#mulder in this ep hits hard

[cutemothman]

The X-Files 1.04 "Conduit"

You know when I was a kid, I had this ritual. I closed my eyes before I walked into my room, cause I thought that one day when I opened them my sister would be there. Just lying in bed, like nothing ever happened. You know I'm still walking into that room, everyday of my life.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s4 episode 1 thoughts

ah, the first ep of a new season. it has such a fresh feeling to it each time! and according to that poll i reblogged, s4 is a fan-favorite (along with s3). well, i really liked s3, so i hope i’m in for more of that! 

overall, this was a wild episode. things just! kept! happening! so fast! in fact, i think it will take me a while to gather my thoughts on the stuff that was happening, because it was occurring so rapidly! but luckily, i am familiar enough with the monster of the week format by now to know that i have some time to process all these events, because most episodes will be entirely unrelated to the plot action that went down today. so good episode, but separated scully and mulder + so much plot so fast = not a GOAT ep for me. and with this being said, back to my liveblogging!

it feels that it has been so long!!! maybe even a full WEEK! or more!! since i watched the last episode! i recall, however, not being very impressed due to lack of scully. so let’s see if this episode can change my opinion.

so, reading the description, it seems this alien fellow is referred to as “Bounty Hunter”. i’ve been calling him "alien hit man" for 2 seasons now, so this will be an adjustment. the seriousness with which i take using his proper name is yet to be determined. and we get some alleged samantha lore here?!?! will it actually be true?!? i assume everything about samantha will be a lie forever

i want to know how jeremiah smith gets out of this sticky situation, so let us continue together and see what happens to our agents.

“last season on the x files…” yes yes, this was probably a vital refresher for those who had to wait a year in between seasons. and also for me who had to wait a week, which as i am sure you can imagine was JUST as excruciating!

in my absence, i seem to have forgotten how terribly beautiful this mulder fellow is. rest assured that i am now remembering as we get a little recap.

but oh! we do not begin in the fight scene where we ended last time. we begin in… a van? of a fellow who is fixing a power line? is this some more TV mind control stuff…..? (no, thankfully, it was not)

there is a bug by his ear and he slaps it. and then we see the bee on the ground struggling while a bunch of kids gather around. they all look the same and seem to be multiplying. which is very weird but i feel bad for the bee.

5 creepy blond identical children watch this man DIE after being stung??? he’s writhing up on the cable pole and then he FALLS and all the kids surround him like jackals... omg… very much gives the impression they are gonna eat him. but they just walk away after staring at this body for a bit which is maybe even creepier. hard to say. 

what do the children know…….?

(intro time) (<3)

HEY WHAT THE HELL? i interrupt making a heart emoji by hand to inform you that the words on the screen do NOT read “the truth is out there”, but today they say “everything dies”. this is NOT a good sign for mrs. mulder or jeremy smith omg… 

i know our agents aren’t kicking the bucket yet though because we have a few more seasons!!!

okay, NOW back to mulder and scully and jeremy and the bounty hunter. mulder tells scully to not get in the bounty hunter's way, and she immediately does and gets knocked over, which is a little comical- but you can’t blame a girl for trying!!!

mulder is now chasing jeremy and in turn being chased by the bounty hunter through some weird warehouse-y building, with scully not too far behind. the screen is very dark and it is hard to see things. mulder comes face-to-face with the bounty hunter but they just look at each other and then run after their real target, which is probably a good thing, because we have seen the bounty hunter kick mulder’s ass before, and i’m not really feeling a rematch at this point in time.

no, jeremy! the bounty hunter approaches, and to escape him, he jumps off of the roof. mulder is taking jeremy down to the car where scully shall be the getaway driver. i'm in the getaway car, i left you in the hotel bar, etc.

until the bounty hunter DROPS on their window like a spider!!!!! so she honks the horn for a very long time, which was deserved. 

okay, so back into the maze of the building. mulder and jeremy are running on foot. mulder hides in some bushes!!! then LEAPS out and STABS THE BOUNTY HUNTER in the base of his neck!! omg!! the one spot where these beings can be killed!!! i knew sneaky mulder was gonna set some sort of trap, i just didn’t think he would have such good luck with his aim! 

yes, he did it!!! the poison goop is coming from the base of the bounty hunter’s neck. but jeremiah is motoring away on a little boat, saying more killers will be after him. mulder yells after him that he needs help; his mother is dying. and i think it is fair to save a life after mulder saved his, so maybe, just maybe, they can buzz to the hospital reallllly quick before they let him go… back to space, or whatever. 

scully has found the dead bounty hunter, and is looking for mulder, who has gotten on the boat with jeremy and sailed away, i guess. rude as hell to leave her stranded there!!

she keeps going back to the body and i’m yelling NO GIRL, THE BLOOD GAS but NO! that is not even the biggest problem, for the bounty hunter is ALIVE! he grabs her throat and chokes her, which had to absolutely SUCK to film. 

he keeps asking where they’re going while he’s choking her, and that seems to be a bad way to get answers. she says she doesn’t know, but in my head i’m yelling, just say they’re going to the mall!! lie!! lie!!! they’re going to the mall. a dude in the food court claims to be an alien expert who knows information on samantha’s whereabouts. they want to see the guy at quizno’s knew about jeremy’s existence. send him on a side quest!!! but she just says she doesn’t know, which is fine, too.

anyway, back to mulder and jeremy disembarking from the boat. jeremy says that the government men will be waiting for them at the hospital in mrs. mulder’s room, but mulder tries to counter by saying that if the government men do anything there, they will be exposed. well! i think this is faulty reasoning because they might just kill all of you, but i see that he wants this to be true for the sake of his mother.

jeremy explains that they are working on colonization, and if they kill him, he sure can’t help his mother, which makes sense to me even if it is deeply unfortunate. or, he says... mulder can stop it! mulder, stopping colonization?! that is a large task for one guy...

OH! jeremy claims that he can take mulder to a place where there is a “work in progress” and SEE HIS SISTER??? how do we know that isn’t another TRICK!!!! i always suspect deception when it comes to his sister, because they know that claiming to have information on her can get him to do anything they please.

cutscene to the hospital, where CANCER MAN is holding mrs. scully’s hand (LET GO, FREAK!) and some lackey says that “he isn’t coming”

GASP! this lackey pulls out the pictures of cancer man at mrs. mulder’s house and suggests… a SECURITY LEAK! he proposes planting information to see where it flows… information that mrs. mulder’s life is in “unnatural danger”… oh no… will X see through the trickery?

back to scully cam. her phone is ringing. mulder wants to know where she is: “i’m right where you left me, mulder” OHHH! get him again for me. and when he asks why she is still there, she says it’s because he wouldn’t answer his phone and she didn’t know what to do :( which is so sad

but what about the bounty hunter……

NO!!!! he’s right behind her in the car, holding the needle up to her neck through the phone!! she’s trying to get him to stfu, but he keeps yapping about stealing a car in alberta, and revealing all his plans to the bounty hunter!!!!

so he just lets her go after hearing where mulder is, which is lowkey crazy, but she tells him that the bounty hunter is coming after him. and that he is in fact NOT dead. so now what do mulder and jeremy do about these plans they have made and just revealed to their enemy????

anyway, mulder and jeremy are in the hills of alberta where we earlier saw the dude who got stung by a bee drop dead. and mulder's face is all beat up and it’s kinda endearing... like aww, let me put a bandage on you.

scully is going to skinner’s office, who has summoned her. she lies that her and mulder are okay, and it’s a pretty visible lie in terms of body language, so i imagine skinner catches onto that. but he’s like, why tf are there 5 dudes at the social security administration all called jeremy smith and with the same face? and what do you know about them?

well she’s honest in this regard at least, and says idk. but the nerd down at the labs can see that each of the 5 jeremys had very weird data on their computers. 

“enough to fill seven ten-gigabyte hard drives” hold on. okay so that is, in modern terms, not a whole lot of stuff. like a 68 GB flash drive at target rn is $6, and it's even a nice blue color. so i’m wondering how much stuff you can stick on there but honestly i do need to get back to the plot at hand and stop looking up the differences between flash and hard drives. he says it’s “a billion entries” which is a lot!

scully thinks it might be a code!!! and she thinks she might be able to crack it!!!! wahoooo!!! code time! code time!! i love when she is in her sleuthing era!! and the lab nerd (revealed to be named "agent pendrell") says "seriously?" when she says she thinks she can crack it, but i wouldn't have said that, because i trust in her skills.

she says there is someone she wants to run it by… is it the lone gunmen? the navajo representative? her dad’s old friend? who could it be?

back to mulder and jeremy running through the hills of canada, arguably even frolicking. where they come across the dead guy!!! he is bubbling and covered in bugs…… so the death was yesterday. and jeremy knows what killed him!!! he’s being VERY WEIRD!!! 

gag… the body looks soooooo nasty... but as always, to cope with this, i give a shoutout to the props department. but i WILL gag. 

so they’re at their destination, which is… a “flowering shrub”? being grown for pollen? and worked by a bunch of kids like the creepy ones from before. what the hell do aliens want with some pollen...

MULDER THINKS ONE OF THE KIDS IS HIS SISTER??? but she’s still a child!!!!! how could this be?

i’m suspecting trickery here. either way, he goes right in after her, calling her name. NOOOOO- he gets on his knees, grabs her arms, and says “it’s me, fox, your brother” and she has no readable expression whatsoever NOOOOO omg WHAT SORT OF TORTURES HAVE THEY CONCOCTED TO PUT THIS MAN THROUGH???

(i’m operating under the assumption that it is Not Actually Her)

she just looks at him…. and jeremy says “she has no language”, and is a drone…. he says he has more to show him so that he might understand. YOU MADE A CHILD A DRONE? and you're supposed to be THE GOOD ONE, JEREMY?

(if this actually is samantha and they hurt her like that i’m going to choke slam this jeremy fellow into the core of the earth)

mulder naturally wants to know what tf is going on, and jeremy says the drones are stationed here as part of an agrarian workforce, where they take care of themselves, and “parenting is unnecessary”. oh i just KNOW that at this point if i were mulder and someone told me parenting his long lost sister "wasn't necessary”, i would have started throwing hands. what an insult to injury, taking her away and saying that she doesn't even deserve someone to look after her, when all he has wanted for so long was to do just that...

and a bunch of other kids come out ALL WITH HER FACE and the boys have the fact of that CREEPY BLOND KID FROM BEFORE!!! CLONING??? did they CLONE HER???? yes they did. so they’re clones but... where is the OG samantha??????

this is soooooo fucked up like WHERE is his REAL and ACTUAL sister and what can we do to free these identical children!!!!!

scully is going to mulder’s place to put an x tape on the window. oh no! but what if X HAS really been fed lies??? (she also bites the tape again which i still think is funny)

i am observing mulder’s apartment as she tries to crack the code whilst waiting for his arrival. sadly, i cannot work out the names of the books on his shelves.

someone knocks and she grabs her gun… but it is, in fact, X, our man of the hour. AND OH NO!!! he does say he has information concerning mulder’s mother!!! NOOOOOOO, i was hoping he would be more discerning than this and not fall for such a trap!!

scully doesn’t seem to be buying it… X refuses to talk to her, and says to get in contact with mulder, but she is insisting he gives her information on the code.

he knows what the various entries are… they’re about the smallpox eradication program. but X is telling her not to open doors she isn’t ready for. so what does THAT mean???? he leaves by saying “protect the mother” ummmm okay...

WAIT! if she goes there then they’ll think SHE is the spy, right??? or no… because they know she wouldn’t have access to information at that level, so someone would have to give it to her. lie and say krychek gave it to her. idk just lie!!!

back to this weird little town. mulder is trying to take the little girl with them, which pisses jeremy off (STOP… HE WANTED TO TAKE HER WITH THEM I’ll SOB 😭)

he’s all “she’s not your sister” and “you have a chance to understand something so much greater” but he won’t do any actual explaining. condescending fuck. and when explanation is requested, who rolls up but the bounty hunter!!!

now they’re sprinting off to a place… where the girl is taking them. a place filled with the bees who killed that guy earlier!! mulder learns that while jeremy and samantha clone have immunity to the killer bees, he does not.

so now he’s covered in killer bees and to protect himself he DOUSES HIS BODY IN GASOLINE and therefore cannot see a single thing and needs to be led along by this small child who looks like his sister but isn’t. they are in a building filled with evil evil evil looking bees and their evil honey... but they realize they have been trapped by the bounty hunter when they look up and see a hole in the sky. 

the bounty hunter is entering into this cavernous honey town, and sees only the gasoline can and many bees, but no people. until they break a wall of honeycomb they were hiding behind down directly on top of him, and the bounty hunter is swarmed by them!!!! he seems to be busy being hurt by them. so i guess they will hurt him, but not kill him? noted. need to keep track of the alien species rules.

okay, so back to the lab nerd, agent pendrell, who frantically adjusts his tie as scully walks in with a break on the data. yeah don't think i missed that. that actor wanted to make his 5 minutes of screen time count. i see you!

“you say a twenty letter code to any scientist, and they immediately think ‘protein amino acid sequence code’, which is what this turned out to be” <- i love her so terribly i can’t even form a decent sentence to describe it. it's actually embarrassing but whatever.

and it’s a code for cowpox virus, which was used to vaccinate people against smallpox! so why were they keeping vaccine records… besides for the obvious reason of making sure that smallpox is defeated?

well, that doesn’t matter right now, because the big question is: what is with this second alpha numeric string? each with an infinite number of variations?

she says it’s an inventory… of us… and pulls off her jacket to reveal a bandage on her arm. which i’m sure had that nerd sweating. 

(did she like get a shot in the time whilst mulder was MIA... i’m confused) (<- lmao sometimes i just do not understand wtf is going on and it is really funny reading these notes back)

she’s presenting her theory and an image created by “a confocal microscope” to some people in skinner’s office. and i’m not sure i’ve ever been more in love before, but whatever. she’s explaining it’s a protein’s location, a cowpox protein, number 6 to be exact, thank you!

OH! it came from her! she got a biopsy taken from her vaccination scar. which makes a lot more sense than getting your flu shot while doing important FBI work. although getting your flu shot IS important it’s just. you know. bigger fish to fry n all that.

she got this image “through a process called immunohisto chemical staining and through the addition of an antibody” <- unfortunately her saying all this is incredibly attractive to me

but there’s important business at hand. she thinks anybody who has been vaccinated over the past 50 years might have a marker in them!!

oh, low blow from the guy who said this sounds like something that would come from mulder….

but she performed the same procedure on agent pendrell i’m CRYING he is SOOOOOOO down bad for herrrrrr 😭😭😭😭

and his protein is different even though it should be the same as hers!! DEEPLY suspicious!

“so what you’re saying, agent scully, is we’re being catalogued, tagged, and inventoried?” well yes skinner, i do believe that is what she is saying!

by who and for what purpose? she doesn’t know. but jeremiah smith probably does!

skinner wants to talk to scully ALONE! he looks MAD and asks “do you realize what you are promoting” and she cuts him off with “i am a SCIENTIST, sir” OHHHHHH YES!!! shut him up!!!!!!!!!!! and isn’t that why she was assigned to the x files in the first place?!?!?! YES EXACTLY!!!!! TELL HIM!!!!!!!

pained skinner expression as her phone goes off. it’s mulder, and she needs to meet him. she says “just tell me where” (ohhh my god the way they’d do anything for each other…)

he explains that he and jeremiah smith and “someone else” need to be at mrs. mulder’s hospital room, where she has to wait and keep her safe. 

she says a lot of people want to talk to jeremiah smith and will be there, but who comes barreling down the road to get mulder and the squad as she says this, but the damn bounty hunter!!!! omg!!! can this dude just die already!! damn!!! 

the bounty hunter runs his van STRAIGHT into the car with jeremy and “samantha”!!! and when the bounty hunter picks mulder up by his throat, he begs for jeremy and his sister’s life, while bounty hunter says “he shows you pieces, but tells you nothing of the whole” which i do feel is deeply true. but jeremy being a “traitor to the project” isn’t really feeling as damning as having a crop of brainwashed clone children harvest killer honey to me personally.

so mulder says “kill me, and let them go”, and that he would TRADE HIS LIFE FOR HIS MOTHER’S!!!!!! the bounty hunter says that “everything dies” while jeremy tries to make an escape.

(omg is he really willing to sacrifice his life… or is he just saying anything to buy jeremy more time???)

bounty hunter TOSSES mulder into a truck, picks up the needle to go after him, while samantha clone starts screaming... NOOOO that poor girl😭

back at the hospital, scully, skinner, and the guys have been waiting for five hours, with nothing to show for it. it’s starting to compromise the treatment of patients, says a random nurse. but in walks mulder!!!

“oh my god, mulder!” scully says, running to him, while he mumbles “i can’t, there’s nothing”, and other nonsensical phrases, which begs the question: WHAT HAPPENED IN THOSE FIVE HOURS????

she’s feeling him, saying he’s freezing and in shock, and he can’t even stumble to the right hospital room door to find his mother without scully’s help. but he gets there and looks at his mother while scully wraps a blanket around him, and he mumbles that "she’ll never know". 

and he’s CRYING, and he LEANS DOWN so scully can hold him while he sobs into her shoulder (height difference height difference oh my GOD its so painful and terribly tender)

WHAT WILL SHE NEVER KNOW?? WHAT DID HE SEE?????

just when i expect an emotional climax, we change scenes to mulder’s place, where footsteps are approaching. X lets himself into the apartment, but seems to realize that something is… afoot. 

he goes for the elevator to escape, when a man FIRES TWO SHOTS INTO HIM!!! NOOOO X!!!

we had a rocky relationship but i never wanted it to end in this fashion……….

(is it inappropriate to wait until he’s dead to say that i’ve always thought he was handsome….)

well. um. we don’t get a lot of time to linger on that.

back to mrs. mulder. mulder has his head in his hands, saying they could have saved her, that he had once chance. and he tells scully that he saw his sister. and she was just a little girl. 

it’s not clear if scully can tell he’s speaking the truth or if she thinks he is still saying random stuff in shock, but he says that he’s seen too much to not believe. she counters that she believes they have a place to begin in looking for answers.

“you put such faith in your science, scully, but… the things i’ve seen, science provides no place to start” 

“nothing happens in contradiction to nature, only in contradiction to what we know of it- and that’s a place to start”

OOOOOH BANGER LINE!!!!! such hope there is in understanding the world that seems impossible to comprehend, if only we seek out the knowledge to grasp it!!!! if we admit what we don’t know and start where we do until we reach the Truth!!!

this line coaxes a smile out of him, and she adds “that’s where the hope is”, and i think i understand scully on a molecular level. 

but he is still in agony over there. he feels he came close, and she feels it too.

and as she says she was warned by X about his mother being in danger, and that he is who can lead them to a place to start, we see him dragging himself down mulder’s hallway, gasping for breath, before finally collapsing, having written “SRSG” in his OWN BLOOD???????? HOLY HELL??? that was very metal in a fashion i was not expecting…….. rip X :(

as much as i feel like we need some time to linger on that we really aren't given any in terms of the episode’s pacing. but like. damn. its MY writeup and i can give us a moment of silence for X as i choose.

...

okay, jump to a month later, at the UN building in NYC. we see someone open a door to the special representative to the secretary general- OMG... the SRSG!!! and mulder is there to visit!! he must have pieced together the horrific clue… the special representative won’t see him. but his secretary, marita covarrubias, will.

he’s trying to get answers on the farmland in canada, but only getting dead ends. however, maria says the farm was abandoned, but the crops were identified as ginseng. 

GINSENG? making killer bees? press F to doubt. and she says there no evidence of bees. YEAH RIGHT,,, I SAW THEM!

she asks why this is so important to him, and he starts to say that he’s suffered some very personal losses recently, but he can’t seem to get it out (oh my gosh, it is so sad) but he opens the file she hands him and sees A PHOTO of the CLONES OF HIS SISTER doing farm work!!!

and this assistant says “not everything dies, mr. mulder” (which at this point i had to rewind and get her name because i realized she might KNOW THINGS and be a RECURRING character with INFORMATION…. OMG….)

SO WHAT DO WE DO WITH ALL OF THAT?!?!?

back to the hospital, where THE BOUNTY HUNTER is visiting????? is he gonna hurt mrs. mulder OMFG???? stay away from her?!!!!!

but he goes in there and looks at her. “i need to know the reasons why this should be”, he asks CANCER MAN??? who seems to have SET UP OFFICE IN THERE??? he says it’s so that the project may continue, and this will remove an obstacle. and that obstacle is AGENT MULDER???

HELLO??? so DID cancer man do this to her??? “if his mother were to die….” NO NO, KEEP ON TALKING CANCER MAN, SHARE WITH THE CLASS WHAT YOU NEED TO SAY

“the fiercest enemy is the man who has nothing left to lose, and you know how important agent mulder is to the equation” <- SO THIS WHOLE COLONIZATION PLAN WAS DRAFTED WITH HIM IN MIND???? how would that even be possible... how far back does this plan even go?

bounty hunter closes the door and locks it behind him, then proceeds to lay his hand on mrs. mulder- so ALL of these aliens can do the healing thingy? and she opens her eyes!!!! and sees cancer man!!

imagine that being the first thing you see when you wake up omg….

and thus concludes the episode.

okay, so i have a lot to say, but yesterday i saw a video that said “think of the character you hate the most in the world” and i thought of cancer man. then the video said “now imagine all your negative self thoughts in that character’s voice and you won’t listen to them ever again” and damn, if cancer man TRIED me i would find new and exciting ways to cause him suffering. in ways that i shan’t describe, for i haven’t even thought of them yet. i imagine an entirely empty room with nothing but that one “i’m good and i’m feeling alright” song on loop for years, with his ears in protective gear that make them impossible to self-deafen when he’s lost it.

BUT. we got a lot in this episode. and i’m not sure how i’m feeling. 

well, first, we lost X. this is a major L for our heroes. even though he could be a bit insufferable in his vague hints, he seemed to have some sort of positive feeling toward mulder, at least part of the time. but how much of what he was doing was furthering cancer man’s agenda? it might be impossible to ever tell.

second, jeremy. he was a great dude in episode 1, saving all those lives, and then it turns out he knew about the clone children slavery which makes me think much less of him and i find it hard to mourn his death. because seriously WTF kind of evil creature uses cloned kidnapped kids to harvest evil killer bees. and no parents because they are “unnecessary”. and poor mulder was tortured by seeing her again but it not actually being Her. and despite it not actually being Her, he wanted to save this clone samantha, who had been deprived of any language. what the hell. jeremy is supposed to be RESISTING to the alien’s plan for colonization but he knew about this so like???? which side is he on?????

i mean, i guess knowing about atrocities committed by your people doesn’t mean you endorse them, but he was SO condescending about the whole matter, all “oh you don’t understand” in a way that makes me think he WAS endorsing it. so if he’s down with their evil plans, why the hell is he resisting them bad enough to be hunted by this bounty hunter for???

i am puzzled on that front, but it feels that it was designed to be this way. either way, jeremy is dead now too, so no answers on that front, either.

so, we know that there is this plan at colonization of earth by this alien species, and that jeremy claimed mulder had some way of stopping it. and the colonization plan involves evil bees and pollen and cloned children and inventorying every person who ever received a smallpox vaccine. and also kidnapping people and performing tests on them that will slowly kill them. and this is a plan set in place by a certain group at the UN to which cancer man belongs, but somehow this plan stretches back to mr. mulder, and was drafted with the younger mulder in mind. and we also know that they took samantha as "insurance" so that mr. mulder didn't betray the plan, because he was not in agreement with the ethics involved.

other things that we know but are not clear how exactly they fit in: the whole oil alien that turns people into flashbangs found in the sunken submarine deal, krychek's escape arc, exactly who the little grey dudes that look like stereotypical aliens are, and if the bodies found in the train car back in anasazi were actual aliens, or alien-human hybrids- because they had smallpox vaccine scars. also, we still do not know to whom X pledged his loyalty, and the exact purpose of the disease center in west virginia where that one dude claimed the government was testing on vulnerable populations.

so somehow we have some known aliens in here, people being catalogued and experimented upon, possibly in an attempt to create alien-human hybrids to accelerate the plan of alien colonization. but also some mystery aliens of uncertain relevance to the plot.

okay, i think... i have it all in order.

there was a lot that went down here, so i will need some time to process it all. but, we did get more scully, which is ALWAYS a good thing, especially when she is cracking codes and being a scientist. and poor mulder... they are just torturing him for fun at this point...

there was a lot of plot, but not a ton of time to process it. so this episode was good, but i don’t think it would make my top 10 ranking. this is also a consequence of our agents being separated for most of the ep.

so, where do we go from here? i have no idea! i am just glad to begin a new journey with these characters, even if things are still very murky in terms of plot! in fact, there was so much plot crammed into a short space of time, i'm almost looking forward to a few monster of the week episodes to try and give my brain a break from unraveling all that.

now... i know that the next episode has a reputation for being quite spooky. and i shall face this challenge with bravery and honor. wish me luck…

[gentlebeardsbarngrill]

04/14/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; Cast & Crew Sightings; Ruibo, Samba, Vico; Watch Party Reminders; Fan Spotlight; Cast Cards; Our Flag Means Fanfiction; s1 script; Teal Oranges & Garlic Soup Week; Love Notes; Daily Darby / Tonight's Taika.

= Ruibo Qian =

Our Pirate Queen once again asks us to think some important questions of ourselves.

= Samba Cameo =

Some of our crewmates got another Cameo from Samba! This one was requested by The Bardflies! It's fantastic and full of Shakespeare!

Thank you so much The Bardflies for sharing this cameo! Source: Cameo

= Vico Ortiz =

Vico apparently has made some more changes to their Patreon and have updated their IG to let everyone know! Here's a link! Vico's patreon

== Watch Party Reminders! ==

== Flight Of the Conchords ==

Today we're on Season 1 Ep 11 and 12. Join @saveofmdcrewmates, and @iamadequate1 this week for Flight of the Conchords watch parties! You can watch each day at 4pm PT, 7 pm ET, 11pm BST! If you don't have access, feel free to join us on the #RhysDarbyFaction Discord server, you can hit me up for an invite.

Hashtags:

#FlagOfTheConchords

#OurFlagMeansDeath

== Fan Spotlight ==

== S1 Script Pics ==

Some of you may have noticed one of our crewmates posted several pictures of some of the original S1 script. Some juicy stuff in there if you're interested! Visit @amefuyuu's tumblr below :)

== Our Flag Means Fanfiction ==

Our crewmates over at Our Flag Means Fanfiction are giving away two Samba Cameo's! You can Enter by Following the IG Account. liking the post, and adding a comment tagging a friend who would appreciate a Cameo from Samba!

= Cast Cards =

I 100% did not realize that was Pete Gardner! That's awesome! Tonight is the Dutch Captain Cast Card by our darling @melvisik!

== Teal Oranges & Garlic Soup Week ==

FYI! Prompt release will happen on April 16th instead of 15th in consideration of Global Strike for Palestine Monday April 15th.

== Love Notes ==

Hey lovelies. I know it's been a crazy week or so... tax time, all the random sightings of Chaos Dad, WBD being a POS. I know a lot of you are hurting pretty bad right now, and not sure where to vent your frustrations.

Just remember that it's okay to step away, and it's okay to not engage with things you don't feel like you can stomach. It doesn't mean you're not allowed in that space, and it doesn't make you a bad person. You are allowed to shine as bright as you are, but you can also choose which places get to bask in that light. You are allowed to take up space. You are allowed to shine. You are allowed to find the places that your sunshine helps others to grow and vice versa.

We aren't all going to get along all the time, as much as I'd love the world to be in that kind of space to allow for it. We've all been hurt, and we've all been through things in this life that have made us no longer trust people and places. I hope that one day, along with this awesome crew we can make a better space for everyone, and even if not all of us can get along all the time, that all of us find our ways to people who we feel safe with.

Remember that you are so kind, and you are so worthy. Some days it doesn't feel like it. Some days others try to take that from you. But that's what you are. You are worthy of love, and safety, and you are so very beautiful. Remember the kindness in your heart, and try not to let folks snuff it out. I know it's there, and I believe in you.

I really hope you all get some rest tonight lovelies, or soon, you deserve a break. The world can be very hard, but you are the soft, bright ball of love it needs, don't forget that.

It's gonna be okay.

== Daily Darby / Tonight's Taika ==

Tonight's theme: Arms

Darby Gif courtesy of @fandomsmeantheworldtome

Taika Gif Courtesy of @mulder-isms

[carefulfears]

top 5 (or 10 if you have em) scully taking care of mulder moments <3

she said IF i have 10 😭😭😭

1/ sein und zeit

i fear i have talked about this television scene more times than anyone has ever talked about a television scene....like. one, two, three, four, i was even foolishly invited onto a podcast to talk about it more...

my tags here:

she gets down on the Ground. there's something so primal about it. there's such a lack of pretense and sense of desperation about it. the way he hits the table. we so Rarely see him lash out like that. but it's just too much to Bear. like everything in him is just Breaking the only thing that he's even remotely been able to hold onto amidst all of the unbearable loss and trauma in his life has failed. he's fumbling around for anything that might make it better. that audries fic describing him in this moment as an 'addict out of a fix' with 'newborn anger.' “this is the world? this is it?” it's the way that he spends this whole ep cooking up some elaborate mythology about missing children and how they can be found and then the last shot of the episode is that wide shot of all of the children's graves. sometimes he's just wrong. the world is so much fucking darker and uglier sometimes than the way he sees it. and that's what is crashing down around him in this moment. and she's sitting in the wreckage holding him tight.

this is such brave, brave love. i keep thinking about CSM in the following episode, standing in scully's apartment, warning her. "allow him his ignorance, it's what gives him hope."

she doesn't know what will happen to him, to her, to them, when she breaks down the only method of coping that he has. his mother lost her bedrock too, and she didn't survive. from the moment scully enters, you can watch it break her. she does it anyway. she gets down on the ground, and she cries, and she holds him. god, it all just would've been so different, if there'd been just 1 person, 27 years ago.

(thinking about mulder reaching up to hold scully when missy died, and these tags asking: did anyone hold him, when it was his sister?)

i love the show's message on grief (and trauma), in that this is all that is necessary for "closure." there is no "Truth," (and there really isn't any closure, there's no "beyond" the sea). but it matters that someone knows. it matters that someone bears witness. it matters that someone tells you the truth, even when it fucking breaks their heart. sits in the destruction with you.

the exhaustion in her voice the next morning, when she tells skinner, "it's been a hard night for him." she's still wearing her work clothes from the day before. she was up all night. she's tired, and she's scared, and she's sad. it's been a hard 7 years. it's been a hard 27 years.

it makes me tear up every time i see it, the way she blocks him in the doorway. she's not moving. this is just so scully. it's not even starbuck, it's just so scully. she would keep him in that apartment where she could cover him and control what touches him forever, if she could. (she can't, so you're not taking him anywhere without her. the way she looks her boss in the eye and tells him he better book her a flight too. brave love.)

2/ demons

god, this one just makes me sad. this might be the one that makes me saddest. she's dying. she doesn't have it in her, anymore. i talked about this in my newsletter (and i wrote a fic about it once) but this is like...the only time where she never calls him out on what he's doing. she never yells. she never rolls her eyes. she never gets frustrated with him. she doesn't have it in her. she's dying. he will be alone. she won't be here the next time. what can she even do about it?

i always think about this post:

and you know she is thinking about how if she hadn’t been there he would’ve died. and how the next time he does something like this, she won’t have enough life left in her to keep them both alive. she might not even have enough left for herself. and she’ll give whatever she does have left to him, but it won’t be enough to save either of them. she’ll die cold and pale and he’ll burn himself out. and what can she do but hold him? who will he have when she’s gone? what will he do to himself? who will he call?

and these tags:

this is so cautious and tender and apologetic. sorry for all the pain he feels constantly. and sorry that nothing can ease it. and sorry that she is dying and leaving him like this.

she started writing to him as soon as she was diagnosed, begging. begging forgiveness, begging courage, begging grace. begging for him to not feel there was anything more he could've done, to not become the next cause he is lost in. for him to keep going, as she needs to know he's "out there."

but she's seen him hold a gun to himself too many times, and she knows he's coming down with her. and it's such a loss? this is a person she gave up everything, including her life, to follow, because she believed in him and what he wanted to do in the world that much. but things are different now. he won't survive this. he won't be "out there" saving the world.

what can she do? go to rhode island at 5am, wrap him up. stay quiet, stay still, but scream and thrash at anyone who's careless with him. sink down next to him, cover him, hold him. "maybe we need every answer in the world to survive a single question: how long do we have each other?" (x)

(also, her memento mori journal, in general. she sat in that hospital alone, for days, knowing she was going to die. and she wrote letter, after letter, after letter, to him. so that he would have something. so that he wouldn’t be left alone with nothing, again.)

3/ the end

"as mulder appears. the look on his face is of a man who's seeing, smelling, and tasting the loss of everything he has worked for. it's the look of utter defeat. angle on scully at the door. she sees only mulder right now...she moves to him now. putting her arms around him, holding on to keep him from breaking. off this, we fade out. the end." (script)

i think so often about the script notes of this scene. the description of mulder, as absorbed in destruction. everything that he's worked for, literally reduced to (cigarette) ash. scully only focused on him.

in the final angle of the season, you can really see how she's standing in front of him. her fingers clutching him. but when she first grabs him, it's so tentative. it almost feels like she's trying to see if he's still there, if he exists, if his work doesn't.

this is...the whole thing! there's a reason why this was "the end." the final image of this iteration of the series, before everything changes. this is what it is all about. it's mulder walking headfirst into the devastation of the world. drenched in loss. seeing it. smelling it. tasting it. surrounded by it. and it's scully knowing what he'll find even as he's still moving (this script note, from the hallway: "reverse on scully. returning the look. knowing what mulder is going to find. and what it will mean.")

following behind. eyes on him, while he takes in the ash. just holding on for dear life; trying to keep him close, whole.

(also, i love the moment before the fire, at his apartment, after diana was shot. the way scully tells skinner that he can reach her at mulder's if he needs her, because that's where she'll be. he doesn't even have a bed, or anywhere for her to stay!! she's not leaving him.)

4/ paper hearts

oh, starbuck. we are really in it now.

paper hearts is an ahab and starbuck episode, yes. but mostly it's about grief. mostly it's about harsh awakenings. mostly it's about confrontation with fear, scully's included.

one of the most haunting moments of the series, to me, is when they speak to the father of the 14th victim, twenty-one years after his daughter went missing. and through tears, the father says, "i used to think...that missing was worse than dead, because...you never knew what happened. now that i know, i'm glad my wife's not here. she got luckier."

in that moment, as mulder looks over at the photos on the mantle, missing is not worse than dead. it is not worse than knowing. and later that day, in his first scene, roche calls it exactly as it is: "i understand you take this very personally, mulder."

i've written about this scene in the hallway so many times, because it's truly the crux of this episode (my favorite episode).

from my newsletter:

There’s something so viscerally deep about this episode that’s hard to put into words, but to me, it is most palpable in the moment in the hallway when Mulder asks Scully if she believes that his sister was abducted by aliens. And you can see in his face that he knows the answer, and he’s challenging her to come out and say it. You can see in Scully’s that she would rather admit to anything else.

he's challenging her. he's taking their entire dynamic, and throwing it in her face. not to be cruel. not to disrupt. but just to say...so what now? isn't this what you believe?

i don't think that they've ever been so fragile, as in this hallway, honestly. they rarely threaten to break it all down. their entire lives are built on him walking up to tragedy and saying: it was aliens. it was XYZ. and her following behind saying: no. it was a killer, it was a man.

what does that mean? what is she really saying?

this episode is hard on scully. mulder has never been more haunted. there has never been a bigger reminder of what they are actually doing. they are not just chasing little green men, having adventures, studying sewer worms. they are trying to make sense of something that will never make sense. they are trying to find a "truth" that they do not want to know. they are living their lives in mourning, in bereavement, in remembrance, of a missing little girl, and scully is terrified that they'll find her. that it will be exactly like roche threatens. that missing is not worse than dead.

and there is no one else. there is no one else that even knows how haunted he is. how stuck he is, in that childhood bedroom, like he said all those years ago. how deeply sad it is.

it's all of the little things. it's the "you did good work, mulder" in the beginning. it's the way she asks if he's okay to go tell the 14th victim's family. it's way she exclaims "oh my god" when roche says that he just wants to see mulder's face, when he finds samantha's body. one of the few times that we ever see scully lose control, but she just stands up and screams, opens the door and wordlessly waits for mulder to get up and get out of there.

it's the way that she hears "help me, scully" and digs in the dirt, with her bare hands.

(you can tell in his eyes here that he's been crying, and it really gets to me. there's so much that we don't see.)

in the end, they're back in the basement. nothing left but one scrap of tattered fabric, one more lost failure. it's over. she just comes down to check on him.

the progression of scully's face in this last scene is just unbelievably gut-wrenching to me. her smile, when she tells him to get some sleep, and he laughs. the way it disappears when he holds her, and can't see her anymore. with his mother, flashing that smile and hugging her was all that it took to convince her not to worry. when he repeats the same actions with scully, she looks like she could break.

this post:

Episodes like this make me think how alone - not just lonely, but truly alone - Mulder was before her. Nobody lost sleep over him falling apart under the fist of decades old trauma. Nobody grappled with him, let him wrestle his grief against them, and still stayed. Nobody visited him in the hospital, flew to Alaska, lied for him, stayed by his bed for days straight without an extra change of clothes. Nobody else knew he was suffering or wanted to, knew it more than he knew. That end of Paper hearts where she tells him to get some sleep, he laughs at the ridiculousness of it, but also out of incredulity at having someone to wish for better on his behalf. The heartbroken look on her face as he’s laughing into her waist seems to be her coming to the same realisation; “Who looked after you before? How long did you feel like this on your own?”

she is heartbroken. there is so much grief, in being starbuck. there's grief in being needed. there's grief in following ghosts. there's grief in loving someone who is so encased in pain, in loss. he will not go home and get some sleep. a well-placed joke, that smile, a hug, does not convince her that he's okay. he hurts so much, for so long, and he has one person who knows it. and all they do is keep moving: closer and closer to that breaking point that she is so afraid of, and they can't stop.

5/ redux ii

remember when dana scully lied on her death bed and looked up at mulder as he told her that he was not willing to jeopardize skinner to save himself, and she replied, "well, then, you have to lay it on me."

the way he smiles and shakes his head, chokes out "i can't...i can't do that." through tears...they are so kind to each other. all that she has left in the world is her reputation, and she says: take it. take it all. take everything.

she cries when he won't do it.

6/ herrenvolk

okay, i wanna get into some slightly lighter ones, so y'all remember when she nearly fully knocked skinner into the wall, because mulder came in with a (checks notes) scratch on his face?

this is just so scully.

she is so panicked. she just wants to slow him down, to stand between him and the world for even one moment longer.

these tags:

she's almost begging him not to go in. the extent of her worry is heartbreaking. she loves him. it frightens her to know what awaits him.

one of the biggest conflicts of scully's character is that she just cannot stop him, she cannot shield him, she cannot protect him. the way she leans up here, and pulls him to her shoulder. covers him with a blanket. this is what she can do.

there is so much grief in being starbuck!! in loving someone who walks blindly into a world that you do not trust. in following someone into the worst night of their life: over, over, over. years, years, years. in being first mate, holding the responsibility on your shoulders of having to steer in a safe direction, only having one to choose from.

(i also think it's really special, all of the little moments where she checks in. in the previous episode, in the hospital hallway, the way she says "are you okay?" so softly.

in paper clip, when she makes him stop, and says "no, wait, hold on a second...i don't think you've had time to process everything that you've been through."

remnants of the girl who told him she'll cover for him and he should just go get a beer, take some time for himself, after jersey. who suggested he talk to someone, when jerry lamana died. she's always wanted so much for him, but she understands more now. there's still room to pause, for a moment, before he carries on.)

7/ anasazi

ladies, would you shoot your man with a gun, to keep him from endangering himself, while he was being laced with LSD, and then drag him across the country singlehandedly, while he was unconscious, despite him being twice your size? and this, too, is taking care.

the way she says, "i was certain they would have killed you, mulder." and the fear in her voice, his hand on her knee. (she is so young. she really doesn't know what to do, not as often as she seems like she does). the way he says, "thank you. thank you for taking care of me." they are so kind to each other. it'll break your fucking heart.

(i remember asking y'all a few weeks ago, if mulder and scully ever say "i'm sorry," if they ever apologize to each other. and we came up with a couple of times. i'll tell you what, though: not as often as they say "thank you.")

8/ fire

girlbosses when they singlehandedly solve serial murders, to get their best friend's shitty ex away from them!!! okay, i put this one on here because we were talking about it yesterday, but scully really does handle the entire situation with phoebe so perfectly, and that's hard to do, when you're dealing with friends and abusers.

trish, i loved this part of your post yesterday:

scully gives him the space to talk about it, never says too much but she says enough. her phrasing is SO important. she repeats what he just told her in a way that frames it as wrong.

she's a little rabid, lol. we can see it on her face when she's alone, or when mulder's not looking. but around him (around phoebe too) she's calm. she listens, she addresses what he tells her as bad, without pressing. when he tells her that she's off the case, that he doesn't want to expose her to what phoebe is doing, she asks one time: are you sure you don't want help?

he says yes, and she does it anyway. she catches that fucking murderer so that this woman can go home. just, like, an inspiration to us all.

trish's tweet:

really, truly, genuinely. scully solving the case in fire was the absolute best course of action she could have taken. get that woman out of here, an ocean away from mulder. (give him freedom, let him heal, teach him what real love feels like)

(her eyes locked in on him here, phoebe behind her. the way that when phoebe leaves the room, scully says, "you alright?" instantly.)

meeting phoebe just a few months into their partnership made her so fucking crazy like...i make fun of her for being sick in the head in regards to everyone he meets (men and women alike) and never wanting anyone around him other than her but like, my god, can you blame her!!! he's such a gentle person and people are so cruel and it makes her eyes bug out of her head.

yeah, i really don't have much else to say here, you guys. she solved a murder herself, a case that she wasn't even supposed to be working, so that his old gf would go away and stop being mean to him. she doesn't play!!

(also! while we're on the subject of abusive exes, honorable mention to scully cornering diana into an empty room and telling her to "just think" about who mulder is, who he was when she met him, compared to where he is now. "and then try and stand there in front of me. look me in the eye. and tell me mulder wouldn't bust his ass trying to save you.")

9/ deadalive

oh, you guys remember that time she raised him from the dead, right?

scully at 8 months pregnant, sitting in that hospital chair, holding his hand, for days. knowing he can’t feel it, knowing that there’s nothing that says he’ll ever wake up. that it’s impossible. that there is no science…yeah. she just sits there and holds his hand.

i love the moment when she finds out, and she comes barreling through that hallway. she hits skinner first, and starts yelling, “i want to see him. no, i need to see him,” slams her fists into his chest.

then she moves onto doggett. repeats, “i need to see him” through tears. and the way doggett says… “i know. but i wish you wouldn’t.”

she’s loved. they want to protect her, protect her image of mulder as she knew him. but they also both know she will fucking plow them down.

i always think of this fic and feel so ill:

“I pulled you six feet out of the ground,” she whispers, dangerously low. “Because I couldn’t live without you. I gave birth to your child.”

she fed his fish while he was in a casket. she planned a funeral and decorated a nursery alone, at the same time. she ran herself ragged all over the country, trying to keep his work going. she raised him from the dead.

(i also feel that i can throw in here, as related, the time that she busted him out of prison and then abandoned everything in her entire life including her career, her family, and everything she owns, to go on the run from the law and live secretly in seedy motels for years to be with him.)

10/ fight the future

there are too many contenders for my last spot, so i’m gonna keep it simple, and go with the most special movie moment. (of all movies).

from my newsletter:

“Mulder watches the spaceship as it flies overhead, his face glows with a heart-melting grin of childlike wonder and awe.”(x)

That’s exactly what it feels like to me, it’s an innocence and excitement that was so present in season one, that was all over him when he told Scully to come look in the second episode, but that’s rare to see in the later seasons. It’s rare to see at this point in their story, after all that’s happened. They are stranded in Antarctica, both of them injured, both of them freezing in the cold, and they are holding each other and gazing up at the sky. What a perfect thing in their big momentous feature, to bring it all back to what it started with.

there’s such a reverent sentimentality to it, in the simplicity. she had stopped breathing, a few minutes earlier. but when he passes out, she pulls herself up, and grabs onto him. keeps him alive, keeps them both alive, just by holding him close. that’s really the heart of it.

(also, i find it so moving that this film is the only time in the franchise that scully considers leaving, not working with him anymore, and it’s because she thinks she’s not good for him. that she’s holding him back. she never considers him as anything other than wanted, something worth believing in.)

some honorable mentions to: little green men, which i’ve written about here. (especially her secret-signaling him to their secret meet-up place, just to ask if he’s okay). the erlenmeyer flask, which i’ve talked about here. (she literally stops him in the street to tell him that she should have listened to him, and she’s sorry, because she should have trusted his instincts. that means so much, you guys). her telling colton she hopes he falls on his ass after he was making rude comments about mulder in squeeze, screaming at a serial killer that she’ll gas him into hell herself and no one will stop her, if mulder isn’t okay, in beyond the sea….she has threatened and shouted at and smacked around so many people for fucking with him, and this too is care!! (anger meaning you’re worth being angry over, etc etc)

how desperately she became frantic to find their son, after 17 years resigned to never ever looking for him, never ever endangering him that way…because she became convinced that it’s the only thing that would help mulder.

and how important samantha is to her. it matters. it matters, that sam is remembered. that someone else in the world knows. someone knows that they played baseball in the summers, that they fought over the television, that he’s looked for her in every room he’s ever been in. someone else cares about her; not as a white whale, not as a photo on a desk, as a little girl who broke her collarbone because she played on swings too hard. scully listened to her journal, and cried. listened to how much she suffered. how much she just wanted to see her big brother. (scully kept a journal like that, too, once. underwent those same tests. almost died at the hands of those same men. wrote her testimony to that same person.) it’s taking care of mulder, to love samantha. and she does.

[myassbrokethefall]

xf rewatch: ice/space/fallen angel

one thing about me is I know how important it is to stick to a consistent posting schedule. anyway here’s 3 more XF rewatch writeups after weeks of silence

ice

Ice doesn’t deserve to be just lumped in here, but I watched it forever ago and I’ve seen it a million times and no one needs my thoughts on it anyway. Biggest Ice takeaways this time through:

this is M&S’s, and our, first truly grownup episode. M&S have been faffing around in their shoulder pads debating about whether aliens are real and if a jersey devil could be a girl and and certainly getting in scrapes/close calls, but this shit is SERIOUS. like they could die. and they know it. and this ep feels it. they are scared, they are wild-eyed and sweaty in their casual thermals and this is not just investigating a Case or intellectual sparring. there is no remove. no one is wearing a suit or renting a car or buying an office sandwich from the cart. they keep getting in deeper and deeper and it is out of control and scary and real as shit

that exterior shot with the extremely fake Rudolph snowflakes is used, I believe my final count was, 472 times. and was hilarious to me each and every time.

ice is a magnificent ep, no notes. we knew this

space

Space is… not good, which is not news but allow me to attempt to pinpoint why:

pacing so bad. like in the beginning some stuff (conveyed mostly through stock footage) is happening and then suddenly mulder and scully are there and it’s like, a case I guess? this lady walks up to them and shows them this photo that looks like nothing and spends like an hour explaining it to them and is like the fbi has to investigate this! and mulder and scully are like oh, well we’re the fbi so we can do that. then they go to nasa and just stand around

listen I love, LOVE a good nerd infodump but even for me it was all getting deeply tedious and I ceased being able to, or having the will to, follow what was going on. And I just read and enjoyed all 864 pages of Seveneves. Having scully stand next to mulder and he has to keep explaining to her every space thing as it happens just adds this extra layer of shellac over everything. it’s like when you’re on a plane and you kind of half-voluntarily watch a movie in the row ahead of you through the seat backs. primo chris carter “tell don’t show.”

the whole car accident sequence is a facepalm from beginning to end. the car literally FLIPS OVER, michelle is in there yelling and sounding mostly just mildly pissed off, mulder keeps chirping “y’all right?” like she tumbled into a snowbank in a hallmark movie, then bodily drags her out from her flipped-over car that she is trapped under, and THEN scully goes “now, don’t try to move.” thanks doc! then michelle just goes back to NASA, with blood dripping down her face (which continues actively dripping throughout the scene, with no trace of a scar the next day). couldn’t hitting a tree have conveyed the sense of “a malevolent space monster made me lose control of my driving” just as well? presumably the car explodes as soon as they leave. and no one minds.

I realize this is not an easy thing to replicate on a budget, but my god “mission control” is sad-looking. it looks like it was filmed inside the janitor’s closet at a puppet theater. and the only person who works there is that one guy who I am informed was a canadian vj on MuchMusic and who has literally all the dialogue. (counterpoint: hard for me not to compare to For All Mankind, which does all this a million times better, but deeply unfair to do so since that's not only 25 years later but the theme on which this episode is kind of the saddest crackerjackiest variation is their show's entire job and budget.)

Mulder And Scully At The (NASA) Library: Approved. Love how they just leave the file they spent hours searching for when they run out.

what even was the motivation of the space/mars guy. to get back to space? to kill everyone? to kill everyone but only after getting back to space first? to bring down more space/mars guys to cause dramatically bad car accidents where everyone is fine? yes I know the REAL motivation is "give mulder and scully a semi-plausible paranormal reason to go to nasa and stand around"

the “everyone cheers in mission control because a scary/tense space thing was accomplished and everyone is ok” moment happened I think 3 separate times?? chris come on

this episode is still like 5x as coherent and watchable as any of CC’s revival episodes (other than Plus One).

one good thing is the space face morphing or whatever was super cool/creepy and holds up quite decently as an effect. also scully saw it!! well that’s cool! she doesn’t really seem to have any particular thoughts about that or anything though. you might think Mulder would bring that up more in the future. (morgan & wong: “well scully can’t SEE the paranormal thing so let’s have her juuuust miss it! twice!” chris carter: *file not found*)

I get that CC wanted to make a tense NASA episode, I like that genre of thing, and I appreciate that they took a stab at it but in the end, the execution was not the greatest. nor was the concept. ah well.

fallen angel

fallen angel was a friggin breath of fresh air after space, and I remembered NOTHING about it beyond a bit of Max and “the enigmatic Dr. Scully.”

the gordon/gansa ripping off of scifi classics continues apace as the whole evacuating for a “toxic spill” that is really a UFO is of course straight out of Close Encounters.

although I (correctly) complained about this in Space, I actually liked how we got sort of sideways-pulled into this one, with the scenario setup first and then we see Mulder (only Mulder) skulking around while we are flashing back to Deep Throat giving him the lowdown. immediately understandable that this is kind of an off-book adventure for him (leather jacket for forest hiking, perfect). And super satisfying when Scully gets her hero’s entrance to bail him out (and yell at him).

it was fun getting an idea of mulder as UFO Celebrity. always mobbed by fans while in air force jail. rough. (also funny to see his sheepishness at getting called out for writing an article in Omni about UFO sightings under a fake name)

Loved Scully getting pulled into some clutch doctoring. Just some great dimension for her as well/a reminder that she has her own areas of expertise and this FBI sidekick situation is not all she can do. (she is also still heartbreakingly in her "the government cannot do that! you are entitled to the truth!" phase.) I also loved when she marches glassy-eyed into Mulder’s motel room after a long rough night and wordlessly opens the fridge.

I liked the bit where mulder is talking about Max being an abductee and scully is all, mulder he's unreliable and he might be psychotic blah blah and mulder goes, scully you don’t get it, HE doesn’t think he’s an abductee, I think it. Also brings back a bit of what I liked so much in the pilot and earliest eps: scully being like mulder your crazy alien voodoo isn't gonna work on me!!! a martian didn't eat those livers!!! and mulder being like, scully, all I am asking is that you look at a scar and give me your medical opinion. he's not trying to talk her into anything and that's how he GETS YA

Interesting to see how they're still throwing out whatever alien concepts at this point. they are benevolent and send reassuring messages through the tv to loved ones? sure. they are evil spirits that possess astronauts' faces before killing them? got it. they're invisible/use cloaking devices to pass through lasers? duly noted.

I’m not sure the ending worked great but that’s ok. Gotta end it somehow. I found myself glad to know that we will be seeing Max again.

On a scale between Ice where Mulder and Scully are believably layered humans, frightened but determined, shakily wielding their authority one minute and losing their shit in realistically overlapping off-camera arguments in the next, and Space where they are sidelined Mary Sues in a half-baked NASA fanfic that could have used another beta, Fallen Angel is somewhere in the middle. Good ep, not great. But that yearning feeling that XF was so good at is present here. Something big is happening and it's JUST beyond where we can see. gotta see it. gotta keep searching. it's out there (the truth)

[attn-all-pickpockets]

top 5 txf episodes

I loved this prompt but also it was very hardddd, I mostly chose ones that I never shut up about lmao

"Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose"

This is my girl, this is my ride or die. I was in the Northeast when the first category 1 hurricane hit in like 50 years and I had to drive through the outer bands in a rental car with a spare tire on it and when we got home I made everyone watch this because it's my comfort episode that accompanies me through moments of triumph as well as crisis. Scully befriending the depressed old man psychic is such a great storyline for Scully and this whole ep really lets her shine. Scully has such a kindness and playfulness that she typically only shows with Mulder, but her fondness for the deadpan comedy stylings of Bruckman made her fond of him and her heartbreak when he dies is such a perfect scene. Also I just think of her smile and "there are hits and there are misses, and then there are misses :)" a lot.

2. "Leonard Betts"

If someone asked me what is the episode of The X Files that feels like the quintessential episode, I would say "Leonard Betts", which I think some would think as a weird choice. But this episode is what this show was at the height of its popularity to me. It aired after the Superbowl and the cold open is one of its best with a beheading, followed by the corpse waltzing right out of the morgue. The banter between Mulder and Scully is top notch and full of perfect Mulder quips ("blinked or winked?") and incredulous Scully deliveries ("Mulder, they're worms") and even if the scientific explanation of "evolutionary cancer" is deeply ludicrous from a scientific perspective, it is a great x-file. And the ENDING of finding out Scully has cancer is such a gut punch, just a phenomenal hour of tv.

3. "Paper Clip"

This is on here because I love the Anasazi/The Blessing Way/Paper Clip trilogy so much and I have to shout it out. I will always cape for early mythology because I think the fact that became a muddled mess makes people forget how damn good it was to begin with. So much of the early character work was done in these episodes and they're so compelling. Bringing in real history with Operation Paper Clip and connecting Mulder's father to the people Mulder is trying to investigate was a great move (that they didn't totally deliver on imo, but "sins of the father" is a great idea at the very least) and expanding the scope and complicity in the conspiracy really put what Mulder and Scully were up against in perspective. Mulder relenting and choosing to go out of hiding for Scully so she could see her sister and their conversation in the hospital room after Melissa died are some of my favorite moments of the show.

4. "Folie a Deux"

It's hard to pick a Vince episode and this could just as easily be "Pusher" (which was the episode that got me to seriously ship msr) or "Bad Blood" or almost any other episode he wrote, but "Folie a Deux" is special to me. Mulder's mental wellness and people's belief that he's crazy has been an angle that has always been present and Vince framing this as a joint delusion on Mulder and Scully's part is so fascinating and a fantastic bit or writing to me. Mulder is so discredited and dismissed in this episode and the only person who listens to him is Scully and that's a perfect distillation of their dynamic and the show itself. Also the episode is Marxist to me.

5. "Jose Chung's From Outer Space"

I thought to myself "well I can't have two Darin episodes on here" but…of course I can! This is one of the greatest episodes of TV of all time. Not just of sci-fi or network or pre-00s TV, of all TV ever made. This is one of the episodes that sets The X Files apart from its clones or other cop procedural shows and it's that it can switch genres and tones and bring this post-modern, storyline hopping masterpiece out and no one thinks twice about its place in the show or season. A lot gets said about how funny it is and the melancholic tone Darin brings to his writing, but I find myself so impressed by they way the writing and directing work to make the timeline jumping work and not end up confusing the viewer. I'll eventually talk about this more, but the shot construction to create anchor points between a re-enactment and the scene of the narrator telling this story to Mulder and Scully is so great.

[swiftzeldas]

First of all, I am drinking wine and watching Derry Girls, so I LOVE that for us! Second of all! Top 5 episodes of X-Files and top 5 Eras tour moments?

I LOVE THIS FOR US AND I LOVE YOU (i just watched poor things too and now we're doing the holdovers in preparation for the oscars tomorrow!)

top 5 episodes of the x files (this is so hard because there are over 200 i'll have you know)

memento mori - it's just so moving and you can watch gillian anderson winning an emmy in real time

pusher - as perfect a monster of the week episode as has ever been made

tunguska/terma - this two-parter truly has goddamn everything (mulder and scully putting themselves on the line for each other! scully sticking to her guns in front of a lineup of old men! krycek switching sides 15 times! marita makes an appearance! the black oil! skinner takes his shirt off! what's not to love??)

beyond the sea - best acting in the entirety of the show occurs in this ep

quagmire - ok this is also a perfect monster of the week episode

eras tour moments

the fact that i got to hear her perform timeless live for the first time!!!! still screaming about this

the entirety of the chicago shows - those were such wonderful chaos even tho i do suspect she wasn't all that happy (she brought out maren! she played hits different!)

the rain show in nashville where she and aaron performed would've should've could've in a downpour!!!!

the speak now tv announcement!

when she played cowboy like me in vegas!

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

Whumpay Day 6: "what did they do to you?"

during Our Town | @today-in-fic, @whumpay2022

"Are you okay?" Mulder asks, and Scully almost just says yes out of instinct, because it's what she always does. For him, she's always fine. But when he carefully pulls the duct tape from her mouth and helps her stand up, she's hit with a sudden wave of dizziness that nearly makes her lose her tentative balance.

All she can do is look back down at her hands, still bound together, and lift them a little bit. "Get this off of me, please," she whispers.

He fumbles to untie her hands, and she tries not to think of the last time something like this happened. She wasn't as dizzy, then, after Pfaster, but she'd been far more shaken. She's grateful for the ability to hold herself together this time, but at the same time there's a part of her that still wants to feel protected in Mulder's arms.

"What did they do to you?" He asks, catching her drifting attention again. She's staring at the dead man on the ground, but not really seeing him. She looks up at Mulder a little too quickly and wishes she hadn't, because she has to reach out and grab onto him when the dizziness hits her again.

She takes a deep breath and steadies herself. "Just knocked me out and brought me here," she replies. "I'm- I think I have a concussion," she adds, matching up her current symptoms with what she knows happened. "I'm dizzy." Her voice sounds very small to her ears, like a plea for help, but if she seems especially vulnerable, Mulder doesn't let it show.

He just nods, keeps a hand on her arm, keeps her steady and grounded and knocks the mask off of the man who had been about to kill her with his foot. Scully isn't sure whether the added dizziness is just a symptom of being hit on the head, or from shock at seeing the staring face of the sheriff under the mask. She looks at Mulder, who looks at her with equal shock, and steps closer to wrap his arm around her shoulders.

"Think you can make it to the car?" He asks, pointing to where his headlights shine over through the low bushes. "I called the deputy, he should be here with backup and hopefully an ambulance any minute."

Scully leans into his side and tries not to stumble too much, but the ground is just uneven enough and her eyes aren't focusing enough to keep her from tripping. The wobbly, dizzy feeling has grown past her shock into a pounding headache by the time they reach the car and she sits down in the passenger seat. Mulder crouches in front of her, peering up into her face, and she tries to assure him that she's alright, but the fact of the matter is that she's not.

The deputy sheriff does bring an ambulance, but the paramedic just checks her over sitting right there in the car while Mulder confers with the deputy.

"Only sleep for two hour increments," says the medic, and Scully barely stops herself before she nods. "No painkillers at first, but by tomorrow that should be alright. And," she adds, "You're not going to be alone, are you?"

Mulder interjects, then, "No, she won't be."

"Thank you," Scully mumbles, directed both at the nodding paramedic and at Mulder.

When they finally escape the shadows of the raging bonfire and crime scene activity, they drive for an hour before pulling into a hotel with rooms open. Scully is only too dizzy to walk for a few moments after standing up out of the car, but she waves Mulder off when he tries to support her again. She needs to stand on her own strength. Even still, she lets him book just one room for the night, and she slips into the bed beside him after making him promise to wake her up, and considering everything that's just happened, she feels surprisingly safe with him beside her.

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa has 8 stories at Gossamer, but there are even more X-Files fics at AO3 and her website. She writes Mulder and Scully in a very lovely way. I've recced 3 of my favorites of her fics here before: Bird in Snow, Fall: East on M St, and Skuamorph. Big thanks to Tabula Rasa for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

I'm always extremely pleasantly surprised to get kudos (or, very rarely, a comment) on my old fic, but I'm always happy to see it! I did post them all (I think) to AO3. I'm not surprised people are still reading fic, though. It's an iconic show and now with streaming, it's really easy to watch older shows and natural to want fic about them!

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

XF was my first fandom, definitely my first online fandom, and so it will always have a special place in my heart. Also... I had a great time! I stumbled upon and joined the Scullyfic email list by accident, but it was the best thing I could have done. I learned a lot about how to be a writer and how to be in fandom, and those lessons are still important to me. Foundational. Also, in terms of modern fandom drama, XF was more low-key on the drama (although it didn't seem like it at the time!). But I learned something that's always served me well: find like-minded people, and hang out with them. Don't worry about the rest.

Also... you can't control the show, but you kind of can control the canon.

Because of Scully, I ended up taking a forensic anthropology class in university-- and now I have a Master's in a forensic science! Part of the Scully Effect, and proud of it!

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

Definitely mostly email list! I never really got the hang of message boards. Posting fic was exhausting, and tbh I never figured out how to work Ephemeral. I checked it every day, though! I loved, after a new episode, everyone sending in their thoughts and reading everyone's experiences together. Fandom was a lot more work back then, tbh!

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

That fic can be just as good, or better, than traditionally published works. There are works of XF fic that have stuck with me for years now, far more than some books I've read. That fan writers can know the characters better than the show writers. The fandom in general was really smart, and mostly more adult than me (I joined fandom when I went away to college, so I always felt at the younger end of the scale. That was good though!).

Also, my first time reading and writing porn. Not gonna lie, I was shocked the first time I accidentally read smut. But I adjusted fast. lol

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

I was still a kid (now we would say preteen) when the show premiered- I think in middle school. But I was already into ghosts, aliens, monsters, solving mysteries, and I'd already imprinted on the dynamic thanks to Square One (really)! I was also just old enough to start developing celebrity crushes. Hilariously, I did not twig to the fact that I'm bisexual the entire time I was in XF fandom, despite having enormous crushes on BOTH Mulder and Scully. Ahhhh!

Also, my whole family was into the show, but I was definitely the one with the hyperfixation. I used to take notes and record the episodes as I watched. It just had the right stuff and hit at the right time. And I've always been obsessive.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

As a kid I also really liked Star Trek, and someone had given my dad a book about the history of Star Trek, which I read. This included mentions of fandom and fanfic. As soon as I had a private-- and perhaps more importantly fast-- internet connection (in college), I went looking for XF fanfic, and that was that. Hooked immediately. Also I shipped them A LOT so that's what I went looking for.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

I tend to not go back to a fandom once I have a new fandom, so I wouldn't say I'm in it. I did hang around the edges for the revival, of course, because I wanted to experience that with the same people, but since the revival was mostly not that great (with a few exceptions), I didn't get pulled back into it. But I still think of the people I knew in the fandom a lot, and always hope they're doing well.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

I've never left fandom, and I've been in a BUNCH: Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Bandom, Supernatural, now CQL/The Untamed and other Chinese-media fandoms, with many smaller ones in between or on the side. I feel like at their core fandoms tend to be similar, although where you host the fandom makes a big difference: Livejournal, tumblr, twitter. I think that because fandoms now tend to be bigger and more diverse (which is good) there tends to be more wank (which is bad). In some of them I was close to a group of people, some of them not. Honestly the best thing is when someone you know from an old fandom is in your new fandom. It's so much fun. I have really good friends thanks to fandom, and I've had them for YEARS. Like. 15 years.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

I tend to focus more on ships than characters, but some of my all-time favs: Scully, Hermione, Sirius Black, Castiel, Lan Wangji, Xie Lian. That's just fandom-oriented ones, otherwise we'd be here all day. :D

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

I don't often rewatch episodes any more, although if I come across an ep on tv I might. I definitely still think about them though! For example, I'm a teacher now, and just a couple weeks ago one of my colleagues mentioned he'd heard the students saying they shipped two of their classmates, and he was like "Ship? I don't get it" and I was like "HOO BOY, do I have a story for you!" And I explained how shipping came from XF fandom, and why. That was fun. I definitely still think about Mulder and Scully too-- I mean, they're cultural touchstones, so they do come up sometimes in greater pop culture. Also, I was in Hannibal fandom for a while, and Gillian Anderson is still The Best.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I haven't read XF fic in years, even the ones I remember as being really significant/important to me. I still have my all-time favs saved on an external HD though! Fic in another fandom- every day lol.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

Blinded by White Light by DashaK has stuck with me. Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the Ruby-Throated Warbler by I forget I'm so sorry -- that's lasted as my ideal post-canon MSR and as an interesting and different way to tell a story.  [Lilydale note: It’s by rah.] I was always thrilled to see fic by Brandon, JET, MaybeAmanda, Syntax6... and, frankly, everyone on the Scullyfic/ Emuse list. So many talented people in that fandom!

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Things Outside, which is the only thing I've ever written based on a dream, and I'm really satisfied with it. It was hard to write but so much fun to revel in the weirdness. I always kind of wanted to write more because I know a lot more about the situation, but otoh, I like the open, ambiguous ending (usually I am very HEA).

In other fandoms, King & Country in bandom (MCR) and in Supernatural I'm very proud of Hope and Clay. I struggle to write casefics even though I love to read them, but that one really worked out.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I don't think I'll ever write something new. There is an old fic that may be done but it was smut so I was too shy to post it at the time. In theory if I find it and it's decent, I could post it!

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

I do! I write fic very slowly, but I do write still! I have a million ideas for stories, but I'm so slow at the actual writing part.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

I usually take a jumping-off point from canon, or of course, something I need to fix or expand on. Or sometimes I start telling myself a story as I fall asleep and the idea grabs me long enough I can manage to write it.

What's the story behind your pen name?

I was getting into fandom and realized people didn't use their real names. I flipped through my history book looking for inspiration, and decided tabula rasa was a great name for a writer. I tend to add an X because it's rare to get "tabularasa" as a username, and the X is indeed for X-Files (so I'm something like tabulaxrasa most places). I usually go by Tabula Rasa or Tab, though. And I still use it because 1) it IS a great name for a writer; and 2) it's not fandom-specific so I can keep it in every fandom.

I identify with it so much I have answered to this name in class (oops). I have a "Tab" t-shirt (as in the soda, but I have worn it to Comic-Con for ease of ID-- better than a nametag!). And my mom got me a necklace with a "tab" typewriter key as a charm, which I adore. Yes, I have accidental merch of myself.

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

As you can tell from the above, my family knows (my family being my parents and sister). They are supportive! I think my mom read a couple stories? But obviously she has to know the fandom to get it... I got my sister into fic, and we even wrote a couple fics together (in Gundam Wing). She's a lot more selective about fandoms, but she's joined fandoms on her own, too. She's just not in one constantly, like me. :p

I tend not to tell not-online friends unless I have felt them out and know they're super fannish, or they bring it up first.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

Most of my old fic is now on AO3 and I hang out on twitter a lot, @tabula_x_rasa

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

I'm really glad people are still in this fandom! It will always be so important to me. Thank you Lilydale, for this nostalgia trip!

(Posted by Lilydale on March 30, 2021)

[scullyfemme]

Basketball

After their New Year’s kiss, Mulder takes Scully on yet another sports-related date

Post-ep for Millenium | 2,000 words | tagging @today-in-fic​

---

“Happy New Year, Scully.”

“Happy New Year, Mulder.”

His smile was open and exuberant while hers was quieter; it was a more personal smile meant only for her. Their very real, potentially world-ending kiss had been quick and chaste, but they both felt it lingering. Lingering on their lips and in the air around them. He looped his good arm around her shoulders and led them both down the hallway to leave the hospital.

As soon as they turned the corner, though, she stopped, a hesitant look on her face. This hallway was darker, a bit emptier since most of the people here were gathered in rooms with TVs. He looked down to ask what was up, but before he could do so, she turned and rose up on her toes to give him another kiss.

It was as chaste as the one to ring in the year, but not nearly as quick. Their lips stayed closed against each other's, both of them wary of frightening the other by moving too fast.

When she pulled away, it was still too soon. He resisted the urge to protest, instead just watching her for cues.

Scully's eyes were bright with excitement as she searched his face, absentmindedly licking her lips like she always did. Her lips twitched for a moment, then a smile fully bloomed on her face. She looked almost giddy, something he wasn't quite used to seeing.

“Was that okay?” She asked, and of course she would ask that. They'd both barged into each other's personal space and personal lives and personal what-have-yous countless times, but this specific thing was the only one that they did a careful dance around.

Her smile was contagious; he couldn't help it as one spread across his own face. “Of course.”

Her smile turned sheepish and she looked away, looping her arm around his middle as his fixed itself around her shoulders again. They continued through the hospital with no more pit stops.

“Where do you wanna go now?” She asked. It was an open-ended question. No doubt she saw it as safer than asking What do you want to do now?

His smile returned as he remembered his initial New Year's plans. “I have an idea.”

—-

“This is…not exactly what I thought you had in mind,” Scully couldn't keep the confusion out of her tone as she looked out across the outdoor basketball court. It was completely empty; anyone else in the park right now was probably somewhere better for launching fireworks.

“What'd you think I meant?” He asked, his expression one of exaggerated innocence. He knew exactly where she thought his mind had gone. At her inability to respond, he grinned devilishly. “Dana Scully, you dog.”

“Shut up, Mulder.” Her face burned.

She'd initially driven him home, but this was apparently only so he could pick up a mysterious bag. He then insisted on driving to their actual location, which she'd protested against due to him having only one good arm and being on painkillers. He'd countered by saying that they barely gave him any and that they were already wearing off. She'd relented, but only because he was the only one who knew how to get to this secret location.

Now that they were here, though, she felt like she should've insisted on staying at his place. Maybe her extra kiss wasn't enough to let him know how she was feeling, what she wanted. Even with his bad arm, there were quite a few things they were able to do.

Basketball, apparently, was one of them. Mulder dropped the bag off his shoulder and deftly opened it with one hand before pulling out a brand new basketball. He stood up and started dribbling.

“C’mon, Scully. How ‘bout a game?” He offered the ball out to her.

A laugh escaped her, ringing clear between the booms of fireworks. “Mulder, did you really bring me out here to play basketball on New Year's Eve?”

“Technically, it's New Year's Day.” He winked. “And why wouldn't I?”

“Well, your arm's in a sling.”

“Which evens out the playing field. That's my good arm.”

She just shook her head, an incredulous grin on her face. He'd already had the basketball, which means he was already planning this. Of course he did. And of course he wouldn't let an injured arm get in the way of a date.

“You've never shot a basket, have you, Scully?”

You've never hit a baseball, have you, Scully? His words echoed in her mind as she recalled that night at the baseball fields. She'd lied back then, of course. Tomboy Dana Scully who shot BB guns with her brothers had played many a game of baseball as a kid, but adult Dana Scully had understood Mulder’s question like a chess move. And in two quick moves of her own, she'd successfully gotten herself wrapped in his arms while his hips pressed against hers to guide her through the motions of swinging a bat. Is it still a checkmate if both parties win?

“No, I haven't,” she lied again, but this one felt like less of a lie. She was never good at basketball. “Guess I've had better things to do with my time.”

He grinned again and motioned her over. She obliged, moving to stand next to him on his left side. His good side. They both faced the basket.

“Alright, so,” he easily maneuvered the ball in his hand, putting his palm under it with the heel of his hand facing forward while his fingers supported the back of the ball. “This is how you wanna hold it with your dominant hand. That's your shooting hand.”

She nodded as if she didn't already know this.

“Your other hand — I can't exactly show you right now — but your other hand is going to cradle the side of the ball. That's just to keep it safe; your right hand is gonna do all the work.”

She nodded again, watching him with amusement. He was cute like this, when he talked about sports. Not that she would admit that to him anytime soon.

“Now,” He bent down a bit to put the ball down, then straightened up and took her hand in his. “With basketball, it's all in the wrist. You're gonna want to keep your hand straight” -he straightened out her fingers- “and let your wrist do all the work.” He gently pulled her hand back so it was in a similar position to how his had been, then wrapped his hand around her wrist, his thumb at the inner base of her hand.

It was an excuse to touch her. They always needed excuses. Baseball dates with his arms around her, movie nights on his couch where they pretended their thighs weren't pressed together, unnecessary check-ups when his head hadn't even been damaged just so she could run her fingers through his hair. This was part of their dance, their endless movements around each other, both afraid to make a bold move.

His thumb pressed into the joint and her wrist bent forward in reaction. “Just like that,” he murmured, and she realized his shoulder was pressed against hers.

The warmth of his body disappeared for a moment as he dropped down to pick the ball back up. He handed it off to her and she held it up in both hands, ready to shoot but waiting for his cue.

“Alright. Now, remember.” He moved slightly behind her and his hand curled under her elbow to prop it up. She suppressed a shiver as his voice came as a low murmur in her ear. “You want to keep your eye on the basket. Your arm is what's propelling the ball, but your wrist is the aim. Keep your eye on the basket, push upward,” -his thumb rubbed her arm as his lips brushed against her ear- “and let your wrist carry it through.”

Scully's cheeks burned and her mouth felt dry. He moved away to give her space for the shot and she immediately craved his warmth against her. She swallowed it down, though, and tried to focus. No way was she making this shot, but she at least had to look like she was trying.

She stepped forward and actually managed to follow his instructions, but everything was just a bit off. Whether it was her lack of skill or the fact that she was more focused on the memory of his body against hers, she didn't know. The ball hit the backboard — just shy of center — and rebounded off, bouncing on the ground below and rolling back past them.

“That was pretty good.” He sounded genuinely impressed, suddenly close behind her again. “Wanna go again?”

Scully hesitated before answering. It was just like the baseball date. He wouldn't make a move past what was allowed within the limits he'd already set up. It was hard to tell whether it was out of respect for her boundaries or fear of scaring her away. Time to play chess.

“Show me the wrist thing again?” She asked. He obliged, moving sideways a bit as he wrapped his hand around her wrist and pressed his thumb into the joint again.

Her hand didn't keep proper form this time as her wrist bent forward, but she didn't care. She let her hand slip down his grip as she turned to face him, then intertwined her hand with his. She wrapped an arm around his middle in lieu of putting a hand on his shoulder for fear of hurting him.

He smiled down at her, looking confused but entertained. “What’re you doing?”

Dancing, she thought to herself as she pressed a bit closer to him. They didn't sway, though. There was no music to dance to. For a moment they just stood there, looking like they were both waiting for a cue. Waiting for the music to start.

Scully felt her heartbeat spread from her chest throughout her body, up into her throat and down into her fingertips. She wondered if he could feel it, too. If he knew what she was trying to do. She had to be the one to make the move because he wouldn't do it. Wouldn't want to risk scaring her away. She had to let him know she wasn't scared. Not of this.

Her breath was shaky, and she knew her voice would be too once she finally spoke. She was nervous even though she had no right to be. She knew how he felt, knew he would return the sentiment. He'd already said it before, in fact. Over a year ago.

“Mulder,” She paused, wondering how to word her thoughts. “Do you remember when you were in the hospital?”

“Which time?” He smiled warmly, his eyes glinting with humor.

Scully opened her mouth to answer, to explain. After the Bermuda Triangle. What he'd said to her. But instead, she decided to forgo the preamble.

“I love you.”

The words took him aback and he tried to pull away on instinct. “Scully-”

Her grip was ironclad, though, as she kept him in place. “I mean it.”

“Are you sure?” He searched her face as if he was worried she’d take it back.

She knew what his question really meant, just like he knew what her statement really meant. For every word they spoke aloud, there were always ten more in a hidden message. It wasn’t actually a question of whether she loved him; they were both well aware of the answer to that. But her saying it out loud was a signal. When he asked if she was sure, it wasn’t in regards to whether she loved him or not. He was asking if she was sure she was ready.

Instead of saying so, she opted to rise up on her toes and press her lips against his for the third time that night. His hand let go of hers and wrapped around her middle, pulling her closer as she did the same to him, both careful to avoid his injured arm that was in danger of being sandwiched between them.

It was impossible to tell how much time passed before she pulled away, her hand once again seeking his.

“Thought I made it obvious earlier, but apparently I didn't.”

“Well, you know me, Scully.” He grinned, looking euphoric. “I need a lot of proof before I'll believe something.”

Instead of rolling her eyes, she simply grinned. “Well,then I'd suggest we get out of here.”

His eyebrows shot up as she stepped away, leading him hand-in-hand back to the car.

They forgot about the basketball.

[starbuck09256]

ooh prompt 111 please!!

Tagging @today-in-fic and @ruindil

“You can’t just hug me and think everything is going to be okay”

Triangle Post Ep

The parking lot is bleak at 9pm on a Friday night. The rain droplets race down her windshield as the lights from ambulances dance along the darkness. She sits in her car, and has been sitting there for a solid 15 minutes. Playing with her gold cross, running it back and forth across the longer than it was before chain. The chain he replaced for her, after it was broken in Antarctica. She’s here to pick him up and she knows in her heart when she walks in, he will have that goofy grin and the shy smile, he’ll wrap his arms around her and say “Thanks for busting me out Doc,” like he normally does. But for some reason she can’t get herself to move, to open the door and step out into the night. To be his knight in shining armor, after he played damsel in distress by chasing after a ship not quite a century old. She wonders about what he said in the hospital, has been thinking about it for the last 24 hours nonstop. She’s barely slept, each time she closes her eyes, her lips tingle and her dreams are of red dresses and Skinner dressed as a Nazi. It’s not ok, this constant ditching her. She thought they were more than that now. They don’t have the x-files to fall back on. They need to behave, tread lightly if they ever hope to see the cold damp basement again. He easily could have died this time, she would've never found him. Never seen his body floating on a piece of wood, dragging his sorry ass on board and whispering how she had him. She breathes in a deep breath to calm her emotions as she wipes a stray tear from her eyes.  She can blame anything he thinks he sees in her eyes on the rain outside. “I love you,” he said it, said it to her finally after a delusional rambling. “You saved the world,” she thinks of the countless times he has saved her world. Saved her from the darkness that has found them. She bites her lip prepares herself to feel his chest against her, smell his aftershave that she dropped off yesterday. She knows what is in store she can already hear the tremble of his voice as it resonates in her ears and then after she drives him home, after she helps him get undressed and ready for bed, after she touches his skin, chuckles at his jokes, marvels at the strength and determination of the man she is so desperately in love with.  She will need to have the strength to get in her car and remember the sound of his voice when he finally said he loved her. She just has to make it through the next hour then she can go home and rationalize away the feelings they both have been sharing too much of. She can do this, not let her guard slip as she helps him yet again,  praying that she has the strength should he mention his love again to not do anything stupid. Don’t tell him what you feel Dana. Just scold him like the man child he is. She can do this, has done it for years. That was before though, before she realized he went to the ends of the earth for her with a gunshot wound to the head. Before he confessed so much to her in his hallway. Before he went and did something so stupid, knowing she would find him, save him, and save the world. Before he pulled her back into his trap and gazed into her soul with three little words almost crumbling the remaining shred of professionalism she could have with him. 

Deep Breath

Breathe Dana

One hour, be strong. Get out of the car. Pull your jacket close but still let some rain hit your face and hair and for god's sake do not tell Mulder you love him too. 

He probably doesn’t remember, that’s why you said oh brother remember. 

Hold Strong.

She steps out the rain light and airy in the cool evening. She lets it hit her face, cleanser her a bit before she starts to race across the parking lot towards the hospital entrance. Her heels click lightly as she reaches the automatic doors. The warm air and smell of antiseptic reach her nostrils. She clicks through the hallways. Advantages of being with the FBI and a medical doctor means not a lot of people asking you silly questions. 

His room up on the right, she looks through the glass window in the door. His back to her as she sees him putting on his shirt. The long lines of his back covered by his white undershirt. The crisp blue shirt that she picked up just in case he took a little longer to get out of the hospital and they had to make a mad dash to an opr meeting about his misadventure on the bureaus dime. Being prepared for Kershs wrath has taught them a few new skills. 

She knocks lightly shuffling her feet as she feels the door open. She smiles up at him and starts to walk forward but before she knows what is happening his arms are around her. God he is so warm, so strong, and she fits so perfectly. He hugs her, wraps her up like his own personal christmas present, and while normally she does relish this feeling, lives in part for these moments where it can be just them, violating all the rules of professional conduct, now is not the time. He knows what his hugs do to her, knows they are a not so secret weakness. “Hi Scully,” he says but doesn’t let her go, his fingers gently caress her back and she knows she needs to stop this. She starts to pull away, pulling herself together at the same time. But he doesn’t let her, he pulls her back closer mutters into her ear. “I’m sorry,” but she does pull away. I’m sorry doesn’t really cut it, after making her freak out searching high and low for him. Practically begging that rat bastard Spender to help her, and Kersh. She kissed Skinner for christ sakes, all to find his stupid ass floating lifelessly in the water. She remembers how her heart stopped, how all her fear wanted to pour out of her soul when they lifted him out of the cold water. 

She pulls back and her words come out before she has a chance to stop them. “You can’t just hug me and think everything is going to be ok. Everything is not ok Mulder.” her voice shutters towards the end and she turns her head, pursues her lips to gain some control. She expected the “I’m sorry,” he knows how to play her emotions, using those profiler skills in ways that test her patience and her rational mind. 

He steps back pulls her gently out of the door frame and into the hospital room, still slightly aglow with a dimmed lamp in the corner. He cups her face, cradling it in his hands. She swallows hard, tries not to meet his eyes for a second. He strokes her cheeks with his thumbs and it feels so nice. He kisses her forehead, and then rests his forehead against hers as she takes a shuttered breath. He pulls back gives her a sad smile. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t tell you.” She looks at him sternly. She nods her head and starts to turn to grab his bag that is sitting on the chair, so she can drive him home and go home to her soft bed. He turns her back towards him. She looks at him, he’s not forgiven and he knows it. But his eyes are soft, the flecks of gold are shining through even with the soft light of the room. “I love you,” he says it again looking her straight in the eye and she can’t help but gasp and he wraps his arms around her again. She is shocked as he nuzzles her hair with his nose. “I love you so damn much Scully,” she rubs his back closes her eyes and licks her lips. “They really drugged you up good huh?” she says trying to lighten the seriousness of the room. He pulls back looks at her. “I kissed you on that ship Scully, and it was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. And sometime soon we are going to find our moment, where I get to kiss you and tell you I love you, and you won’t be so skeptical anymore.”  

She shakes her head laughs at him as she moves towards the chair. “Now I know they gave you the good stuff, me not skeptical…” she grabs his bag in her hand pulling it up to her shoulder, turns to look at him. He chuckles shuffles his feet a bit, he pulls the door open for her with his arm outstretched. She walks in front of him out the door and as he closes it he grabs her hand sliding his fingers against hers intertwining them. He leans towards her ear to whisper. “Real soon Scully, that moment is going to erase all those doubts.” She can’t help but squeeze his hand as she looks straight ahead. “I look forward to it.” She mutters into the fluorescent corridor as they leave. 

[jessahmewren]

“Just The Way You Are” / The X-Files / Fan Fiction

A response to @xfilesfanficexchange​ The X-Files Fan Fic Episode Challenge.  I had The War of the Coprophages for @admiralty-xfd​ who wanted a little bit of Scully’s thoughts post ep on Bambi, Mulder and the whole deal.  I hope I delivered for you dear. 

Also on Ao3 and tagging @today-in-fic

-0-0-0-

Scully stood bemused as Dr. Berenbaum and Dr. Ivanov retreated into the rainy afternoon, happily chatting about their combined interests.  If only Bambi had found him sooner, Scully found herself thinking.

It wasn’t that she was bitter that her partner had spent the better part of a week working with a smart, beautiful woman.  She was just wet and cold and covered in dung.

That’s what she told herself, at least, as Scully and Mulder made their way to the car.

Scully sat in the front seat as Mulder drove, the combined stink of the two of them almost comical in its overwhelming cloud.  As if reading her mind, Mulder hit the switch to roll down both of their windows.

They said very little on the drive back to the hotel, and Scully’s mind slowly turned over thoughts of a hot shower, bionic cockroaches, and big-breasted, doe-eyed etymologists.

Her cheeks dusted pink, a tight flutter in her chest.

Mulder had spent days with Bambi, working side by side, bouncing ideas off each other.  They’d gotten a lot of work done, it seemed.

Scully chewed on that as Mulder pulled up to the hotel.  “I call dibs,” Mulder called over his shoulder.  He had checked out the day before, so this was her room.

She rolled her eyes, following him inside the small room.  “Be quick,” she said.

It was chill inside, with that stale wet cold common to all motel rooms.  She absently picked through her things, setting aside her hairbrush and clothes on one of the double beds.  She heard the shower start up, and a puff of steam snaking out from a crack in the door.

After a few minutes Mulder came out, hair spiked in places and sticking to his head in others, his tan skin pinked at the collar of his t-shirt.  Scully swallowed, feeling the color rise in her cheeks.

“Leave any hot water for me?”

His mouth quirked up.  “Maybe a little.  Should’ve showered together, Scully.  Save the planet and all that.”

She cocked her head, eying him hard as her heart hammered in her chest.  When she slid past him on her way to the bathroom, the warmth and clean soap smell of him pressed into her, and it was all she could do not to lean into it.

She quickly scrubbed off, washing her hair and her body, her skin just a touch oversensitive.  She chalked it up to nerves, to tiredness.  After a few minutes, Scully staggered out of the shower and stood in front of the mirror, appraising herself.  Small breasts, few curves.  Her mouth turned down in a small frown.  While she knew Mulder wasn’t interested in her like that, she couldn’t help but compare herself to Bambi, a woman Mulder had been obviously interested in.

Scully turned away, toweling off and dressing in one of her college t-shirts and a pair of sweats.  It would do for tonight; they would be sharing a room, after all, the hotel being completely booked and their flight out not being until in the morning.  Inwardly, she was glad the hotel had given her the double.

She padded into the hotel room in sock feet, finding Mulder propped up against the headboard on her bed watching television.

She put her hands on her hips, her head cocked toward him.  “That’s my bed, you know.”

He worked his mouth.  “Your stuff was on the other one,” he reasoned.  “Come on, Scully.  Full House is on.”

She sighed, flopping down on the pristine coverlet of the other bed.  She propped some pillows behind her, eyes vacant as she stared in the direction of the television.

“Who do you think is more likely to believe in aliens, Uncle Jesse, Joey, or Danny?”  Mulder drawled out between laughing.  He was chewing on the end of a pen he’d found on the bedside table, one leg casually bent where he lounged against the pillows.

“Joey,” Scully replied flatly.  He seems most gullible, she wanted to say, but bit her tongue.

Mulder seemed pleased, happily chewing the end of his pen.  “Ok, then who do you think is most like to be an alien?”  His eyes sparkled in the light of the TV.  He loved it when they got into, and she could see his excitement tensing his whole body.

She rolled her eyes, deciding to play along.  “IF they existed, I would say Danny.  He is very neat.  A being like that IF they existed would probably go to great lengths to replicate what is quote normal behavior for a species and not draw attention to itself.”

Mulder was beaming.  He tossed the pen on the bed beside him, a broad smile on his face.  “So, Dr. Scully, by answering that question you’re admitting to the mere possibility of an alien species are you not?”  He was very animated now, sitting on the edge of the bed.

Scully just smiled.  “No I am not.  It’s merely conjecture.”

Mulder frowned, but still seemingly satisfied.  Then he looked at her shrewdly.  “You know what else I think is conjecture?  That you’re still upset about something.”

He looked at her meaningfully, stood from the bed and crossed to hers to sit next to her.  He could feel the heat from her body, warm from the shower as his shoulder pressed against hers and the smell of her strawberry shampoo.  No hotel-issue stuff for his Scully.  “Wanna tell me what it is?”

Scully looked up at him, the light from the TV casting lurid shapes onto the gentle slope of her cheek.  “Dr. Berenbaum,” she whispered.

Mulder pursed his lips, mind ticking quickly.  “What about her?”

Scully’s liquid blue eyes flashed up at him.  “Did you like working with her?”

Mulder answered without a thought.  “Of course.  She’s very good at what she does.”

Scully sank a little.  “Oh. Yes of course,” she answered a little thinly.

They sat like that a little longer, Mulder pressed up against, feeling Scully breathe and the bed creak under them.  His hand went up, touching under her chin.

“Is there something else?”

Scully swallowed.  She couldn’t get the insecurities out of her mind, nor could she stop the burning desire to just blurt out question after question about the woman and Mulder’s time with her.

“Did you um…did you like her?”

Mulder blinked.  “Yeah Scully, I did.  She was nice.”

It wasn’t enough, and she hated herself for it.  “Let’s just watch some more TV ok?”

Mulder nodded, still concerned, and returned to his bed.  The next sitcom came on, but she couldn’t focus.  “What’s wrong,” Mulder finally said, eyes turning away from the TV.  “You’re too quiet.  Usually you make fun of this.”

Her mouth quirked into a tight smile.  She turned on her side, finally giving in.

“I think I’m just tired,” She said finally.  “I’m going to bed early.”

Mulder grunted, content to leave her for the moment.  Scully reached for the small lamp by the bed and switched it off.

She closed her eyes, trying to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come.  She heard Mulder flipping through the channels, felt the strobing light from the TV bleeding through her eyelids.  She turned over again, the covers twisting at her feet.

Mulder exhaled, his eyes darting to Scully’s restless form for the umpteenth time.  He worked his mouth.  “Talk to me, Scully.”

She sighed.  “We already talked, Mulder.  I just need to sleep.”

“You want me to turn the TV off?”

“No.”

“We haven’t really talked,” Mulder said.

Scully said nothing, she just lay in the dark, listening to Mulder wait for her response.  The silence was deafening, despite the noise from the television.

“Is this about Bambi?” Mulder prodded.

Scully squeezed her eyes shut, burying her head in the pillow.

“No,” she lied.

Mulder exhaled through his nose.  “She was just a colleague, Scully.  Just—“

“I know,” Scully said, tears straining her voice.  “I know that.”

They said nothing for a while, the tension hanging thick in the room.  Scully willed herself to sleep, anything to quell her racing thoughts.

“Then what is it?” Mulder asked quietly.

Scully closed her eyes.  She was facing the door, her body curled into itself.  “Is that what you want,” Scully inquired softly.

Scully could almost hear the wheels turning and then click into place.  “What do you mean ‘what I want,’” and Scully could tell he truly didn’t understand and wasn’t just avoiding the question.

She swallowed, not really wanting to explain herself but feeling strangely compelled to.  “Like Bambi,” she said quietly, still looking at the door.  “You know, the way she looks.”

“Forget it,” Scully said quickly, squeezing her eyes shut so fast, wishing she was anywhere else, anywhere but with him in that room, in that town, wishing that the whole week had never –

She felt the bed dip, felt his long limbs fold and arrange themselves on the space beside her.  Her heart flipped as his hand brushed the back of her head.

“Scully, look a me.”

She exhaled, hands gripping the sheets up around her chin, and remained stubbornly stuck where she was.

Another stroke to her hair, his knuckles brushing the now-wavy strands, silky-soft against the pillow.

“Come on, Scully.”  More insistent now, Mulder’s voice dropping low and rough.  She didn’t have to turn around to know he was worrying his bottom lip.

But she did.  She slowly rolled onto her back, meeting his thoughtful gaze.

When Scully turned over, he could see the silver tracks of her tears in the low light, and he instinctively wiped them with his thumb.  She closed her eyes against his touch, her face turning slightly as if she could hide the fact that she had been crying.  He sighed softly, his brow furrowed.

“Do you wish I looked like that,” she said quickly, instantly feeling relieved…feeling unburdened as ridiculous as it made her feel.  She was glad it was out in the open, finally blinking in the light of day.

Mulder inhaled slowly, his face impassive.  His hand slipped down to cup her cheek, a thumb sweeping over the soft flesh.  “Why would you think that?”

Scully pulled her plump lower lip between her teeth.  “Because you and Bambi got on so well.  And she is...,” she struggled with her words for a second…”You know, she looks the way she does.”  Scully swallowed hard, averting her eyes.

Mulder pursed his lips, shaking his head softly.  “That has nothing to do with our partnership, Scully.”  He tutted softly, stroking her cheek.  “I didn’t see Dr. Berenbaum that way at all.  She helped me on a case.  That’s all.”

Scully should have felt relieved, but she just felt miserable.  Embarrassed and miserable.  “I know,” she whispered.  “I didn’t think anything else.”

Mulder just pressed his lips together.  Scully eased into his touch, his presence beside her soothing her anxiety somewhat.  “Is there something else going on Scully?”

She shook her head.  “Everything’s fine Mulder.  She reached up to stroke his shoulder, letting her hand rest along his bicep.  “Why don’t you get some rest, hmm?  We’ve got a long journey tomorrow.”

Mulder worried the inside of his jaw, still looking at her.  His mouth quirked, and then he leaned down and pressed his lips to her forehead.  “Get some sleep, Scully.”

She sighed as his weight lifted from the mattress and the TV flicked off.  She listened in as he busied himself in the bathroom, the tingle of his touch still burning on her cheek.  Finally, he lay down in his bed and turned off his lamp.

Just as she was nodding off to sleep, she heard him turn over.

“Scully?”

“Yeah Mulder?”

“For the record, there’s not one thing I would change about you.  Not one freckle, not one lock of red hair, not one thing.  You’re perfect just the way you are.  Do you understand, Scully?”

She lay in the dark, breathlessly still.  “Yes,” she said.

He smiled, even if she couldn’t see it.  “Good.  Don’t ever forget it.”

She wouldn’t, she thought as she listened to his breathing even out and a light snore fill their small hotel room.  She would never forget it again.

-0-0-0-

[settle-down-frohike]

Shrinking Violet

3. Which part of [title] was hardest to write?

Maaaaan! The whole thing! No but um? The scene where they enter the motel room. Going from strangers to lovers(?) without a lot of fluff. Because that’s not what it was about for either of them. It was a fix it fuck, and they needed to get down to the point.

6. Which scenes did you cut, and which were added in [title]?

I don’t think I cut anything? Adding Mulder in the parking lot...I didn’t want to? But. It made sense.

8. Which came first, the title or the fic?

The title for sure. I had to write something smutty inspired by Excelsis Dei, which is a decidedly *unsexy* episode. But there’s a line. Where the victim (in the ep) is saying that’s she’s no “shrinking violet”, that she would have remembered the face of an attacker, and not blocked it out like a coward. Given how recent Scully’s own abduction and medical rape had been, that line hit me hard. I imagined it affected her too. And it absolutely came from that line, Scully’s need to regain power, agency, some affirmation from someone who wasn’t Mulder or her mother, etc., her character canonically gravitates toward powerful men. The final dialogue from Miles came absolutely from that line of thought.

[myassbrokethefall]

untitled rm9sbg93zxjz post-ep

rated: B for blobfish, R for robots, D for dreams and S for Scott.

So as I mentioned I watched the episode last night while Somewhat Drunk after a work party, and I could barely follow what was happening. It was like some crazy dream I had. I woke up this morning and it FELT like a crazy dream I had had. So I ran with that.

I'm looking forward to rewatching, but as of now I've watched it one time, while (as I mentioned) kinda drunk. So I've probably gotten a bunch of stuff wrong, which is fine because that's how a dream would be anyway. I'm sure it will all make perfect sense when I watch it again. Uh, maybe.

I wrote this in like three hours (for me, that is INSANELY fast), after drinking coffee, so adjust your expectations accordingly.

The friendly cacophony of the diner envelops them, comfortable, the two of them (as so often) alone together in a crowd. Mulder likes sitting at the counter, a habit left over from his lonelier days. You feel like you're part of the busy hum of life if you're drinking your coffee while plates pass by your head and orders are yelled out around you and someone is making pancakes three feet away.

Scully's phone chirps, and she looks down automatically. It's a push notification for something or other, telling her to drink water, or stretch, or pay her gas bill, or something. She frowns at it, and flips it over. Smartphone-era Scully, he has found, can be perfectly summed up by her habit of first programming her phone to remind her to do things all day and night, and then getting annoyed and refusing to do the things at least half the time.

Something about the exchange, however, lights something up in his brain. "Scully," he says. "I had the craziest dream last night. Whoa. I just remembered."

"Yeah?" She forks a bite of scrambled egg into her mouth. "What kind of dream?" She lifts an eyebrow at him. Gone, thankfully, are the days when they would have to flirt with each other while pretending that wasn't what they were doing, held back by a mutual terror that Crossing The Line would somehow prove disastrous. He doesn't miss those days. At all.

"Not that kind of dream, G-woman." He squints, trying to piece it all together. "I remember...a bunch of computers were after us."

"Computers were after us? Meaning what? Chasing us? Physically?"

"Well...we angered them somehow. The computers. Like...all of them, I guess."

"We ANGERED them? ...Like with that case we had at the office tower way back when?"

"Actually, yeah, kind of. God, that case was weird. I haven't thought of that in years. My subconscious must be thinking about it. Yeah, we...Well, in the first part we were at this sushi restaurant..."

"You and me?"

"Yeah, but it was empty. It was only us. And we couldn't talk for some reason, I think? I forget why. So we were eating our sushi. It came on a...one of those trays like on a conveyor belt. But they brought us the wrong thing. Remember the blobfish picture?"

She laughs. Scully had chanced to see a picture of a blobfish on the internet some months ago and he wasn't sure he had ever, in their years and years together, seen her laugh so hard. It was one of the best things that had ever happened to him, frankly, watching the outsizedly hysterical reaction of Dana Scully MD, his serious scientist partner, to a picture of a lumpy, slimy, theatrically frowning fish on the internet. He had brought it up at every opportunity for weeks, renamed the wireless network at the house Blobfish Cove, found a way to work a reference to it into a meeting with Skinner, once printed out a picture of it and left it on Scully’s pillow, and watched in utter delight as she got the helpless giggles every single time. (Even the Skinner time. He hadn't even asked, just looked wearily at some point behind their heads for a few seconds before sighing and continuing on.)

"Don't tell me the blobfish was in your dream!"

"It was!"

"You're just saying that because you want me to laugh."

"No, Scully, I swear. The restaurant served us the blobfish as part of our meal, and you thought it was hilarious." Just like now. She's giggling delicately even as he talks. "But we didn't want to eat it. You had some objection."

"Of course! I could never eat it." She cackles. "I love that thing. If ever there was something to prove that God has a sense of humor..." She shakes her head. Blobfish. Mulder sends God a mental high-five.

"So I tried to take it back to the kitchen, but I couldn't find anybody. There was literally no one in the entire restaurant but us. Like no one even working there."

"Why were we at this restaurant?"

"I don't know, we were just there. It's a dream. Oh, I think maybe it was your birthday. But then later I remember it was June, so, I don't know. Anyway, we were leaving and I tried to pay at some payment machine and the machine asked me for a tip. And I got annoyed and I wouldn't tip it, because, it's a machine. You were scolding me about that."

"Which you probably dreamed because I was scolding you just the other day for that shitty tip you gave the pizza delivery guy." It’s an annoying habit of hers, every time he's told her about a cool dream he's had (which, to be fair, is kind of often): to immediately attempt to map every aspect of it onto a real-world cause, the more mundane the better. No respect for mystery or symbolism, Scully.

"Yes. Your scolding reached my subconscious, congratulations." She nods as if accepting a great honor. "So I was hitting 'no tip' on the thing, but then I couldn't get my credit card out. It was stuck. There was this whole part -- I think we got trapped in the restaurant?"

"With the blobfish?" Her eyes are crinkling happily.

"Yes, Scully, with the blobfish. I'm sorry the blobfish doesn't play an even more substantial part in this dream than it already does."

"I can't believe you dreamed that we were going to EAT the BLOBFISH."

"We weren't going to eat it! That was the whole point. We ordered it by accident or something but we didn't want to eat it."

"So we got trapped in the restaurant, then what?"

"Well, we went home, I guess, I forget how we got out but we did somehow, and you were gonna take a taxi to your apartment." He's pleased with himself for keeping his tone neutral when he mentions her apartment. Easier these days when she's spending more nights at the house than not, but still. "But there was no driver, it was like, one of those Google cars. And you didn't want to get in and you were about to argue with me but then you got in anyway, and the car took off like, EXTREMELY fast. I'm sure you were mad about that. And I don't blame you, because it was not safe. So I went home too -- "

"Did you also have a Google car?"

"No, I just drove home."

"Why didn't I just drive my car home?"

"I don't know. It's a DREAM, Scully. It's a dream where you didn't have your car with you for some reason and we also apparently lived in some near-future dystopia where we were imprisoned in a restaurant after being served a blobfish by robots." He pauses to watch her giggle. Never fails. "And after I got home I think I was trying to call my credit card company. Maybe it was something about my card getting stuck from the other part? I just remember this whole long part where I was on hold for a really long time."

"Probably because of that erroneous charge you had to call Citibank about last month, and you kept getting that horrible voicemail system."

"Yes. I'm sure it was from that. Anyway, I was on hold forever and I also had to keep calling back -- "

"Because of how the voicemail kept kicking you back to the beginning when you were calling Citibank."

"Scully. Yes, I'm sure that's why I dreamed about it. I didn't know you were paying that close attention. Anyway, it was annoying. And while I was doing that there were a bunch of drones chasing me."

"Drones?"

"Yeah, the little ones, like in the Olympics opening ceremony. In the house. They were on the stairs."

"How did drones get in the house?"

"I have no idea, but then I got worried about you for some reason and I guess I went to your place. And Scully, I got to your place and it was insane. It was like, some crazy executive suite or something. Or a super posh hotel. All modern and, you know, like designer-y. And you were mad when I got there because I guess I had sent you a Roomba? Like I ordered it for you as a joke and you were mad because you thought I was insinuating something about your housekeeping."

"You ordered me a Roomba?"

"Yeah, but when you opened it it chased your vibrator."

She looks delightfully flabbergasted. "Mulder!"

"It was trying to vacuum up your vibrator. That little pink one." He likes that one. Because she likes that one. "But your vibrator -- "

"Mulder, PLEASE stop saying 'vibrator' in a restaurant."

"It had somehow come to life. I don't know how."

"You mean it came to life beyond the act of," she coughs lightly, "vibrating?"

"I think so. It had a malevolent intelligence. I guess. So I guess the Roomba was trying to stop it? I don't know. And, it was some kind of off-brand Roomba because I remember you saying, why didn't you just get the Roomba brand, and I had no answer. I don't know why I ordered you an off-brand Roomba."

"You were probably being cheap."

"Probably."

"So which one was malevolently intelligent? The Roomba? Or the, the other thing?"

"I don't know. The Roomba was trying to mow down the vibrator. Maybe it was a 'the enemy of my enemy' situation. Anyway, Scully, this apartment, this place was a palace. I wish in real life you could hook us up with a place like that that government employees could afford. You obviously had some secret inside real-estate source. It was insane. You had this fancy fridge."

"Full of blobfish?" She smiles around her coffee cup.

"I didn't see inside it. Oh, but you had a note on your fridge to defrost chicken because Scott was coming over. Who is Scott, Scully?"

"My sexy marine-biologist slash realtor boyfriend. I didn't tell you about him?"

He forks her gently on the nose, causing her to jerk away like a surprised cat. She swipes at her nose, then licks her finger. It's real maple syrup, so she's got nothing to complain about.

"Well, Scott the world's leading blobfish authority slash real-estate virtuoso is gonna be disappointed when he comes over for chicken because then your apartment burned down."

"WHAT?" She steals a bite of his not-quite-finished pancakes. He knew she wouldn't be able to resist that maple syrup.

"Yeah, there was a gas fire or something. I forget how it happened, but then you and I were trying to escape and we did, I guess, and you still had your vibrator but then we had to throw it away because they were tracking us."

"Tracking us via my..." she drops her voice. "My vibrator? Mulder. This is a dream only you would have. Talk about paranoid fantasies that -- "

"ANYWAY, Scully, your luxurious apartment. Burned down. And we didn't even get to christen all the rooms. So we were running and we had to throw our phones away, and the vibrator, because it was tracking us. That was your idea, because you're smarter than I am even in my own dreams. So we threw it in a dumpster." She makes a disappointed noise. Scully loves that vibrator. God bless.

"It's OK, Scully, it was only a dream. So we were running away and we ended up in this, like...robot factory? Or something like that. Maybe a warehouse? But a bunch of robots started chasing us."

"It sounds like most of this dream is robots chasing us."

"It is. I've got some deep-rooted anxieties. So we were running around the robot factory, or whatever it was, and the robots were after us. But they were robot animals, kind of. Like a robo-dog, like -- "

"Like that Boston Dynamics video we saw?"

"I don't remember that."

"You were falling asleep on the couch when I showed you."

"Well, I guess I absorbed it on some level. Maybe that part happened before we threw out our stuff. I can't remember. You know how dreams are."

The waitress leans over with her coffee pot, a silent question, and Scully obligingly pushes the cup towards her. Mulder feels a warmth deep in his belly. She has nowhere to be right now, except here, with him. He nods at the waitress and she refills his mug as well.

"Can we have more half-and-half, please?" Scully asks, and the waitress nods and takes the little pitcher to refill. She loves her half-and-half. Sensual pleasures, his Scully.

"So then what happened?"

"Well, then at some point I realized, somehow, that the reason this was all happening was that I didn't tip at the sushi restaurant."

"You disrespected the blobfish, you mean?"

"Yes. I disrespected the blobfish, or the blobfish's, I guess, robot masters, and they summoned all their connected, artificial will to come after us. And they almost succeeded. We almost DIED, Scully."

"Because you cheaped out."

"Yes. You were right all along. We almost died because I was too cheap, plus you lost your amazing apartment. Before I had a chance to defile it with you."

"I'm dying to know where this apartment was and how I afforded it."

"It was in some leafy suburb. I remember all the trees."

"Good thing I had driverless robot cars to take me to and from work, then. So did you finally cough up the tip?"

"Yeah, and once I did all the computer stuff stopped chasing us. But then you were mad that you had thrown away your vibrator for nothing. And then I woke up."

"Well, I'm glad you finally got what's been coming to you as far as your unacceptable tipping habits."

"Tipping is for exceptional service, Scully! They got my order wrong! And they were robots!"

"That's such an upper-class thing to say. You know servers don't make a living wage without tips. It's part of the cost of eating at a restaurant and if you can't pay it, you shouldn't eat there."

"ROBOTS, Scully. They don't need a living wage. They're not alive."

"Also, what does you throwing away my vibrator mean? That's got to have some kind of meaning, Profiling Wonderboy Mulder."

"You threw it away. And burned your own apartment down. Accidentally, but still." The waitress is back with the half-and-half, which Scully pours liberally into her refilled coffee.

"Why, though? What does it mean?"

"Well, I think it means that my subconscious wants you to come home. But so does the rest of me, so, I already knew that."

There's a little silence. Scully sips her coffee. Her face-down phone chimes softly again. She ignores it.

"Drones...in the house, Mulder?"

"Yeah. You know what I just realized they reminded me of? Those little green flying bugs. Do you remember? It was one of our first cases. Way back when."

"God. Of course I remember. We were in quarantine for two weeks."

"Yeah. They reminded me of those. I got the willies when I saw them on the Olympics thing and now I know why. They were purple though, not green. In my dream."

"You told me, as I recall, that it would be a nice trip to the forest."

"I probably did."

"It was NOT a nice trip to the forest, Mulder."

"I, honestly, Scully, I probably would have said anything to get you to come with me. Even then."

She shakes her head at him. They sit in companionable silence for a bit, the human noise of the diner around them.

"It would be a lot of trouble to find a new apartment, if I were to burn the current one down, due to evil sentient robots," she muses, after a time. "Probably more trouble than it would be worth."

"Probably."

"Since I don't have a Scott, in real life, to find me one."

"Shame."

"Not to mention that I could save on rent and protect you from scary drones at the same time."

His stomach flutters a bit. They have talked about this, sort of, in a roundabout way, but he hasn't wanted to ask too often, or too insistently. Scully doesn't like to be pushed. By him, by a phone that she had instructed to remind her about things, by anyone.

"Plus, no place would live up to that apartment," he says. "No place you could find in the city at least. Or anywhere, really. Unless like, maybe on a billionaire's private island or something."

"But then the commute would be hell. Even with a recklessly driving driverless car. Or boat, I guess."

"Is Scott also a billionaire, by any chance?"

"Scott can barely pay his own rent. And I think he's just with me for the free meals."

"Scott," he says, with a joking disgust that is not entirely forced. "God. Well. If that ever happens, Scully. You know the way back."

"It would be even worse if I lost my favorite vibrator at the same time." She's lowered her voice, he knows, so the entire diner won't overhear them, but he enjoys the effect anyway.

"You know I'm always willing to pinch-hit for your little pink buddy." He drops his voice to match hers. She touches her tongue to the side of her lip in that way that drives him crazy, then takes another gulp of her coffee.

"Or, you know. You don't HAVE to wait for it to burn down."

"True."

"There's room in that drawer next to the bed for Scully's little helper."

"Mulder...enough."

"I'm just saying."

She reaches over and rests her hand on his, warm from the coffee cup, lacing their fingers together, then leans her head into his shoulder. It's another reason he likes sitting at the counter. Being next to her, a very good reason.

"Got time for a walk around the park after this?" he asks. "Work off breakfast, get some extra steps in?"

"Sure," she says, giving his hand a squeeze. "There's nowhere else I need to be."

When they leave, he makes sure to tip the waitress well.

"Blobfish," he says in Scully’s ear on their way out the door, and she dissolves into giggles.

[frangipanidownunder]

Mulder and Scully’s book of all the answers

Post ep fic for The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat. Tagging @today-in-fic

She calls again. And again. It’s been hours. She hasn’t been worried until now, until the point where he’s missed the Knicks game and their regular...she doesn’t even have a name for whatever kind of fucking they do now. She knows it’s more than fucking. And she knows that he’d gladly have her living back in the house but she’s still processing everything, and everything includes whatever the fuck the fucking is.

              “Pick up, Mulder,” she says for the twentieth time before staring at the screen in her hand and sighing down to the couch. The couch. The fucking couch. Not the fucking couch but the ‘fucking’ couch. They’ve never made it to the bed. And she kind of likes that. He does too, despite his utterings that he’s too old for this shit. They are old, truth be told. But, she tells him, they are not too old. They will never be too old. Not for this shit. Or this fucking. Or whatever the fuck it is.

              “Skinner,” she says standing up again, straightening the hem of her blouse so there’s no gape. “Have you heard from Mulder today?”

              His voice is distant, distracted. She can hear muffled groans in the background. She flushes. Walter S Skinner, even older than us, she thinks. “No, Agent Scully. Is there a problem?” He’s even gruffer than usual and she can’t blame him. She imagines Mulder’s pitch at being interrupted mid-coitus. She smothers a laugh and that’s when she knows she’s seriously worried.

              “No, no problem, Sir. Sorry to have bothered you.”

              She hears more rustling and mumbling. “Scully,” he says, “you know he’s probably just…”

              “Squatching…yes, Sir. I do. Thank you.” She hangs up and startles as the phone buzzes. Mulder.

              “Mulder, where have you been?” Her pitch is shriller than she intends.

              “Looking for answers,” he says and leaves a long silence. She bites her lip, working her way through the catalogue of what his silences have held. None of them has ever yielded anything that has made her smile. “I’m sorry about tonight, Scully.”

              “Where are you?”

              “On my way home.”

              “You missed the game,” she says.

              The light on the table flickers and she walks towards it. Her footfalls are clipped on the wooden floor and she realises she hasn’t taken her shoes off. He hasn’t reached for her feet and rolled them between his hands like he usually does. She touches the globe. It’s cool. “Mulder, are you okay?”

              The light flickers again and then goes out. He doesn’t answer. She waits.

 There’s something about him that she recognises. That hungry look, rapacious mind working through data ready to expound wild theories. There’s something about that look all right. Her stomach fizzes and she tucks her hand across it to pull it in, like a safety belt against the joy ride he’s no doubt going to strap them in for.

              “The book, Scully. There are pages missing.”

              He’s holding a tome. Weighty, large, like an encyclopedia. “Pages?”

              The noise of his fingers slapping against cover resounds around the room. The light snaps on and they both look at it for a split second. “All the Answers. The book the alien gave me.”

              Her mouth opens with a pop. This is not what she expected. “This is the book? Mulder, that book was a joke. That whole case was a joke. There was no alien. We didn’t see it. Reggie just made it up. Along with his whole life.”

              “No, no, Scully. It wasn’t a joke.”

              Now he’s holding the book towards her. She watches the peppery stubble on his chin as he speaks. “It’s satire. No. Not satire. Meta. It’s meta. A statement about us. About the files. About life. It’s…so perfectly true yet so insane that it really jarred, you know? It’s not just about the X-Files and life’s mysteries. It’s about our truth.”

              “Truth? Mulder, the man was mentally unstable. We saw him being taken away. That story about the alien and the case was…not the truth. Where did you get the book? I mean, how did you…I’ve never seen you with it.”

              The light flickers “I went to see Reggie. He gave it to me.”

She blinks. “You went to see Reggie? Mulder…” It was date night, she wants to add.

“But something’s not right.” He looks at her. “See…the pages are numbered wrong here and again here.”

She sighs and walks to him. The smell of musty pages hits her as she leans around to see. She follows his thumb but the pages are in chronological order. “This is page 352 and then there’s 353 and 354 and 355…Mulder…” her voice trails away.

His face drops. He looks again, shaking his head. “No, Scully. There are pages missing. Look…352 through to 381 are missing.”

She takes the book. “I see every page in order, Mulder. What is this thing about? These are…Mulder? This is the time when you were...” Her throat itches and a knot forms in the pit of it. She flicks back through the book, listening as her heart keeps time with the thump of the pages.

“But when I read it earlier, there wasn’t any mention of this stuff. It was all about the cases. The conspiracies. There wasn’t much of the personal stuff, just the facts.”

She looks at him and tries not to roll her eyes. Facts. Reggie. She should call Skinner again. But then she doubles back. Checks again. “Hold on,” she says. “There does seem to be some pages missing. Here, almost at the start. Look.”

He takes it from her and looks, frowning. “No. The early pages are all there. See, 47 through to 61. They’re right here, Scully. This is when…this is when Duane Barry.” He snaps the book shut and lets his head fall back. “You can’t see the pages from when you were taken. I can’t see them from when I was abducted. And these aren’t the same pages as the ones I read earlier. The book is changing.”

She shakes her head. “That’s not possible, Mulder. How can I see pages you can’t and vice-versa when the book is right here in front of us. There’s only one book.”

“Right,” he says, “one book of our lives spent looking for the truth. This isn’t a book about All the Answers now, it’s a book about our life together.” He’s smiling and his eyes are wet. “About all our answers. He opens the pages again, thumbing through them. “Where does it end, Scully?”

She steps forward and grabs it from him. He lets out a surprised yelp. “Do you really want to know?” The book is hard against her ribs, digging in to her skin. “You can’t ever unsee what you read.”

She takes it to the coffee table and puts it there, pages spilling open. The light flickers and he goes to speak before stopping and turning his head, hands on hips. He stays that way for a while, shoulders rising and falling, jaw flexing. She can see the wildness dissipating. He’s returning to the new version of himself. The one she’s ready to return to.

“You know Scully, maybe I once did. I would have opened the last page. I would have done that first of all, jumped in. But I started reading it from the beginning this time.”

Tears build in her eyes and she sniffs quietly. “But we already know how we got here. It doesn’t matter what the book says. All the answers in here,” she lifts the book towards him and he takes it back, “might not be the same as the answers in here.” She taps him on the chest with a closed fist then lays her head against the spot, listening to his heartbeat. “Maybe we just need to write our own ending?”

The vibration of his chuckle in his Adam’s apple tickles her cheek. “Where do we start?”

She looks up and kisses him. “Where did we really start, Mulder? When I walked into your office? When I survived the cancer?”

His arms are strong around her waist and his fingers are circling the spot where the Ourobouros turns for eternity. “When you came into my bedroom that windy night?” His lips are soft against hers.

“Fox Mulder,” she says, pulling on his hand. “Would you go to bed with me?”

His eyes wander to the couch and his lips split into a half-smile. His head tilts and he holds his eyes shut in a long, slow blink. “I think I might.”

 The book is on the coffee table, open at page 682. She tries not to look at it as they walk past. They both do. But its pull is strong.

              “What word do you see, Scully?” he whispers.

              She smiles up at him. “Love, Mulder. It’s a whole page of love.”

              The light goes out.

[xfilesfanscribe]

Plus One - Post-ep MSR Fic (NC-17)

Well, thanks for the positive feedback, everyone.  Here’s part 2. It picks up immediately after part 1, so if you haven’t read that one, make sure to go find it on my feed (it’s my only other post, so should be easy to find :-) STEAMY Once again, the characters aren’t mine.  And this takes place immediately after Plus One.

********************************

Mulder took Scully by the hands and walked her toward the bathroom. He turned her toward the vanity mirror and wrapped his arms around her from behind. He moved her hair away from her neck and began kissing her right below her ear, down her neck to the slope of her shoulder.



They’d been together long enough for him to know her sensitive spots, and he loved hitting them at just the right time. 

Mulder looked up at the mirror to see Scully watching him through heavily lided eyes. Her head was arched back a bit, but Mulder could tell she was enjoying watching him kiss and lick her neck.

Mulder began pulling Scully’s blouse out from the hem of her skirt, while she lifted her hands and reached back to run them through Mulder’s hair. Little squeaks of pleasure escaped her lips as Mulder smoothed his hands up Scully’s ribcage under her blouse and up to her bra.

Scully moved to turn around in Mulder’s arms to face him. He thought for a moment to stop her, but he had no desire to play games tonight. He just wanted them both to enjoy themselves and revel in being close and completely in sync about where they were headed with the evening.

As Scully turned to Mulder, she didn’t wait even a moment before pulling his face forcefully down to kiss him. Their lips were soft and came together with just the right pressure, as Mulder slipped his tongue between her lips. 

They kissed for a minute before Scully broke their kiss breathlessly and panted, “Mulder…let’s do this in the shower, I’m a bit chilly”. 

Not one to deny his Queen, Mulder turned his torso to reach back and get the shower running. Then he turned back and smiled to Scully, saying sarcastically “This should be fun, Scully. I’ve actually never imagined us in the shower together before”.

They both chuckled, knowing full well that the opposite was true. Scully continued the joke, but intended to knock Mulder off his feet.

She deadpanned, “Really, Mulder? That’s weird, it’s one of my favourite ways to imagine us”.

The joke was over and Scully new it from the dark look in Mulder’s eyes. He hadn’t even had time to register surprise before an overwhelming sense of arousal overcame him. 

“Why don’t you take my clothes off and I’ll show you what I imagined”, continued Scully with a glint in her eyes.

Mulder’s eyes grew darker as his pupils reflexively dilated. He pulled Scully toward him and had her skirt unzipped and halfway down her legs in one quick move. Next he moved to her blouse and made quick work of the buttons.

Scully reached for the hem of Mulder’s shirt and pulled it over his head, before grabbing the waist of his pants and heading straight for the button, though not before running the palm of her hand down the front of his pants and squeezing him through his pants.

Scully was enjoying the effect he was having on him and said, coyly,  “Ooo…Mulder…I’m kind of hoping to jump right into the main course tonight, and it looks like you might be ready to do the same”. 



Standing face to face, wearing only their underwear, Mulder decided he’d waited long enough to get her into the shower. He grabbed Scully by the hips and walked her back through the opening of the glass door and under the spray of soothing hot water, before following immediately behind her. 



Scully didn’t protest being led to the shower in her bra and panties. The urgency Mulder displayed was turning her on even more than she had already been.

Mulder came up behind Scully again and wrapped his arms around her in an embrace as they both let the hot stream of water warm them up.

Mulder sighed contentedly. “Oh God, Scully….(sigh)…I could stay right here with you forever. Mmmmmm”.



Scully sighed in agreement, not needing to say anything at all. She raised her arms and reached back to run her fingers through Mulder’s wet hair. She loved the feeling of his thick head of hair, but also felt sexy giving him free access to her breasts and the curves of her abdomen.

Mulder didn’t miss the opportunity and quickly used a free hand to unclip Scully’s bra before lifting the lingerie off her breasts to massage them while he he licked and nipped her shoulder.

Scully reached back and hooked her fingers in the waistband of Mulder’s boxer briefs, pulling them down over his erection and allowing them to fall to the floor of the shower. 



Not missing his cue, Mulder reached down and lowered Scully’s lace panties. He moved to turn Scully around to face him, but Scully resisted, wanting to face forward. 

She looked back over her shoulder and whispered to Mulder seductively, picking up where they’d left off on their sarcasm from before.

“Since I’m the only one who’s imagined us together in the shower, why don’t I show you what I had us doing in my mind…”



Mulder groaned, infinitely grateful for this seductive Godess standing before him. Scully had rendered him speechless; one of the few times she’d managed such a feat since they’d been together. 



Scully stepped forward a couple steps until she was within reach of the shower’s front wall. She moved her legs apart and widened her stance before leaning forward and placing her palms on the wall and peering back at Mulder again. 



Mulder was frozen, and Scully held his gaze until he moaned her name in a voice that was at least two octaves lower than normal. 

“Scully…ugh….what are you doing to me?”.


Mulder’s erection was throbbing red, verging on purple, and pointed straight up, ready for everything Scully seemed to want.

Mulder took a moment to compose himself before deciding to take some control of the situation back.

“What do you want me to do, Scully?”, he asked.

Scully stared into his eyes, recognizing full well what he was doing. He wanted her to say it…to tell him what she wanted.

Scully was past feeling shy. Shyness was only an issue when she had any doubts about what Mulder wanted. And in this case, he left no doubt.

Scully took a deep breath and said “Mulder, I want you to come up here and take me from behind”.

Mulder grabbed his cock and squeezed it to stop himself from coming on the spot.

He’d never heard Scully say anything like that before and his heart was racing so fast that he could hear it beating in his ears. 


He wasn’t about to waste the moment. He moved toward Scully with a predatory intensity. He wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her body just a few inches until her ass was aligned with his erection.

With his free hand, Mulder grabbed his erection and lowered it as he thrust forward a bit and felt himself slip just a few millimetres inside of Scully. She was hot and slick. So clearly ready for this. 


Normally he wouldn’t rush her, but he could tell this was exactly what she wanted. 

Mulder lifted his eyes to find Scully’s once more. As their gazes met, Mulder let out a breath and pushed himself deeply inside of Scully, as far as he could go.



They both moaned loudly and whimpered at the perfect sensation of being joined together.

Mulder held Scully by both hips, while she steadied herself on the front wall of the shower. 

He thrust into her over and over, firmly and leaving no doubt that they weren’t going to draw this out any more than required.

Scully’s legs began to tremble, as she realized she and Mulder were enacting the exact fantasy she’d dreamed up so many times before.

“Ugh…Ugh…Mulder”, she panted. “Just like that, Mulder…yeah…don’t stop. Oh God. Mulder….perfect…just…just like I imagined us. Oh God…Mulder…”.

Mulder continued thrusting into Scully from behind, hard and deep with every move. 
He reached his left arm around her torso to keep holding her up while freeing up his other hand, which he reached around and used to rub Scully’s clit.

Scully’s high pitched squeaks were coming rhythmically as he rubbed her in just the right spots. He could feel the tension growing inside her, as he continued thrusting deeply within her. He knew she was close…mercifully close, because he wasn’t far behind.

Mulder groaned with pleasure and he continued thrusting inside Scully and rubbing her between her folds to bring her orgasm. 



“Fucking perfect…so…fucking perfect, Scully…ugh…ahhhhh….Nobody but you, Scully….uhhhh ughh….you’re the…only…one….ugh…Scully….Scully…Scully…Scully…Love…Scully…You…”.

Mulder was nearly incoherent as he neared his own climax, but his professions of love were enough to drive Scully over the edge.



“Don’t stop, Mulder…yeah….yeah….ugh…Mulder…yeah…please…I’m….I’m coming,” Scully squealed.

Scully’s orgasm hit her like a tidal wave, sending tight shockwaves around Mulder’s cock and driving him over the edge, too. 

He exploded inside her as he thrust his final frantic thrusts inside her and slowly lowered her feet back to the tub floor, before resting his head on her back.

They were both completely winded, panting hard. Mulder pulled his fingers out from between Scully’s legs and Scully whimpered lightly.

Scully spun around to face Mulder and caught his mouth with her own. She kissed him deeply and sloppily, not caring about anything but reconnecting with him after such an intense experience.

They wrapped their arms around each other and kissed for a few minutes. Mulder finally broke their embrace and rested his forehead against Scully’s. 



“I love you, Scully. I love you”, he said breathlessly. “You are the woman of my dreams. I don’t want to go back to having to send you hints and signals about what I want. I know…I know it’s selfish of me. You want your space, I know. I just…,” Mulder paused. “God, I just love you so much, Scully.

Scully smiled and cupped his face in her hands. “I love you, too, Mulder. I want the same thing”. Scully kissed him again, then added “No more games…no more guessing, ok? I promise. Just promise me one thing, ok, Mulder?”

“Anything,” Mulder replied.

“Promise me you’ll do that to me at least once a week until the day I die, ok?”.

They both chuckled softly.

“We all have our crosses to bear, Scully. I guess that’ll be mine”.

Mulder and Scully laughed together and kissed passionately for a few minutes until the water began to run cold.