Zella Wants to Believe

Omg 1. This ask is adorable hey you!!! 2. I don’t do shots and I also stopped drinking two hours ago but I will metaphorically drink to that!!! 3. Thank you for the prompt this is not my style at all but I will try to deliver and like……. That’s all you can do???? You know??

Lila

He’s smooth, and he knows it. He’s smooth with an easy smile and an easy hand lifted to signal the bartender. Another, another, keep ‘em coming. He’s smooth, but he’s not slick. She’s drunk, but she’s not stupid.

“Mulder,” she lulls, trailing a lone finger up the center of his thigh when his knee knocks against hers for the millionth time. “Have I ever told you….” She trails off, shaking her head, smiling into her drink. “Nevermind.”

“No, tell me,” he insists, his voice husky, the desperate twinge not unnoticed.

“It’s silly,” she counters, trying to hide her smirk in a coy grin. She’s blushing enough to cover for it.

“Tell me.” Shit.

“Have I ever told you about Lila?” Innocent enough. Could a pet, a cousin, a friend.

“Lila?”

“Lila. You remind me of her sometimes.” The heat between her legs is certainly reminiscent of her college trists, but there the similarity ends. Biting her lip, she drags out the enigma, hellbent on driving him over the edge. “She and I were… close in college.”

“How close?” The catch in his voice made her nipples ache, and she scooted closer to him.

“Have you ever known someone so intoxicating, you just couldn’t keep your hands off them?” As she spoke, hardly above a whisper, she tented her fingers over his kneecap and pushed down and out, producing a shiver that sent her aflame.

“Oh have I,” he answered, a storm brewing in his eyes.

“She was electric.” She was, and Scully remembers every moment of that affair like she herself had a photographic memory. If ever she wanted it, it would be for something like Lila. “She had the softest lips…” She watched Mulder unconsciously dart his tongue out to wet his own lips. “…The softest breasts.” She relished the drastic widening of his eyes, the shift in his hips, the grip of his fingers on her thigh.

“Scully…” He sounded dangerous, and it only added fuel to the fire.

It feels a little dreamlike, early on a Friday morning. The lemony sun is filtering in through the dusty basement windows and she can still taste cranberry juice in her mouth, and the pleasure is coiling around low in her belly, making it hard to breathe.

His tongue laps gently at her clit, circles it. She inhales sharply and shifts her weight on her elbows, her arms aching. Office chairs were not made with this in mind. His arms tighten around her hips and he pulls her toward him, until she’s perched right on the edge of the chair. He glances up at her, and there’s something incredibly arousing about seeing him in his shirtsleeves, kneeling there between her legs on the carpeted floor.

His jaw is deliciously smooth this soon after shaving, and when his tongue comes in and touches her again, she nearly jumps, toes curling. His grip on her tightens and keeps her cemented to the leather and his mouth. She exhales, and there’s a hint of a moan there.

His fingers curl in on her thighs a bit in gratification.

The office phone suddenly rings from its spot on the desk beside her, under some papers they had shoved aside when they began this, and it sounds louder than usual. The office seems tiny.

“Shit,” she squeaks, a little breathlessly.

“Leave it,” Mulder says, his words against her skin. He licks.

She swallows anxiously. “It’s Skinner. We’re late for the meeting.”

“We’ll be there soon,” he points out. He glances at her as he says it, moving his lips deliberately against her.

She lets it go to voicemail and drops her head heavily back against the chair, closing her eyes. Heat is working its way into every corner of her body. A hum like a current of electricity. She presses up against his mouth, and he makes a satisfied sound, his tongue sliding around and around…

Her cell phone rings then, a sure sign it’s Skinner, and she grits her teeth and reaches for it. Mulder moves faster and grabs her hand mid-motion, linking their fingers together and pressing them against her stomach. He slides his other arm back under her thighs and around her hips again.

“Mulder,” she whines, “what if it’s urgent?”

He glances up at her again, eyebrows raised. “Then come,” he says, “and we’ll go.”

the ways you said “i love you”: 11. With a shuddering gasp

thanks to everyone who told me i should do the deadalive au i had the idea for yesterday.

—

Three months after they buried him, Skinner pulls Agent Mulder out of the ground. Doggett is skeptical from the beginning, but he’s not too surprised when they find out Mulder is alive. He should be, but he’s not. He’s seen some pretty weird shit in his time on the X-Files, and this may take the cake, but he’s experienced a resurrection of his own in that time. He’s thinking less of the reasons that Mulder might be alive, and more of how Agent Scully is going to react when she finds out. She’s been in grief for months, teary and quiet, teetering on the edge of something. It’s been clear for a while that her relationship with Mulder goes a whole lot deeper than a simple partnership, and he knows that her loss has left a gaping hole in her life—hell, if anyone can understand that, it’s him. He’s had plenty of loss in his life. She’ll be so happy if this means she can have him back… but what’s going to happen if this is all a fluke, and it’s not really him or he doesn’t make it?

When Skinner walks away from the opened coffin, muttering something about telling Scully, Doggett grabs him by the arm. “You can’t do that to her,” he says. “Not til we know he’s okay. If we tell her he’s alive and he doesn’t make it… it’ll be like she’s losing him all over again.”

—

Against all odds, Mulder lives. Between threats to Scully’s baby in exchange for Mulder’s health and whatever the hell is going on with Billy Miles, Mulder survives. Skinner pulls his life support, and that ends up being exactly what he needs. The doctors reassure Skinner and Doggett that he is going to live.

Skinner presses Doggett, again, to call Scully, but he still refuses. “Wait til he’s awake,” he says, “til we know everything is okay.”

Skinner glares at him searingly, in that Stern Father way Doggett suspects he uses on Mulder and Scully often. “I know them,” he growls. “She’ll want to know, she’ll want to be there when he wakes up. She’ll be furious if she finds out we didn’t tell her.”

“How is she gonna feel if there’s something wrong?” Doggett demands. “We’re doing this for her, for both of them. We can’t mess it up.” He’s thinking of his boy, of how he would feel if he thought he could get him back and then it all fell apart. Losing him once was hard enough; he cannot imagine losing him again.

Skinner looks as if he’s in immense, immense disagreement. He kind of looks like he wants to sock Doggett right in the face. But Doggett won’t let up. Finally he lets go of the phone. Sighs heavily and tells him fine. He’ll stay with Mulder in the meantime.

—

Mulder can’t remember much. He remembers the light, the circle of abductees in the woods, and then awakening in the hospital. He remembers nothing else. Nothing but flashes of darkness and pain and his voice rasping as he screamed Scully’s name. He isn’t sure he wants to remember.

When he wakes up, he initially thinks that he is alone. He is stiff and numb, his mind foggy, his limbs limp. His hands are lying at his sides. He thinks he is alone—which he finds a little confusing; he hasn’t woken up alone in a hospital bed since 1993—but then he turns his head and finds Skinner slumped in a chair next to the bed, his eyes mostly closed. He scans the rest of the room, turning his head as best as he can, but Scully is not there.

Some sort of instinctual worry bubbles up in him, and he rasps, “Skinner.”

Skinner stirs, sitting straight up in the chair, lifting his glasses to rub at his eyes as he blinks. “Mulder,” he says softly, sounding exhausted, “Jesus Christ. How did you feel?”

Mulder licks his cracked lips, clears his throat. “What happened?” he rasps.

Panic washes over Skinner’s face briefly before he composes himself. “You… you were abducted,” he says carefully. “In Oregon. Do you remember?”

“Yes.” He doesn’t want to talk too much, it hurts to talk, but he has to know, he has to know why she isn’t here. She’s always been here before. Is she okay, is she hurt? Did they take her too? “Where’s Scully?” he says, with effort. It’s only after the words come out that he realizes that she might’ve not wanted to be here.

Skinner’s face falls a little further. “She's… she’s coming, okay?” he replies. “She’s going to come, Mulder. She’s going to be so happy to see you.”

Mulder shuts his eyes. He doesn’t want to analyze it, the fact that she isn’t here. “Is she okay,” he whispers.  

“She's—” Skinner falters again. “She’s just fine, Mulder. I swear.”

He doesn’t believe him, and he doesn’t know why, but he just wants to see Scully. He misses her so much. But he doesn’t have the energy to argue. He’s so tired. He’s drifting off when he hears Skinner say, “Let me get your doctor.”

—

The next time he wakes up, it is with considerably more energy. He is able to sit up in bed, to get up and walk around the room. He searches for a phone and finds none. There is no one in the room, no one coming to check on him. He sits on the edge of the bed, defeated.

There are scars he doesn’t remember getting on his hands and face, and he has no idea how long he’s been gone. It could’ve been months, or years; Skinner didn’t look that much older, but that doesn’t mean that a long period of time hasn’t passed. He keeps coming back to the fact that Scully isn’t here. Why wouldn’t they call Scully, his emergency contact? Did she take her name off of the form? Has she given up on him, taken him for dead? He doesn’t think she would do that, but he is having trouble rationalizing why she is not here.

He keeps coming back to the moment when Skinner said she was fine, she’d be coming here, and he didn’t believe him. He doesn’t know why he didn’t, but he didn’t. He doesn’t. And he wants to see her. All he wants is to see her.

He decides to leave the hospital at that moment. In a split second. He sneaks into the hospital lockers and steals some clothes, a shirt and pants that are too big on him, and a fifty from someone’s wallet. He finds out on the curb, from the cab driver, that he is in Annapolis.

He rattles off Scully’s address without a second thought and prays that she still lives there.

—

By the time he gets to Scully’s house, he’s figured out how long he’s been gone. Six months. Six months of his life, missing. It hits him so hard he has trouble breathing for a moment. Six months lost with Scully, six months they’ll never get back. In the moment, Mulder can’t remember why he ever wanted to go to Oregon. Every sound of his feet on the stairs feels like a condemnation. When he knocks on the door, the pause that follows feels like a sentencing.

He hears footsteps on the other side, and the door unlocks. It swings open to reveal Scully on the other side, dressed in pajamas and visibly pregnant. She has a polite smile on her face, and then it melts away, replaced by shock as she pales rapidly. A hand presses over her stomach. Her mouth opens but nothing comes out.

His heart is thudding too hard in his chest. He can’t breathe. He whispers, airlessly, “Scully?”

She is breathing too rapidly, as if she is hyperventilating. Her lips form her name, but no sound comes out. Shakily, she steps closer, reaching out for him. Her hands tremble. She touches his face, first, with trembling fingers, and then slides her hands down to the back of his neck. He knows what he is searching for, and he stands still and lets her do it, tears pricking the back of his eyes. When she doesn’t find it, she steps back, her eyes wide as saucers. “Mulder?” she chokes out.

He nods.

Her lower lip trembles. She practically launches herself at him, landing in his arms, throwing her arms around him. She’s clutching him so tight that her nails are practically piercing his skin. She bursts into tears, shaking in his embrace as she sobs. She’s whispering his name over and over again, her hands clutching at his stolen shirt. Speechless, all he can do is hold her tight, to rock her back and forth gently.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” she gasps, pulling back to look at him, to touch his face. He wipes her tears from her cheeks. “How are you here?” she breathes.

“I think Skinner found me. I woke up in the hospital.”

“Jesus.” She hugs him again, so tight that he loses his breath for a second. She’s crying again, her shoulders quivering. “This doesn’t feel real,” she chokes out, gripping his shirt with one hand. “I’ve prayed for this so many times, Mulder…”

“I’m here,” he whispers. He doesn’t understand how—he wants to ask what happened to him, because he’s guessing that it’s a bit more extensive than a simple abduction—but he’s here. He strokes her hair gently. “Scully…?”

She seizes his face in her hands and kisses him hard, her eyes red, her lips salty. She kisses his face, his cheeks, his forehead with a relieved sort of fervor. “I love you,” she gasps, her voice trembling, and he shuts his eyes, bites back a sob. “I love you so much, Mulder… I thought I’d lost you. I thought I would never see you again.”

—

Eventually, they make it inside. Scully won’t let go of him. She grips his hand in hers and sits beside him on the couch, her thigh pressed to his as she calls Skinner. She sounds furious as she talks to him, furious that she wasn’t told that he was alive, and this is when Mulder understands: he was dead. He was dead and buried, and somehow he’s alive again. And this is why his fish tank is sitting on her kitchen counter, and she is wearing one of his sweaters over her pajamas. He has no idea when she had gotten pregnant—he knows he has been gone for two months, but he has no way to gauge how far along she is—and he doesn’t want to ask. Scully is clutching at his hand tightly as she snaps at Skinner on the phone. She sounds like she is going to cry all over again.

Eventually, she hangs up the phone, lets it fall onto the coffee table with a thunk and looks over at him with something almost like embarrassment. Her eyes are still brimming with tears. “Are you okay?” she whispers. “How do you feel?”

“A little tired,” he says unsteadily. He’s having a little bit of trouble processing it, all of it.

“Skinner told me you weren’t exactly discharged through the normal channels.” She smiles at him shakily, letting go of his hand to feel his forehead, to push his hair away from his face.

He shakes his head, and the corners of his mouth upturn a bit. “Have you ever known me to go through the proper channels, Scully?” he teases, but his heart isn’t into it; it comes out flat. He looks down at his lap, at the swell of her belly under his sweater. “I wanted to find you,” he admits, his voice soft and a little ashamed.

“Mulder, I’m so sorry,” she says in a rush. “I would’ve been there if they’d told me, I swear. I… I’ve been waiting for news like this for months, and I'd… given up hope…” Her voice breaks. “All I wanted was to have you back,” she whispers, “and I thought I’d never have that again.” She keeps one hand on his face and presses the other over her stomach. “The baby… I thought I’d never get to tell you about it,’ she whispers.

His head shoots up at that, his eyes widening, and she nods, teary and happy all at once somehow. She finds his hand and brings it to her stomach, to the small movements there, and he feels like crying all over again. “Oh my god,” he whispers. She nods, her chin trembling. “Oh my god,” he repeats, faltering, and he wraps his arms around her this time, holding her as tight as he can, and they’re quivering together on the couch, clinging to each other and rocking back and forth as they dissolve into sobs.

—

“I’m so glad,” Scully whispers, hours later, when they’ve gone to the doctor and talked to an extremely apologetic Skinner, when they’re curled up in bed together, her hand curled hard around the hem of his shirt. She still hasn’t let go of him. “I’m so glad you’re okay, Mulder. I was so scared…” She sniffles. “I… I thought I’d lost you forever, and yet here you are.”

After Philadelphia by @icedteainthebag

Rating: NC-17

Word Count: 1125

chapter 8 of ‘Birdsong’ on ao3 ( chapters: 1, 2, 3 , 4, 5, 6, 7, on tumblr) @today-in-fic

chapter rating: k+

summary: The plot of Silence of the Lambs, with Dana Scully replacing Clarice Starling, and a younger Agent Mulder, working in the B.S.U, assigned to help her. It is not at all necessary to have seen/read ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ OR ‘The X-Files’ to enjoy this fic.

She grabbed a sad turkey club at a deli after taking a cab from the airport into downtown Memphis and practically inhaled it, parked at a table in a flimsy plastic chair. Getting through airport security had been interesting, but she supposed she’d get used to presenting her weapon and flashing her badge. She’d seen the surprise on some of the boarding passengers’ faces -what’s that girl doing with a gun? And who knew if she’d even end up graduating in January with the rest of her class and getting assigned her own weapon? She was in so deep now that it almost seemed preferable to do the six months over again. If they didn’t catch Buffalo Bill, if Catherine Martin died, she simply couldn’t carry on with the case. She’d be recycled, and that was it.

After a late lunch she headed to Catherine’s apartment, a fifteen minute cab ride away. The building was nicer than what the average twenty-four year old could afford, but she supposed being the daughter of a senator must have its perks. Two plain police cars were parked out front, recognizable to her from the radar on the dashboards. She paid her driver and went into the lobby, where a policeman held up a hand.

“Woah, who are you?”

She held up her badge. “Agent Scully, from the F.B.I,” she said, thinking it wasn’t exactly true.

He nodded. “Okay, then. Fifth floor.”

She thought perhaps the security was a little light -lobby door didn’t have a code, no security guard, she hadn’t seen cameras. Anyone off the street could have easily slipped in as an unremarkable tenant. Everyone looked unremarkable, until you had an idea of who they were inside. She could have been a criminal, but with a badge and a cool demeanor she’d gotten past a policeman without even saying hello.

The elevator was new and clean, with shiny buttons and a phone for emergencies. She tucked her hair behind her ears when it came to a stop and looked around when the doors opened. Apartment 7B, 7B…Just down the hall and to the left -the door was even propped open with a yellow wet-floor sign. Catherine hadn’t even been kidnapped in her apartment, it had apparently happened in the parking area behind the building, where Crawford and Mulder had appeared on television, ducking under yellow crime scene tape.

She walked through the open door and down a short hallway that, to the left, opened to a living room. To the right, the kitchen. Sitting on the small sofa in the carpeted living room was a young state trooper, who set down his newspaper to look at her.

“Hi,” she said quietly, holding up her badge. He smiled a little, then relaxed, going back to his paper. A box of latex gloves sat on the low coffee table, and she bent to take two, slipping them on and walking carefully around the room, absorbing it all.