lips and, for a moment, just looks her in the eye. He gazes at her like she hung the moon, placed the stars, all the things in between them. Like she is his reason for being, the only worthwhile thing on the face of the planet. Like she’s GOD. He presses a sticky-wet kiss to the first sliver of skin above her skirt, needing to take in every bit of her, to catalog the taste and texture of her entire body.

Scully is not as patient, “Now, Mulder,” she all but growls.

He complies, placing two fingers to her entrance, barely letting his fingertips slip in. She bucks her hips towards him, forcing his fingers in a bit further, but meeting no resistance. He presses them in further and bends them towards the front wall of her vagina. He must hit the exact right spot, because Scully just about screams and drops forward above him, held up by a hand on his shoulder. He rubs that spot, and shifts his thumb to hit her clitoris as well.

When his lips reach her chest, her breathing hitches. He’s struck gold. She arches into him, presenting an expanse of skin and tangling her fingers in his hair. His name, again and again and again. His name on her tongue and her taste on his.

His lips dance across the outer curve of her breast, tracing the shape of her name against her skin. Scully. Scully. Scully. Over and over. Only her.

It doesn’t take long, with two fingers inside her, his thumb sliding across her clit in slow swipes and his mouth on her tits, for her to come once again. This time, she holds his head to her chest while he pants her name into her skin like it’s the only word he knows. He thinks there might be tears in his eyes, borne from the overwhelming pleasure.

She pulls him off her chest by his hair and he looks up at her as her eyes dip to his lips.

“Are you hard?”

Well, now he is. Mulder nods, eyes wide.

Scully, breathless, orders, “Then fuck me.”

He’s too floored by the idea, overcome by his want for her, to process as she pulls him in to kiss her.

It’s then, he knows he’s doomed. It’s over. Any second now, he’ll wake up on his couch with a crick in his neck and missing time and Scully never, ever remembering that this even happened. So he kisses her back, tries to absorb every bit of the contact before he’s dragged away from it.

He makes it out the other end, when she starts fiddling with his belt buckle and pulls away to look at what she’s doing. For a fleeting moment, he thinks he’s broken it. He thinks that maybe, just maybe, sex is what he needed to break the loop, that he will get to keep this, to keep her.

Then he blinks, and his living room blooms in front of his eyes. It’s Thursday again. His fingers are still wet.

***

Scully

Scully wakes up sore. She can’t for the life of her figure out why. She also wakes up with a rather flustering mental image of Mulder looking up at her, puppy eyes from between her thighs. It isn’t like she hasn’t had…dreams about him before, this just feels so vivid. So real. She reminds herself that dreams mean nothing. They are the subconscious brain’s way of making sense of a life’s worth of memories and there is no hidden meaning in them. But those pleading eyes, the slightly parted and glistening lips, the tousled hair sticking out in odd directions, the ghost of a dream memory burned into her brain. How many times has she imagined him like that? Looking at her like there is nothing else in the universe that deserves his attention, on the verge of tears and begging for more. Begging for her, only her. She’s used to feeling guilty about it, years of catholic school have drilled that shame into her. But this time is different. The guilt isn’t there, just a vague yearning. Vague, but deep.

Scully glances at the clock. 6:32, like it has been for the past 38 February 29ths. She knows she doesn’t have the time to do anything about the pulsing between her thighs that has come as a product of the mental image of Mulder beneath her, not if she wants to be on time for work. But, on the other hand, so what if she’s late? It’s not like tomorrow will hold any consequences. And she certainly needs the tension in her body to… release.

Scully peels the covers back to give herself space to work. She rounds the bed to the nightstand on the opposite side of the bed and retrieves her vibrator. After giving it a quick wash, not one to risk an infection, lays it on the bed and kneels over it, hovering naked. Her head falls back and she summons the image of Mulder. Not the one she’s dreamt up, but the one she’s… used… before, where she lays flat on his couch with his lips on her pussy.

It’s not hard to. Instinctually, she starts grinding down on the still vibrator, just trying to get friction. To warm up. To find the right angle. But it’s the returning image she had woken up with, of Mulder between her thighs, his eyes wide and glazed over and the entire lower half of his face covered in her wetness, that makes her actually turn it on.

She lets out a broken groan as the device powers to life. She falls forward a little when she does it, catching herself on her hands and looking down where her pussy is grinding on the vibrator. Her body has a mind of its own, she’s barely in control of it. She lifts one hand up to her chest and slides it across her sensitive skin.

She lifts her eyes and is met with her reflection in the vanity. She isn’t used to masturbating in the morning light or in this position, so she’s surprised by her own image. Her bed-mussed hair reminds her of the absolute fucking wreck that Mulder’s hair had been in her dream, which she can only imagine was from her pulling at it and guiding him.

Then she’s shaking harder and tensing with her orgasm. Overstimulated by the vibrations, she raises up off the sex toy, replaced by her hand as she rides it out. The sensation blooms throughout her body, blissful, but still not quite enough.

She needs more. Again.

Scully does not end up making it into the office on time. When she does step through the door, Mulder turns around to greet her with his bright, excited eyes and she can’t help but walk right up and kiss him square on the mouth. And again. And again. Until she wakes up and it's 6:32 again, and she cries.

***

Mulder

Mulder is getting tired of this. There just isn’t enough time in the one day to convince Scully that he’s in a time loop. Despite his exhaustion, he drags her out to the corner of 10th NW and Pennsylvania to watch the three legged dog again.

He parks her by the flower pots and places his hands on her shoulders to explain, yet again, the series of events that is about to transpire.

“There’s going to be a guy with a three legged dog, he’s going to laugh at the sex walks sign, trip on the sidewalk–”

“And the dog is going to glare.” Scully finishes the sentence for him, her voice distant and vaguely distracted.

Mulder pauses. “How did you know that?”

“I don’t know, it just seemed familiar.”

“You remember.” A laugh bubbles out of him, pure relief. Oh god. She’s remembering. He’s not going to be alone.

“Remember what?” She asks as Mulder doubles over in relieved laughter. “Mulder?”

He stands back up straight. “I’m in a time loop, Scully. I’ve lived February 29th, 1996 somewhere around 60 times.”

Instead of twisting into concern or disbelief, this time Scully’s face is just shocked. “O-kay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

Mulder pauses. “This hasn’t happened before. I’ve never been able to convince you.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Mulder. There’s something about it that just… makes sense.”

“Makes sense?”

“Yes, but I can’t put my finger on why.”

He considers his next move, unsure if it will turn out how he wants it to. “Let's test something.”

“Do you have a theory?”

“Yeah, Scully, I do. Listen, I’ve lived this day so many times. Some things change without me doing anything, but they’re all little things. Like sometimes the dog guy comes a few minutes later. But only one thing has changed how I experience the day.”

“And what is that?”

“When we kiss.” He says, like it’s so simple. Oh, of course we’ve kissed before. Obviously.

“We’ve… kissed? In the time loop?”

“Yes.”

“How many times?”

“Three times, now. Twice accidentally and once to test the theory properly.”

“What did it change?”

“The day restarted then,” he explains, “Instead of rebooting when I went to sleep in the evening or when it hit midnight. And it felt like there was… a gap. Like I was missing time.”

“Oh god, Mulder, don’t go telling me you think this is an alien time loop, that’s just a step too far.”

“No,” Mulder laughs, “No alien time loops, don’t worry. I don’t know what they would want with us repeating today over and over anyway.”

“And why do you think it works that way, then? Who, or what, do you think is controlling us?”

“I don’t know. The universe? God? That’s a big question.”

“Then how do we stop it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you figured out anything, or have you just spent your time kissing me?”

“Hey, that’s a pattern I found!”

“Mulder.” Scully ‘s head falls back in exasperation. “What good is kissing me now going to do? You’ll just wake up in the morning again. You need to investigate and figure out what is happening. This is an X-file.”

“Well what do you suggest we do? Do you have some secret physicist friend who specializes in temporal anomalies?”

She rolls her eyes. “No, Mulder, I don’t. But we can look through the files to see if something like this has happened before.”

Oh. Mulder might be a bit stupid. He must’ve lost his mind a couple of February 29ths ago. He slaps his hand to his forehead. “Oh my god, it’s so obvious!” He turns on his heel and stalks back towards the Hoover building, almost getting pancaked by a Kia in the process. Scully is about two steps behind him, asking questions. He answers none of them, until he waltzes into their office and takes the Leap Day Lovers X-files out of the third cabinet. He hadn’t come in early to review them like he had on his first February 29th, so it feels to him as though the last time he laid eyes on them was months ago.

He hands the file to Scully without even opening it and collapses in his desk chair. Scully settles on the edge of the desk as she skims the contents of the folder. Mulder’s mind provides him with extensive images of Scully’s legs spread for him while she sits just a couple inches from where she is currently, and he doesn’t even have the energy to try to stop it.

“I don’t know how I didn’t put it together sooner.” He runs a hand through his hair. “We’re the Leap Day Lovers, Scully.”

She drops the file on the desk next to her. “Mulder, you don’t actually believe this, do you?”

“It’s the closest any of this has come to making sense.”

“It’s not though. If that were the case, wouldn’t it have already stopped when we kissed?”

“No, not if the intent wasn’t overly romantic. I only kissed you by accident, and to test the theory that that was what made it reset. And once was basically a dare.”

“I dared you to kiss me?”

“More or less.” He would really rather not provide the details of that particular February 29th right now, for fear of repeating it instead of figuring anything out.

“And why am I not remembering the loops? It’s just Thursday for me.”

Mulder does not point out that she’s incredibly stubborn about believing in the paranormal, but he wants to. “I don’t know, the accounts I’ve read aren’t super detailed about what each party goes through or who remembers what, just how they solved it.”

“By entering a… romantic relationship?”

“Yes.”

She looks him up and down, assessing. “And you’re… open to the idea?”

“Leap Day Lovers don’t tend to be people who are unattached, Scully. They're people who have… pent-up…desires.”

“That’s… alright.” Scully hangs her head for a moment, eyes closed, then lifts to look at him again. “Alright, Mulder, what do we need to do to get you out?”

“Have sex?” He suggests. He doesn’t mention that they have already tried that, but maybe if they’ve discussed the significance first it’ll have a more desired effect. And maybe he’ll be able to finish what he started this time.

“Oh.” She says. Not out of denial, just surprised at his brazenness. “...Okay, but we need to discuss something else first.”

“What?”

“In case it doesn’t work, I think we should have a word to try to make me remember. A codeword.”

“Something that says ‘hey, remember the last time loop?’”

“Yes.”

“Okay, what do you want it to be?”

Scully bites her lip, thinking. “Philtrum.”

“What is that?”

“It’s the word for the groove between your nose and lip.” Her hand rises to his face, and she drags a finger down his own philtrum, demonstrating. “Right here.”

“Alright. If I wake up at home, I’ll tell you ‘philtrum’ and hopefully it’ll bring you closer to remembering.” Mulder stands and moves between Scully’s legs, towering over her. He places his hands on either side of her face. “Can I kiss you?”

Scully nods, and he leans down towards her. Her mind catches up with her and she opens her mouth to say no, wait, if you kiss me on the mouth you’ll just wake up at home again, but Mulder’ lips are already on hers and she’s lost, lost, lost in him and the feeling and she’s blinking at her alarm clock, reading 6:32, with the phantom sensation of lips against her own.

***

Converge

At 6:32AM on February 29th, 1996, Scully wakes up confused. Something is different. Something has changed.

Coffee. Paper. Hair. Toast. Work. Mulder.

She can’t place what is different until she sees him. His presence pulls as a loose thread in her mind, trying to unravel the mystery in front of her.

His rant about leap day is the same as it usually is. Scully has all but memorized it by now. Just when he’s about to introduce the concept of Leap Day Lovers, he stops in the middle of his sentence.

“Have I told you about this before?”

This surprises her. Not once in any of her 39 February 29ths has Mulder indicated remembering a previous iteration.

“What?”

“Have we discussed leap day superstitions before? Or the leap day lovers? I’m getting the strongest deja vu of my life right now.”

Scully blinks at him for a moment. “Yes.”

“When?”

Scully sighs, “Mulder, I need to tell you something. I’ve lived this day 39 times before. Each time I come in here and you tell me about leap day, so yes, we’ve had this conversation before.”

“Huh.” Like that adds anything to the conversation.

“Huh? I, Dana Scully, notorious nonbeliever in anything mystical or supernatural, tell you that I’m in a time loop and all you have to say is huh?”

“Well, that makes sense. It seems… I don’t know, it just makes sense to me.” He ponders for a moment, eyebrows scrunching to indicate he’s thinking hard about something. “Scully, does the word philtrum mean anything to you?”

It’s Scully’s turn to consider this intently. “Yes, it’s the groove between the nose and upper lip.” She hesitates. “And you said it to me… here, in the office. You were showing me a file, we had just come in from the corner outside the Hoover building? With the…” She snaps her fingers, trying to summon the memory. “The dog, and the laughing guy.”

Mulder nods. “And the sex walks sign.”

“I’m not calling it that. But why don’t I remember it fully? It seems like it happened recently, but more recently than things that I know have happened in the time loop. And I can’t remember it all the way. It’s like a dream I can only partially recall.”

“Do you think you’ve just lived today so many times that they’ve started to blend together? To feel like dreams?”

“No, I can remember the rest of them, this is the only one that feels… fuzzy.”

“But I can remember it more clearly. I remember you wearing that outfit, I remember how the flowers smelled. I remember seeing an empty coke bottle in one of the flower beds.” His face lights up, like a cartoon light bulb has been switched on above his head. “Scully, what if we’re both in time loops, and they’re starting to feed into each other?”

“That only works if you subscribe to the multiverse theory, which I don’t, and even if it were true, there is no evidence for the ability to cross between these realities.”

“You didn’t think time loops were possible until now, either, and your own experience proves you were wrong about that.”

Scully sighs in exasperation. “Mulder–”

He cuts off whatever rebuttal she was about to provide. “What if we’re in the same reality, but switching who is able to remember each time we kiss.”

“Somehow a switching time loop is more believable, and I hate you for it.”

“So what do we… do about it?” He asks.

“What does the Leap Day Lovers lore say?”

“You think we’re the Leap Day Lovers?”

“You suggested it!” She defends.

“No I didn’t!”

“Yes you–” She pauses. “Maybe it was…”

“Last time.” Mulder finishes for her.

Scully rubs a hand across her forehead. “Damnit, this is getting confusing.”

“They aren’t specific about how they broke it, just that solving their relationship issues got them out of it.”

“So how do we… do that? I mean, clearly we’ve discussed it, so that’s not going to help.” Scully tilts her head, considering. “Maybe we just need to have sex.”

Mulder goes red. “Uhh.”

“What?”

“I feel like that might’ve… already happened. A little bit.”

Scully’s eyebrows shoot to her forehead, indignant. “You fucked me in the time loop?”

“Technically, you started it, so I would say you fucked me in the time loop. Not that I was going to complain.”

“And how is that, if I can’t even remember it?”

“I don’t know, I don’t remember the details now either! I just know you started it.”

Scully rolls her eyes.

“But I don’t think we, uh, got all the way there, if you know what I mean. Hit the home run. So maybe if we do, that will resolve it.”

“Alright Mulder.” Scully looks up at him through her eyelashes. “Let’s fuck. Yours or mine?”

***

They end up at Mulder’s apartment. As soon as they enter, Scully presses him against the door and kisses his jaw, carefully avoiding his lips. She wants to follow through with this, and not be reset halfway through because one of them got too caught up in the moment and kissed the other directly on the mouth.

Mulder’s head tilts up, bearing his neck to Scully as she kisses her way down towards his collar. Her hands work at the buttons of his dress shirt, freeing up more space to kiss. If she can’t have his lips, she's going to claim as much of his skin as she can. He holds her body as close as possible to his own while still allowing her enough space to remove his clothes.

She sinks her teeth into the junction of his neck and shoulder, and Mulder gasps. When he says her name, he’s breathless.

He’s down to his undershirt when Scully grabs him by the belt buckle and pulls him off the door. He’s not entirely sure his legs will carry him, but they do, all the way to the couch, where Scully suavely whips the belt out of its loops and tosses it away.

She kneels between his legs and places her hand on his cock where it tents his pants. When she squeezes, he lets out a punched-out sound and just barely manages not to come on the spot.

She kisses him atop his pants, hands working the button out of its hole, and he gently pushes her back by her shoulder. “Scully, wait.” Her eyes drift back up to meet his. “That might not be the most… strategic move. For right now.”

A single brow lifts and Scully smirks, cocky. “Oh?”

“Well the end goal is for me to fuck you, right?”

“Yes.”

“If your mouth gets any closer to my dick, we aren’t going to make it there.”

She hums. “What a shame. Another time.” She places a hand on his shoulder and guides him to lay across the couch.

“Uh-huh.” Mulder agrees, brain mush at the thought of a repeat act.

Scully divests herself of her clothes and straddles him, rubbing the tip of his dick along her pussy. Mulder grunts, sounding punched-out.

“Scully, please. Please.”

She lets out a satisfied hum and lowers slightly, letting the tip of him just inside her.

“Scully. Scully.” Mulder reveres, begs, needs. She lowers more, dragging it out to tease him.

When he’s sat fully inside her, Scully lets out a groan of her own, and falls forward slightly . She catches herself with a hand on Mulder’s chest. When she finally, finally lifts her eyes back to his, she lifts and falls again.

When she’s close, Scully’s abdominal muscles flex and she doubles over, leaning down towards Mulder, leaving her lips just barely a hair’s breadth from his. She needs a little more stimulation, just a touch.

As if he could sense her thoughts, Mulder groans and bucks up into her, hitting her clit just right. Scully seizes and grids down onto him, desperate for the friction to carry through her orgasm.

Mulder is looking at her lips, and he’s leaning up to kiss her as she’s coming undone on his cock. There’s so much admiration in his eyes, so much love, so much desire, she can’t deny him kissing her while she comes. She can barely kiss him back, lost in the sensation, but her lips are on his, and it’s perfect.

Until she wakes up. In her own bed, not Mulder’s apartment.

The first thing she processes is the alarm clock, no longer mocking her with a bright red 6:32. Instead, 4:17 blinks into 4:18 before her. Oh, thank God.

The second thing she processes is the sound of the front door clicking open.

***

He kissed her. He’s still on his back on the couch, but the daylight is no longer streaming through the window and lighting up Scully’s bare skin, because Scully is no longer here. It’s dark. Without checking his watch, he knows it’s around 4am.

He puts on the crumpled jeans from February 28th that have been sitting on his floor as long as he’s been in this damn time loop. He’s put on a suit for work every February 29th that he’s lived through, but he’s not going to work now. He’s going to Scully’s.

She steps out of her bedroom as he steps into her kitchen.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to wake up and see the clock say it’s four in the morning, Mulder,” she greets, rubbing her eye.

“You remember?” He asks.

She nods. “Leap day. Philtrum. You fucked me in the time loop.”

“I did not– okay, well I did last time. But before that, you fucked me.”

“Sure, Mulder, whatever helps you sleep at night.” Thinking about it does not, in fact, help him sleep. It has the opposite effect.

“It didn’t work.”

“No, it didn’t.” She sighs and switches the coffee pot on. Instead of turning back around to face her partner, she braces her arms on the counter, leaning over the coffee pot as if breathing in the fumes will get the caffeine into her bloodstream faster.

“So what do we do?”

“More research.” She does turn around now, leaning back against the counter with her arms crossed. “Have you reached out to any of the previous Lovers to try and get their stories? See what specifically they did to make the time loop stop?”

“I emailed some, but never heard back.”

“Then we reach out to the Gunmen to get more info on them, and track them down, and go to Skinner and explain what we can without risking getting separated by the Bureau, and investigate it officially. We may restart, but if we are both remembering our respective loops now, hopefully that means we’ve stopped switching for good and will retain our memories, and keep working on it. The only issue is if we need to travel, because we’ll get sent back to our own apartments when it restarts.”

Mulder knows he's looking at her with starry eyes, but he can’t help it. She’s so damn smart, she’s planned the whole thing out half asleep and in the three minutes he’s been in her apartment. So really, when he leans in to kiss her, he can’t be held responsible. He can’t help it.

***

This time, when Scully wakes earlier she has grown accustomed to, it’s to Mulder climbing into bed beside her. She shifts over to make room for him, throws an arm over his side, and settles her head on his chest.

“You kissed me again.” She says, voice rough and tired.

“I did. I couldn’t help myself.” He gives a huff of a laugh and smiles guiltily. “I’m glad we can both remember now, though.”

“Do you think we’ll get the memories of our separate experiences? That they’ll all come back to us?”

“I don’t know, Scully. The accounts from the Leap Day Lovers make it sound like they’re on the same page, so I hope so.”

She nods, and presses closer to him. “We should get up. Start researching.”

“I already called the Gunmen, they’re on it. I think we’ve earned some rest.” He kisses her forehead, a safe spot. “Go back to sleep, Scully.”

She hums, and does just that.

***

A couple hours later, the Gunmen are still digging into information on the previous Leap Day Lovers with no clear leads yet. When 9am hits, Mulder and Scully stand outside Skinner’s door.

“How do we even start to explain this, Mulder.”

“I don’t know. I mean, I proved it to you by making you watch that guy laugh at the sex walks sign and his dog glare at him, we could bring him out there and make him watch that?”

“I think that only worked for me because I had been looking already. Skinner might think we’re pulling his leg and told the guy to do that.”

“Well, do you have any better ideas?”

Scully sighs, “No, I don’t. So I guess we’ll go with that.”

“Alright.” Mulder pauses, bracing himself. “Let’s do this, Scully.” He grabs the doorknob and boldly turns it.

What the door reveals, no one could expect. Not in a million years.

Because Alex fucking Krycek is sat in Skinner’s chair, slumped face down over the desk. The back of his skull has been transformed into something akin to a bloody pudding bowl.

“Mulder?”

“Yes, Scully?”

“Maybe this isn’t… our time loop.”

“I think you might be right.”

#warning it is LONG #LTW: X-File 02291996 #LTWrites #the x files #.txt #fics

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