#the x files brainrot has evolved

[television-overload]

'sh-boom' (an X-Files fanfic)

Like usual, I caved and instead of leaving my "someone should write this" post be, I wrote it myself. I'll tag some people that expressed interest in this prompt below the fic! Shout out to @baronessblixen who already wrote the perfect Scully-accidentally-kisses-Mulder fic. You can read that here!

Now, for Mulder accidentally kissing Scully cause he dreams about her all the time.... takes place February 1998, mid-Season 5.

Read on Ao3

There’s a trick to fighting insomnia, Mulder had discovered. Not a cure, by any means, but an improvement, nonetheless. All you need is a super off-limits best friend you’ve fallen stupidly in love with, spend practically every waking hour of the day with her, and then spend the rest of your time thinking about her until your exhausted and delusional mind has mercy on you and blesses you with her presence in your unconscious state.

A foolproof plan, really. Scully had even noticed he seemed more well-rested and happier in the last few weeks, so something had to be working.

Although, there were—he had to admit—a few rather notable side effects.

Despite what others might tell you, Fox Mulder was not one to have trouble distinguishing between fiction and reality. Usually. But in his defense, his dreams were very, very vivid, and there had been a time or two that he’d referred to something Scully had said, only to realize at her blank stare that it was the figment of her in his imagination who’d said it.

“Must have been someone else I was talking to,” he’d awkwardly say, thankful that she kept her mouth shut about the fact that there was no one else he’d have such conversations with, and they both knew it.

He’d also been on the receiving end of more than a few raised eyebrows and patented “what is wrong with you?” looks, which were well-deserved for catching him staring even more than typical. Sure, he was sleeping better at night, but his brain was now trained to find restfulness when thinking about Scully, which was pretty much an all-day thing too. Sitting across from her in their isolated little office for extended periods of time made his eyes glaze over and eyelids droop halfway shut. Oh, the horror… he probably looked like a drunk idiot. He hoped he at least looked somewhat normal, not like a drooling dope with a dumb smile on his face who was clearly not having a productive day at work.

What would old doctor Pavlov have to say about this sorry scenario?

His consolation was that Scully already knew he was weird, and stuck around anyway, so he had no qualms against going home night after night and picking up where he’d left off in Scullyland the night before. Let’s see, he was just about to their son’s first little league baseball game, of which Mulder was the coach, of course. “Scully, don’t forget, we signed up to bring snacks for the team after the game.”

Behind closed eyes he saw her raise her arm to show him the already packed bag she was holding, an exasperated but loving look in her eye. “Always one step ahead of me,” he said fondly. With practiced ease, they danced around each other in the kitchen of a fairly unremarkable house, grabbing sunscreen, sunglasses, water bottles, keys… “Alright, sport, get in the car! Bus is leaving!” he called out, smiling as the sounds of little footfalls preceded the sight of his freckle-faced son, clad in shiny new baseball cleats.

“Got your glove?”

“Yep.”

“Your bat?”

“Yep.”

“Spitting tobacco?”

“Daaaad…”

“Mulder!”

“I’m just kidding, get in the car, will you? Coach Fox can’t be late, it’s unprofessional.”

“Wait I forgot my seeds!”

A minivan. Perfectly unremarkable. Admittedly, very comfortable, and spacious.

“Fox…” Scully mused with a shake of her head as she buckled her seatbelt.

“What? All the great baseball legends have weird nicknames. I just happen to have been born with mine.”

“The Great Bambino!” a little voice piped up from the back, glancing out the window as they ventured forth into the miles and miles of farmland.

“That’s my boy. ‘Oil Can’ Boyd. ‘Cool Papa’ James Bell. ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson. Did you know Lou Gehrig’s teammates called him ‘Biscuit Pants?’”

A giggle from the back seat.

“Alright you’ve made your point.” He loved it when she used that voice, the one that meant she was tired of his antics, but not really. Of course she loved his senseless rambling. She did it too sometimes, albeit with a few more hyper-specific medical terms thrown in there, leaving him unable to do anything other than smile and nod.

When they arrived, they piled out of the van, the messy brown hair of his son—already sweaty somehow, by the way—disappearing into the dugout with a gaggle of other overexcited little boys. “Good luck,” Scully spoke as she planted a kiss on Mulder’s cheek and made her way to the stands, setting up a cushion and portable fan that were sure to be the envy of all the other parents.

The field smelled like grass and dirt and the leather of brand-new baseball gloves just waiting to be broken in. It was a smell straight out of his childhood, of those summer nights on the Vineyard getting eaten up by bugs under the bright lights of the baseball fields. The crack of a ball against a wooden bat. Coming home covered in sweat and dirt and with a kid sister in tow who insisted on playing with the boys.

It was in this dream state where he found peace. Not in the past, but in some amorphous future. A future where he had a family again, a loving home. Where he wasn’t a coward and had a beautiful wife and partner who somehow made everything work. They fought monsters. They went grocery shopping. They filed paperwork with Skinner. He coached little league. They drove to work together. They picked up their son from school.

Baseballs went flying. Teams celebrated their first win. Little boys were tucked into bed, and he kissed his wife goodnight. That’s just how it was.

It was freedom. A freedom he didn’t think he’d felt since his life changed with a flash of light.

In the morning, he’d wake in a haze. With his brain on autopilot, he’d amble about his apartment, brushing his teeth, making coffee, tying on a tie… Caught somewhere in between these worlds of make-believe and reality. It was a benefit of his eidetic memory, he supposed, to be able to remember his dreams and stay in them even after coming to consciousness. Didn’t work out so great when he had constant nightmares, but hey, now that’s been solved too.

Somewhere along his drive to work was usually when reality really set in. He tried to not let it bring him down too much—it was his own fault, after all, that his life bore little resemblance to that which revealed itself in dreams. But he couldn’t help the slight pangs of disappointment he felt when he thought of the lonely couch he slept on every night and the sad state of his fridge.

“Good morning, Mulder,” Scully called out her usual greeting as she breezed into the office.

Mulder’s head lifted off the desk where it had been laying. “Mm—morning.”

Scully chuckled, setting down her bag in her chair and working to remove her heavy coat which she hung on the coat rack. His dream may have taken place in the heat of summer, but it was unmistakably the dead of winter in Washington, D.C.

“Not get enough sleep?” she asked, her amused tone not entirely disguising the genuine concern she felt for him underneath.

“I slept fine,” Mulder answered, “just… still waking up.”

Scully shook her head and let out another low chuckle, taking her seat across from him. She pulled out a file from her bag and began scanning through it, the lamp next to her providing most of the light, as the cloud-covered sky through the skylight threatened to dump a heap of snow on the city.

The day went on like that. Mulder managed to actually get some work done, finalizing some paperwork he’d been putting off (to Scully’s exaggerated shock and disbelief). She, on the other hand, was working on going over some medical reports a field office had sent over for her expert opinion, something that flattered her and made Mulder bloom with pride.

He didn’t even mind that much that they didn’t have a case to work on at the moment. That was another thing that had changed since he’d started indulging in these dreams: he could sit still for five minutes without vibrating out of his skin.

Of course, he’d never stop yearning for the truth, wondering what was out there waiting for him to discover it. But lately, he also found he enjoyed these quiet days where barely a word was spoken between them. It was comfortable. Everything unspoken didn’t need to be said aloud because it was a given—they both knew without saying everything that could possibly be said.

Lunch?

Yes.

Can you hand me a pen?

Sure.

The winter sun set early, and night was well on its way by the time Mulder looked up from his work to check the clock. Sure enough: quitting time. He stood from his desk just as Scully did, making his way over to the coat rack to grab both his and Scully’s coats. She snapped her bag shut with a click as he handed it to her before slipping his arms into his own coat sleeves.

Scully fluffed her hair out from under the collar of her coat. Mulder flicked off the lamp. She draped her bag over her shoulder. He grabbed his own briefcase and circled around his desk toward the door.

“Night, Scully,” he spoke like he did every evening, dipping down to place a quick kiss goodbye on her lips.

He froze.

Lips still touching, he swore he felt his heart stop and his fingers go numb. Somehow amid all the blaring alarm bells and internal screaming, his brain was able to send the signal back away, you idiot! to the rest of his body, and he obeyed, straightening up to look at her with what he knew she recognized as his ‘panic face.’

The only light now was coming from the streetlamps in the parking lot and the gentle snowfall reflecting it down into the office, the dim yellowish light making it difficult to tell what she was thinking. A wiser man would say something, apologize, explain it away, even leave, dang it! Get out of there! But Mulder was frozen. And apparently mute. Just perfect.

The seconds ticked by. Was that clock always so loud? That was it, he’d really gone and done it now, hadn’t he?

A smile formed across Scully’s lips, barely visible in the darkness. She blinked up at him with an oddly relaxed look in her eyes, sparkling in the faint light.

“Night, Mulder,” she replied before patting him twice on the chest above his heart and turning to leave.

It must have been a combination of her words and her touch that eventually broke him from his stupor, because he finally blinked and managed to stumble back to his office chair only to collapse into it, covering his face with his hands and letting out a muffled scream.

What an idiot. What. An. Idiot.

This was the price he had to pay for his risky little endeavor to sleep through the night. Dreaming of Scully had a cost, he should have known it was only a matter of time. He was messing with the delicate balance of things. Mulder and insomnia, insomnia and Mulder. They went hand-in-hand. Trading it in for the much more pleasant musings he had for his partner was too good to be true.

He sat there in horrified, humiliated silence for what felt like hours before finally heading home to what would inevitably be an appallingly horrible night’s sleep.

-.-.-

Mulder hadn’t slept. At all.

He laid awake most of the night staring at the ceiling and mentally berating himself over and over for blurring the lines so much that he’d briefly forgotten he and Scully weren’t actually together. He had every intent to call out of work the next day, and maybe the day after that, every day until he could come up with something to say to make things less awkward between them the next time they’d see each other, but then Skinner called.

His stomach dropped to the floor when the words “I need to ask you something,” crackled through the phone, the gruff voice of his boss sending a chill down his spine. It turned out all Skinner wanted was for Mulder and Scully to check out some reported aquatic dinosaur sightings in a lake in central Kansas, but Mulder still felt dizzy from the adrenaline the initial words had sent coursing through his system.

Against his wishes, he was dressed and in a taxi to the airport before noon, realizing too late that he hadn’t eaten anything either.

As he entered the bustling terminal, he saw Scully standing near the check-in point, dressed in her sensible heels and no-nonsense suit, her suitcase resting on the ground near her tapping foot. She checked her watch and glanced up to the departures sign before scanning the crowd. He winced as her sight settled on him, and picked up the pace.

“Jeez, Mulder, you look awful,” she said by way of greeting.

“Sorry I’m late,” he spoke, hoping to divert any conversation away from what had happened the night prior.

She wasn’t so easily dissuaded, however. “What happened to you? Are you sick?”

It seemed he would have to say something after all. He settled for, “Haven’t had anything to eat.” There. That would throw her off his scent.

Scully’s eyebrows furrowed and she grabbed the handle of her suitcase, beginning to pull it in the direction of their gate. “Well, you can have the other half of my muffin, it’s in my purse.”

He said nothing after that, choosing to follow after her like a lost puppy. They made their way through the metal detectors and had just enough time to get to their gate before they were boarding.

True to her word, just as soon as they’d reached cruising altitude, Scully extracted half a blueberry muffin from her purse and placed it on the tray table in front of Mulder, who was leaning heavily on the wall of the plane, staring blankly out the window. He mumbled his thanks and ate it in 3 clean bites, feeling only slightly guilty for inhaling his food like that in front of her.

Sensing that he wasn’t in a talkative mood, Scully posed a one-word question. “Insomnia?”

Mulder leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. “Yeah.”

“I thought it was getting better?”

“It was,” he answered, hoping she wouldn’t read into it.

Mulder sat up again, reaching for a book in his bag, but Scully’s hand on his shoulder stopped him. Gently, she pushed him back until he was resting again, forcing his head to the head rest with the soft touch of her hand over his brow.

“Sleep,” she said, pressing a kiss to his cheek.

-.-.-

After the rocky start to the day and the awkwardness on his end throughout the flight, Mulder came to the conclusion that Scully was acting perfectly normal, so he might as well do the same. Well, she had kissed him on the cheek, but that wasn’t unheard of, was it? They’d done that before. Sure, it was rare, but she was worried about him. Aside from that, it was as if nothing had even happened, and if Mulder had been just a little more crazy, he might have believed it had all been a dream after all. It wasn’t though, and the touch of her lips on his still burned when he thought about it.

Against his better judgement, on the first night in the motel in central Kansas, he decided to employ his, now patently risky, sleep technique. It didn’t help that his subconscious supplied him with dreams of a family road trip and motels just like the one he was staying in. It took everything in his power not to say, “Wake up, buddy, time to hit the road,” to an invisible—and sadly, impossible—son in the morning. Even harder was it to suppress the words “Morning, beautiful,” from escaping his lips when he first ran into Scully in the lobby.

She seemed appeased that he had actually gotten some rest, at least, when she saw him at breakfast. The day went on without issue. Things between them were… normal. Conditions: good. Weather: frigid. Why they were investigating a potentially cold-blooded creature in the middle of February was beyond him.

He suspected this case would turn out to be yet another wild goose chase. Nothing was living in that water except maybe a very cold and very large escaped alligator from a nearby run-down zoo. Unfortunately, his recent contentment with boring, unexciting cases didn’t seem to apply here. Or at least right now.

To his relief, the local law enforcement decided to handle it themselves and even had the presence of mind to sheepishly apologize for having them come all the way out there. Flights were booked for the next day, following an almost four-hour drive back to Kansas City.

When they arrived back at the motel, Mulder fished out his room key from his pocket and inserted it into the door to unlock it. At the next door over, Scully set her briefcase on the ground before crossing the distance to him right as he turned the handle, stalling him briefly in the doorway. She stood there just long enough to reach up for a quick peck on the lips, the kiss as brief as he had done two nights before.

“Wha—” he mouthed silently, interrupted by Scully’s easy, “Goodnight, Mulder,” leaving him gaping at her in the doorway, his hand still on the doorknob, as she went off to bed.

-.-.-

It was getting harder to tell fiction from reality, and that was tough for Mulder to admit. Scully smiled at him in the morning when she climbed in the passenger seat of their rental car, and for a moment Mulder felt the gnawing feeling that they’d forgotten to put their son in the backseat despite knowing he wasn’t real. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, but that could only help so much.

Her humming half the ride home was straight out of his dreams too, a happy sound that he hadn’t heard much in the months since Christmas and Emily. She even held his hand during takeoff on the plane, not that that was uncommon, but still.

When they finally touched down in the snow blanketed capitol city, she offered to drive him home rather than have him wait for a taxi out in the cold. He gratefully accepted, unable to come up with a valid excuse not to. That was when it happened again.

Once was a mistake. Twice was a fluke. Three times on the lips, and Mulder had some questions. Namely, was he going completely crazy, or did he miss something?

As she pulled up to his building, she put the car in park and stretched across the center console to give him yet another kiss, finishing it with a smile and a, “See you tomorrow, Mulder.”

Unable to tear his eyes away from her lest she fade away like his dreams, Mulder fumbled for the door handle and pushed open the car door, stumbling his way to his feet.

“See you tomorrow,” he managed to respond, in a voice that he felt wasn’t his own.

He started his way toward the entrance to his building in a daze, screeching to a halt when he heard her call out, “Mulder!” through the opened passenger window.

He turned back, croaking out a very eloquent, “Huh?” as he searched for her face in the dark car interior.

“You forgot your bags.”

Oh.

Scully chuckled and popped the trunk for him. He rubbed his hand awkwardly over the back of his neck and trudged his way back to the car to retrieve his possessions, slamming the trunk shut when he was finished. Scully gave a wave out the window and took off into the night, and for a second night in a row, all he could do was stand there and blink in the direction she had disappeared.

-.-.-

Calling out of work would be useless, it wouldn’t help the issue at all. He was more confused than ever, but Scully seemed to be perfectly fine, so it must be his own problem. What if he’d somehow manifested his dream life into his waking one, that by some mystical force, certain elements of it were slipping through into reality? He could open an X-File. Test out his powers of manifestation—if he didn’t completely lose his grip on reality in the process.

In his dream last night, they’d celebrated her birthday, and now he couldn’t remember if they’d already done so, or if he ought to get started on planning something in real life. What day is it again? It was driving him crazy. Crazier than usual.

He would just have to talk to her. Ask her what was up with all the kissing, not that he minded. But was that actually happening? Was he imagining things? If he brought it up, would they go back to what it was like before? Would it get worse? What if he kissed her again? This time on purpose?

Every time he went to say something, his mouth opened and no sound came out. He was sure she’d notice at some point. How embarrassing. Hours ticked by, and before he knew it, it was the end of the day. An epic fail, as far as his attempt to talk to her went.

He stood from his desk with a sigh, resigned to another day of confusion tomorrow, and started toward the door with his bag and coat in tow.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” her voice called from behind him, and there she was, standing by his desk, arms crossed expectantly over her chest. That eyebrow. That darn eyebrow was doing its thing too, what does she mean by that?

“Scully?” he asked, brain tired and worn out from a tumultuous week.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked again, uncrossing her arms and shifting in that way that exposed her well-masked nervousness. It was the first sign he’d seen that he wasn’t losing his mind, this really was unusual. And she knew it too.

Eyebrows furrowed, he walked toward her until he was standing right in front of her, desperately trying to read her expression as he looked down at her. Her eyes met his with determination, deliberately holding eye contact when every cell in his body screamed Danger! Run away! There was hope there, too, but Mulder didn’t want to guess what that hope might be for. This was not the moment for guessing.

She was still looking at him expectantly, though, and he couldn’t think of anything else.

Slowly, giving her plenty of time to move away or shoot him if he’d read the situation wrong, he bent toward her, placing one hand over her elbow and the other brushing lightly over the hair covering her ear. Her eyes fluttered shut and her breathing hitched, and there! She was leaning forward too! Not quite standing on tiptoes, but stretching to meet him, nonetheless.

Taking this as a good sign, he closed the rest of the distance between them and pressed his lips to hers, holding them there for one, two, three, four, five seconds before pulling back and letting his arms drop to his sides. His eyes remained tightly shut, afraid to open them and see the disgust or annoyance that would surely greet him.

He swallowed past a lump in his throat, his face pinched in concern, but he dared not move. After a moment, he felt two hands cup his cheeks on either side, the thumbs brushing out the lines of tension around his eyes. Something about the motion coaxed his eyes open, and what he saw wasn’t disgust or annoyance, but a content and relieved smile on the face of his partner.

He was entranced.

“Goodnight, Mulder,” she spoke softly, the same words from the other nights, but with a considerable amount of weight that hadn’t been there before. After a moment more, she began to pull away, and Mulder felt his heart stutter. Without thinking, he stopped her, grabbing her by the upper arms and pulling her to him. His eyes fell shut again as he dove toward her lips, stopping short by a few inches and pressing his forehead to hers instead.

“What is this?” he whispered, desperate to know, needing to put a name to it.

She let out a breathless laugh. “I was hoping you’d tell me.”

“Am I dreaming?”

She laughed again, and man, what he would do to hear that sound every day for the rest of his life.

“I just thought you’d decided to institute a new goodbye ritual, and went with it.”

It was Mulder’s turn to smile in amusement. He hummed.

“No, I’ve dreamt of this,” he murmured, nuzzling her forehead with his. “I thought I was going crazy.”

“If you are, then what does that make me?”

“I don’t know. If not crazy, then what other option is there?”

Reaching to cup the back of his neck, she pulled him ever closer, her next words brushing against his cheek. “I can think of something.”

His eyes opened to see her staring back at him, a flood of emotions he wasn’t sure he could name dancing there, reflecting identical ones in his own. Uncertainty gave way to resolve, and he hoped she would lend him some of hers, because he would surely need it.

He knew it was coming, and still it blew him away.

This time, her kiss was slow… purposeful. He melted into her, pulling her closer with an arm clutching to her waist and the other hand splayed across her shoulder blade.

The fog in his brain prevented him from determining how much time passed, but eventually they had to come up for air, identical smiles gracing their faces.

“I think I know what this is, Mulder, and I think you feel the same way. But if I’m wrong, this is going to be really awkward.” Her words were spoken with laughter, but there was an underlying sense of doubt. Doubt that by no means had any place there.

“No, I think you’re right,” he answered, cupping her cheek with his hand. “I think you’ve got it figured out.”

Her eyebrow went up again and a teasing smile played on her lips. “Can I get that in writing, or…”

He grinned and pulled her to him once more. “Oh, shut up.” And he kissed her.

---

Tagging @agent-troi @welsharcher @hippocampouts @invidiosa @whovianelle @captainsolocide @randomfoggytiger @today-in-fic