#mulder and scully are the naughty kids in the back of the class that don’t pay attention and flick pencils at each other and are too busy

[scullee]

i love msr fics where they end up going to the team building conference thing and win and all but i want one where they suck ass at it and end up goofing around way too much to even qualify for a top spot

[edierone]

In Herba Veritas

From a prompt ages ago, a college AU featuring weed; my last remaining WIP -- enjoy!

A week of these buzzing fragrant late-May days where spring’s been shading into summer, the light holding out longer, the air warmer even after sunset. Outdoor study dates, lunches on the steps in the quad, and a tiny little spray of freckles has appeared across Scully’s winter-white collarbones, sweet cinnamon blossoms he imagines are one of the harbingers of the season to come.

He wishes he could look forward to it, this first summer with her, wishes they both had different plans than their actual ones. But next week is finals, then she’s off to this brainiac accelerated pre-med intensive on the opposite coast for ten weeks and he’s so proud of her for being selected that he’s just about bursting with it; also he wants to fling himself directly into the sun from the pain of being separated from her for so long so he doesn’t think about it if he can help it. He’ll be on the Vineyard, for hopefully the last time, working on his thesis in the stifling-hot attic, writing to her every day when he’s had enough of Decoupling Neurodivergence and the Criminal Impulse, having a sad, silent dinner with his mother every evening, going for long runs on the beach in hopes of being able to drop instantly off to sleep at night, alone in a too-short single bed that suddenly feels much too big without her.

But for now — ahh, for now, they do have the now.

He’s coaxed her out here in the almost uncomfortably warm early evening with the promise of stargazing and possibly a meteor shower and/or some UFOs, after a full day of studying — “You could teach these classes yourself at this point, Scully — what you need is a break to let it all sink in,” he’d said, and either his words or the hand skimming lightly over her bared shoulder and glancing her breast through her tank top had been convincing enough to get her into his rattletrap old Volvo for the drive out beyond the city’s light pollution.

Her seriousness has evaporated with the miles. The Volvo last had A/C when he was in high school, and the turbulence from the open windows has pulled wisps of hair from her neat braid. Her smooth pale thigh, exposed beneath the cutoff denim of her shorts, keeps drawing his eye from the road; she slaps his hand away, giggling, and feeds him single M&Ms whenever she pleases.

Seven p.m., and it’s still broad daylight up here on the hill in the un-trafficked county park he’s found to be an excellent place for solitude. They find a relatively flat spot among the wildflowers to spread the blanket he’d dug from the hall closet, then flop onto it it to rest from the hike up. He’s dying to kiss her, but he likes this part, the anticipation, the waiting — they can never keep their hands to themselves for long, though sometimes it’s fun to pretend they’re not definitely about to jump each other’s bones.

Lying on his back a chaste foot or so away from her with his head cradled in his hands, looking up at the clear blue late-day sky, he muses happily, “Shoulda brought some wine or something, huh? Make it more like a picnic …”

“Oh!” she sits up suddenly, pulling her backpack over and rummaging through it. “I almost forgot!” She holds something up, triumphantly — three little wobbly-looking sticks, wrapped in a dining-hall napkin.  

“What are those, cigarettes?” He knew she smoked occasionally, but thought she liked Lucky Strikes, not hand-rolled.

She laughs. “No, square boy — these are from Stoney Dave.”

David Stoney, the really irritatingly good-looking and unreasonably nice rich kid she tutored in Organic Chemistry, had long ago surrendered to the destiny of his name; he often gave out little treats to his friends, which apparently now included Scully. Mulder tries not to sulk.

“Oh, stop,” she says soothingly. “It was a bonus, ‘cause thanks to me, he got an 83 on the lab quiz last week. Relax. In fact … this will help you with that!”

He can’t keep sulking, not while he’s in range of the devilish twinkle in her eyes. She has a way of crowding out the darkness in him, whatever its source or proximate cause (a worrisome thought flits through his brain — oh shit, what’s the summer going to be like without her there to pull me up — but he banishes it immediately).

The problem is, he really is square boy, at least regarding weed — the half-dozen or so times he’s tried it, he’s either felt nothing at all, or gotten really paranoid and freaked out. And frankly, he’s shocked at Scully taking it so casually — she’s got her wild side, but marijuana isn’t just naughty, it’s illegal.

It’s like she can read his mind. “I know it’s technically illegal,” she says with an amused eyeroll. “But if you keep all the little rules, you get to break some of the big ones.” This is something she picked up from Nineteen Eighty-Four — the phrasing, anyway. He suspects she’s always been like this, though, with her color-coded study notebooks and alphabetized shelves, her buttoned-up blouses, perfect attendance at Mass, and unerring ability to be on time for everything always — but underneath it all, her defiant streak, her quick temper, her intellectual adventurousness, the cool blue flame of her sexuality.

She’s not going to guilt him into smoking up with her, or even try to talk him into it, any more than he would her — but as she waits for him to think it through, he realizes he wants to. He feels safe with her; if it makes him paranoid, she’ll take care of him, and if it’s fun, if it opens his mind and loosens his inhibitions, well — who else in the world would he want to be with in that case?

“OK, Cheech, light it up,” he says, with what feels like a pretty foolish grin on his face.

She laughs her wickedly merry little laugh. “Don’t mind if I do, Chong,” she answers, whipping out a cheap drugstore lighter and setting the end of one of the joints ablaze. As it begins smoldering properly, she offers it to him: “Wanna go first?”

“No, no,” he demurs, mock-seriously. “Test it, make sure there’s no paraquat — that’s just good science.”

She shrugs — suit yourself — and takes a nice deep expert-looking drag, holding the smoke in while she passes it to him. He tries his very best to replicate her ease, but knows he probably looks like an FBI agent in bad undercover duds, attempting to crack a teen drug ring. Predictably, his eyes tear up immediately and he coughs harder than an end-stage TB patient.

She giggles, but doesn’t make fun of him, just hands him the Thermos of water and waits for him to recover. His next toke is smoother, and by the time they finish the joint, he’s feeling quite pleasant indeed. Not high, exactly — or maybe he is, yeah, because everything is a little softer around him, and he can’t stop smiling.

“Is this what it’s supposed to feel like?” he asks, genuinely curious.

“I don’t know,” she says, with a slightly spacy smile. “What do you feel?”

“Uhhhh … good,” he answers, and for some reason, this strikes them both as absolutely hilarious. He lays back on the blanket, laughing fit to split. She falls bonelessly onto him at right angles, using his abs as a pillow, and they keep cracking up again every time they think they’re done.

The shadows are getting long when the laughter has finally spent itself and the hyper talking has begun. At some point, Scully sits up long enough to find and light a second joint. They chatter like magpies, jumping from subject to subject, laughing stupidly as they pass the thing back and forth till it’s merely a roach. Then she carefully douses it with water and settles back against him, their bodies forming a comfortable, sloppy T as they quiet down again.

He feels connected, alive, aware, his usually overactive mind surprisingly calm and at ease. They lie there for awhile, senses absorbing everything around them — the sounds of birds, crickets, the warm breeze in the grass; the scents of the evening flowers, the springy soil; the lovely deepening purple of the sky, pink and gold at the edge as the sun sinks below the horizon.

Scully turns sideways, pressing her ear to his stomach, listening with her eyes closed — “I can hear the insides of you,” she murmurs softly. He reaches his hand up — his slightly amazing hand, at the end of an arm that’s longer than he realized — and pets her head, as he would a kitten.

Your hair is soft and pretty, he thinks, his mouth feeling a little too cottony to say it out loud. She makes a sound that’s very like a purr. It buzzes through him, sweet and low, and he realizes he’s half-hard just from that. He almost laughs at the feeling of pride it gives him— well done, reliable young body! — when usually he’s barely tolerant of his own angular awkwardness, shuffling along in a physical frame he has often wished were easier to ignore.

But he’s not ready to do anything about it yet — he feels pleasantly heavy, not willing to move, tethered to the earth and bonded with her, his love. It feels like there’s time for everything, time enough at last. He looks up at the stars and asks her to name constellations. She obliges, lovingly — naming one after the other, pointing with her strong soft capable hand, and as she speaks he can really see them, the shapes they’re supposed to form — she’s a wonderful travel guide. Her voice floats to him dreamily and he starts to drift.

But just as she says “And over there, later in the summer — closer to September, when we’ll be back together again — you could see Vulpecula, the little fox —” he feels a cold finger of dread touch him. It’s the stars. They’re too far away. There are too many of them, it’s too big. And it’s freezing in space. It’s ok for whatever non-human life forms may or may not live out there, but not for people and

oh shit, Sam’s out there

His heart starts pounding, fearful sucking pumps of blood and anguish, circulating hideous sadness a decade old, fermented into something guilty and thick. He’s afraid, so afraid, and he can’t even tell Scully, because if he says anything he’ll infect her with this — this thought virus, this panic — and he has to protect her, like he couldn’t protect Sam —

His body is rigid, his jaw aches, he wonders if whoever took Sam can see him right now.

she’s out there, it’s too big, it’s so cold

“Spooky?”

In his mind it’s like a warm wave of golden sun. He tries to concentrate on her voice.

“Mulder — hey — are you ok?” Stronger now, brighter, but he can’t answer.

She sits up, and he clutches at her — don’t go, don’t you leave me too — but she’s only changing position so she can see him better. She touches his face with one hand, lays the other gently over his hammering heart. Immediately it slows. Oh Scully, sweet Scully …

“The stars,” he mumbles, closing his eyes to keep from seeing their cold glittery twinkling. He feels he has to explain himself, he sounds nuts. “Sam’s up there.”

“Oh honey,” she says, and it’s the sun made into words — or, no, the moon, rising three-quarters full behind her, tawny and huge this low in the sky. She’s never called him honey before and it breaks him, just a little. “Shhh,” she soothes, stroking his cheek, shifting to lie on top of him, her slight weight like the most wonderful, comforting blanket.

He opens his eyes and her face fills his vision almost entirely — everything else recedes to unimportance.

“Just look at me,” she intones softly. “I’m here and I love you and I’m going to kiss you now, OK?” He nods, not even remotely ashamed of the tear that escapes and slides down his temple; his heart is full and it’s spilling over, she knows him and it’s all right.

She dips down to kiss him; at the first touch of her lips on his, the dread vanishes completely, as if it had been a cloud casting a momentary shadow, and now the radiance has returned. He keeps his eyes open, overcome by the delicacy of her eyelids, the smoothness of her skin, the fluttering of her lashes as she sighs into him, sharing breath.

He remembers that he is not tethered to the Earth, not in actuality; his limbs stir at last, his lower body moving to make a cradle for hers, while his arms, his hands, are free to roam — and roam they do, while he marvels at the soft sounds she makes in response to his touch.

He slides the elastic band off of her hair and undoes the long silky braid so that it falls in a curtain on either side of them, it’s like being hidden in a secret cave behind a waterfall with a water sprite, or a mermaid temporarily slumming it on land.

He laughs from the sheer joy of it, and it catches her, too; their kisses grow sloppy and mistimed, which is funny all by itself.

After who knows how long, he realizes she’s been rocking slowly against the bulge in his jeans and it feels so good he’s afraid she might make him come like that. Is that what she wants? He wants to please her, make her feel as good as he does, but how — better find out.

With difficulty he gets her attention, then nearly loses his words as her eyes find his, so full of desire and trust that he feels somehow purified, sanctified by her love. She blinks, waiting, and he finally manages to say, “Can I — can we —”

“Yes.”

Yes, she said yes, his mind echoes, and he takes her fully in his arms, murmuring love you, love you, so much.

They take their time, which is something they rarely have the luxury to do — up to now, it’s mostly been dorm room beds, roommates just on the other side of a door, stolen moments here and there.

And it is wonderful, full of wonder — everything feels more: her skin smoother, her kisses more intense, her taste even sweeter, every sensation heightened, within and without. It’s beautiful discovery, like the first time they were together — there’s the delicious rush and spark, the longing and the anticipation — but this time he’s not so overwhelmed. Body and soul both feel expanded somehow, able to handle this wild precious thing grown strong between them.

Side by side on the blanket, they slide along the length of each other, skin on skin the most amazing feeling, and when he finds himself between her legs, his tongue coaxing her by infinitesimal steps toward the peak, he looks up at her moonlit nakedness and knows — again, always — that wherever else his life takes him, whatever else he does, he wants it to be with her.  

As if he’s communicated this thought directly to her center, she cries out, quaking all around him as she comes; he wants to weep again at the beauty of it all, but she’s pulling him up, kissing him deeply, tasting herself on his lips and saying my god, oh my god … She reaches down, strokes him with the slip from her own body and it’s the most self-control he’s ever used in his entire life to keep from sliding into her right there but he manages to wrest himself free for the time it takes to find a condom in her bag and put it on, kneeling before her, a supplicant who finds himself invited, gladly welcomed inside.

He sinks in — deep, deeper, as if she could absorb him completely — “Ohhhhhh,” she sighs, with a hitch to her breath and rapture in her eyes. This is union, he thinks, we’re joined together …

“Yes we are,” she whispers as he moves over her. Had he said that out loud, or are they just that in sync? No matter, no matter … he’s pretty sure he could do this forever … but eventually, he finds himself climbing, climbing, then falling, floating safely through space with her, landing softly back on the springy, fertile-smelling ground.

After a long time, or maybe just a few minutes, they find the strength to clean up but not get dressed yet; they sit up together, Mulder’s bare back against the large, sun-warmed rock at the edge of their blanket, Scully reclined against his chest with his knees as armrests, the air around them warm and still. He holds her, resting his chin on her head, exquisitely aware of their heartbeats in perfect counterpoint to each other.

They’re silent, spent, bodies humming with the afterglow. I love you, Scully traces lightly on his thigh with her index finger. I’m gonna marry you, he thinks, tracing a heart with the tip of his tongue just behind her ear. She shivers, presses closer against him.

The night above them is beautiful again; she’s given that back to him. He’s about to say something in thanks, but just then, they both gasp, awestruck: A shooting star streaks across the sky, impossibly huge, unbelievably close.

“Make a wish,” he says, just as she says “Meteor, Spooky,” and they shake with laughter.

“Ain’t that always the way,” he grins, and she twists to look up at his face. She traces his cheek with the back of her hand, such affection in the gesture that he tears up again; he’s not used to this, to someone knowing him this deeply and loving him for it. He hopes she knows that he returns it a thousandfold. By the way her eyes fill up, he thinks she does.

She kisses him again, settles back into his arms, gazes peacefully out at the winking stars.

“We’re gonna be OK this summer, Mulder,” she says softly, her voice clear enough to indicate that the weed has worn off entirely.

“I know,” he answers, believing it for the first time, really.

He believes a lot of things, but this — this — is the capital-T truth.