sure. fine. whatever.

“Mulder, you know what I just realized?” she asks him, nuzzling his bare chest with her nose.

He cuddles her closer. “What?”

“Phoebe was a redhead.” She pokes him for emphasis, and says it like: a-ha!

Red-head.

“And?” He laughs.

She lifts her head to look him in the eyes, propping herself on a palm. “You have a type,” she smirks.

“I do,” he says. “Dana Scully.”

She looks at him such that she does not need to say: That is not what I meant.

He shrugs. “I dunno, Scully.”

She slides against his body until she’s on top of him, legs between his. “Was I your type all along?”

He chuckles and rubs her back. “Definitely not,” he says.

“Mulder!” She swats him.

“I mean, not at first,” he explains. “And… aside from physical aspects entirely, because you were—I mean, you’re adorable, Scully. That’s an inalienable fact.”

“An inalienable fact,” she mouths.

“But you were nothing like any of the women I’d been with before. Or any of the women I’d wanted to be with before.”

He tucks her new, old short hair behind her ear. “You were good,” he whispers. “Fundamentally, you were just… you didn’t mess with people. You were very upfront. Confident in a way that didn’t make you mean. I… wanted your approval in the way I’d sought approval from other women, in the past. But your opinion meant… from the start, your opinion meant a lot. To me. Because you were so upstanding and…”—he grins—“amazingly difficult.”

“I was not difficult,” Scully recalls. She blinks, primly. “In fact I was rather easy.”

“I was helpless to love you after I saw you in your underpants,” he tells her. “That was a highlight.”

She kisses his nipple.

“But I also would have been helpless to love you if you were six feet tall with an Afro. I just thought to myself… Oh. So this is how a person is supposed to be.”

“With me?” she asks. “You thought that with me?”

“Right away,” he breathes. “And every day after I told you about Samantha.”

She hums. “Tell me more.”

“After… not a very long time at all, I realized I was… very sexually attracted to you, as well. But then I thought that maybe that first night had been some sort of… test. That you had wanted me to come onto you, and at the same time you didn’t want me to come onto you, and you didn’t know which you wanted more, and you were trusting me to decide.”

She looks at him with soft eyes, feeling seen. “I love you,” she whispers.

He wraps his arms around her fully. “I just wanted to do right by you,” he tells her. “And this is… purely retrospective analysis, given all the context that came later, but… I didn’t want to be your… type. At least not for the reasons you thought I was, off the bat.”

“There are some authority figures I didn’t fuck, you know,” she reminds him.

“I just… didn’t want you to want me because I wore the pants.”

She kisses his nose. “I wear the pants, Mulder.”

He rolls her underneath him. “Mm… I don’t know, Scully.”

(This is very brief and very delayed. Forgiveness is a tenet of Catholicism, yes, but far be it from Scullylike to let Mulder forget that one time he was wrong in 1999.)

“Scott was saying I have great form.” She pours the last of the little vinaigrette cup over her salad, closes the lid, and shakes it. “No herniated discs in my future, thank you.”

“Scott?”

She barely looks up. “The personal trainer, Mulder.”

“And he really admires your form.”

“It’s admirable.”

“Especially in yoga pants.”

Scully bats her eyelashes, cocks her head. The picture of innocence. “Are you taking this a little personally, Mulder?”

the truth is out there

I’ve started to question my priorities since I was first diagnosed with cancer. And I feel like I’ve been given a second chance.

The international chain of smack talk!

Thank you!

Fictober Day 16, Prompt #8 “I’m not doing that again”

ao3 link prompt list @today-in-fic @xffictober

The coffee is terrible, the walls are drab, and the company is migraine-inducing. Some things truly never change, and these tell-tale signs of the annual FBI team building seminar are amongst them.

Mulder chews on the inside of his cheek and doodles flying saucers on his welcome packet as the agents in his “break out circle” go around and introduce themselves, sharing the nature of their jobs with the Bureau and one interesting personal fact apiece. He looks over his shoulder at a similar circle on the other side of the room, spotting the back of Scully’s head and her tense shoulders. Chances are that she’s just as miserable as him. At least if they hadn’t split partners up for the icebreaker they’d be able to share judgemental glances and commiserate, but no such luck.

When it’s his turn, he glances around the circle and into the faces of overzealous agents, on the edges of their seats as if he’s about to do a magic trick. Apparently it’s easier to get through the Academy than it used to be.

“My name is Fox Mulder, I work on the X-Files in DC, we investigate unexplained phenomena,” He says woodenly.

“And one interesting fact about you?” The group leader throws him an encouraging smile and he briefly wonders how he can get back at Skinner for making them attend this seminar. Maybe he’ll make his next report particularly long and pedantic.

Mulder puffs out a long, weary sigh. “Uh, my grandfather invented the microwave oven,” He lies in a deadpan. It’s the fourth false “fun fact” he’s come up with today, and so far nobody has called his bluff. Some of the other agents smile, impressed. If souls exist, Mulder’s withers a little bit.

When he and Scully reconvene, one glance at her expression tells him all he needs to know about her experience with the icebreakers.

“I’m not doing that again,” She whispers to him through gritted teeth as they take their seats for the next speaker. The itinerary lists the next speaker as a life coach versed in meditation and nebulous spirituality. He pats Scully’s shoulder, fearing for her clenched jaw and preparing for her inevitable rant in their hotel later.

As they are led through a meditation and told to sense each other’s emotions through breathing, Mulder tries his best and can almost feel the crushing weight of Scully’s annoyance with the exercise. He refuses to give credit to the meditation, since she’s also cutting off the circulation to his hand with hers.