a lot of pairings involve a great deal of Suffering, but no matter what, i don't think any ship can to MSR in season 8. mulder's abduction and torture -> scully's surprise pregnancy -> finding out about mulder's brain disease (which i usually discard but it counts) -> scully's increasing desperation -> mulder's returned dead and they bury him with a funeral and a grave and everything while scully is 5 months pregnant -> she lives with him being dead for 3 month while pregnant with his baby -> miraculous resurrection and mulder's massive ptsd -> the bad guys plan to steal or do something to the baby but also it might be magic/alien.
truly nothing has ever surpassed it for just. repeated body blows of pain. I was 13 when i watched that air for the first time btw!
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1700 words; gentle; season 6 on the road fic for @suitablyaggrieved who wanted a rest stop
Another month off the X-Files, another whistle-stop tour of the Midwest. It was August and the heat was miserable, pressing down like a cupped hand. They’d had to fly into Des Moines and drive south and the air conditioning in the rental car couldn’t keep up. It had only been an hour. The sky blazed white and the glare set Scully’s teeth on edge. She squinted behind her sunglasses and shook the fabric of her blouse surreptitiously. The silk was sticking to her skin. Mulder had rolled up his sleeves one at a time as he drove and undone all the buttons of his shirt. They’d tried opening the windows, but immediately rolled them up again as hot, humid air blasted in. Outside it was all hills and trees and the occasional town that seemed too far from the highway to stop in.
They drove, saying nothing. The highway spun away under the wheels. Country music whispered from the radio until Scully turned it off. The air conditioning whirred and burbled. There was a death rattle from the vents. Scully held her hand up. There was barely a breath of air coming out. The mechanism coughed again and cool air puffed over her fingers. She could already tell it wasn’t going to be enough.
“There’s a rest stop,” Mulder said. His words sounded heavy. “I’m going to pull over. Maybe we can get something cold to drink.“
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Fic: What Place Is This? Where Are We Now? (MSR, G)
1200 words; G for gentle; set between the IWTB post-credits scene and the revival pre-breakup; adventures in tending the verge at the unremarkable house; title is from Grass by Carl Sandburg; also available on AO3
The late afternoon sky is weighted with clouds: a dove-grey sheet flung over the landscape, smothering them. Scully lies on the porch. The grain of the wood presses patterns into her back and shoulders, bare except for underwear and a sports bra. She shifts, peeling skin away from skin. She pictures herself splayed out like a specimen pinned for display.
Her tanktop and her long pants are draped over a chair to dry. She stripped them off as she climbed the stairs, toeing off her oldest sneakers. The neighbors are far enough away that no one can ogle. Still, she won't strip completely. She appreciates the way the fabric soaks sweat out of her creases, and she'd rather avoid splinters in interesting places. She doesn't trust Mulder with the tweezers. The laboring fan wafts air over her, drying her down from slick to sticky.
"This was not the day for yard work," Mulder says from somewhere near. He rattles ice in a big-bellied glass pitcher.
"Have you read the recent statistics on the rise of tick-borne diseases?" she asks. He appears in her vision, a looming figure rendered strange by his relative position to her. Upside-down, his face is almost unfamiliar. She relishes the chance to fit it together all over again in her mind, to recontextualize him. Here is the shadow cast by his lower lip, distinct from the chiaroscuro stubble shading his jaw. His eyes are cenotes, deep, the light wavering in them. His mouth quirks with amusement.
"Assume I haven't."
"They're dire," she says.
They lease out the pastures around their house for hay. All summer, it will grow and grow, green and then gold, pressed into strange patterns by rabbits and deer and hawks dipping after mice. What's beyond the fence doesn't concern her, but the yard must be kept trim. They have been slack, enjoying their leisure, spending their mornings on the porch with coffee admiring the dew, spending their evenings watching the breeze shift the sighing grasses.
This morning, the neighbors' cat deigned to visit, disappearing afterwards into the verdant lawn, even the imperious tail tip vanishing among the nodding blades. Cat-height grass, most of the way to Scully's knees. She went to the station and filled the red plastic can with gas, watching the vapors shimmer like memory. They produced the mower and the weed whacker from the outbuilding, covered themselves in sun protection, and turned shag into velvet.
Now she pulls a long-stemmed seedhead out of her ponytail and slips it into the cool dim space between the boards. The satiny grains catch, swinging back and forth, a pendulum upended. "I didn't lose you to an alien virus. I'm not watching you get Lyme."
He nudges her shoulder with his toe. She sits up enough to accept a glass. condensation already pearling on its sides. He sets the pitcher on the porch rail. Whatever he's made is the color of alien slime. The light glows lurid inside it.
"Keep talking like that and I'll think you like having me around," he says, folding down next to her. He's shirtless, flecked with green from chin to calf, an ersatz sort of farmer's tan. He clinks his glass against hers. Scully sips: lemon, lime, a squeeze of orange. A whisper of chili. A heavy spoonful of sugar and a healthy dash of salt. Essentially, it's a margarita, gentled to suit their aging palates, sunshine without the burn. A good beverage for a hot day.
She tips half the glass into herself and then stretches out again, still damp. The ice settles with a resigned rattle. Mulder spits a cube from his own glass into his palm and drops it onto her belly. She hisses. He pushes it with his fingertip, no doubt tracing ancient holy glyphs on her. It's the kind of thing Mulder would do.
She watches him watch her, his brow smooth and unworried. The movement of his skin over hers is sensual, undemanding, a pleasure in itself. She's still too hot to think about the ways their bodies could move together, too exhausted. Their yard will never be mistaken for a pasture, but the grass was tall enough to resist their efforts to groom it into smoothness. They took a first pass with the weed whacker before they could shove the mower back and forth, turning the wreckage into some semblance of order.
She's too old for this. When she dreamed, once upon a time, of a suburban house with a white picket fence, she was never the one tending the yard. Or scrubbing the grout or scraping the dishes, now that she thinks of it. Some mysterious force at work, she supposes, organizing her imaginary life. She has taken a break from the hospital; she helps Mulder shift the furniture and let the light in through the windows still gleaming with cleaner. Their house is less tidy than her mother's, but it's comfortable.
Darker clouds are shirred where the trees make a horizon. Lightning embroiders their edges in delicate, searing patterns. She hears thunder rumble, distant as desire.
"Should we go in?" Mulder asks. He tips the last sliver of ice into her navel: par, she thinks.
"We have time," she says. She rolls onto her belly, props herself up on her elbows. What's in her glass is watered down, but she drinks it anyway, feeling the coolness slide all the way down her throat to her belly. Mulder sprawls next to her, tipped onto his side. They watch the storm roll in, lingering until the clouds are hanging over the house, rain whipping through the porch slats to spatter them. Mulder gets up to rescue the pitcher. Scully gathers their discarded clothes. They step into the dark of the house.
"Well, we can't shower," Mulder says.
Scully looks at him, up and sideways, knowing he'll always recognize a challenge. They burst through the door together and clatter down the steps. The rain is just cool enough to refresh. It sluices down. What's left of the grass is pounded flat. Rivulets stream down Scully's thighs and calves, carrying flakes of grass like some strange molted skin. Each drop feels like it splashes on her purposefully: a thousand tiny fists with a personal grudge. Wind shimmers in the leaves of the trees and tugs Scully's hair.
She feels so much a part of everything alive. She wants to shout with glee. When she looks at Mulder, he has the same fierce joy in his smile.
Here we are, she thinks.
Lightning, bright enough that they flinch. Thunder so close the air shivers. They run inside, dripping, laughing.
"Like that storm in Oregon," he says. "The first time."
She remembers.
This time, they won't lose time, unless it's on purpose. This time they'll dry off and make dinner and eat together at their table while her hair dries in unruly waves, and when the storm passes, they'll wash away the residue of their hard work and fall into their comfortable bed.
She looks at the breadth of her life, all the days of it fanned out in her memory, and finds that she's happy.
Let us hold it, she prays, maybe to God or maybe just to the universe. Let us keep it. Amen.
post 7x22 requiem. scully receives an unexpected visitor
She thinks she’s dreaming at first. Another slow nightmare where he’s pulled away from her, can’t see her reaching, can’t hear her screaming…
The moon of the face swims in front of her, backlit by the fluorescent lights—haloed. A sharp profile, the point of a nose, dark eyes lit with concern.
Scully sees Missy first, hair on fire, mouth softening with concern. Oh, Dana. And then him, his eyes wet and worried, callused palm cupping her cheek: Scully? Scully, it’s me.
“Mulder?” she murmurs, and then
The world rearranges. Puzzle pieces slotting into place. The face rearranges; the sky revolves.
It’s not Mulder. Not Missy, either. How could she have made such foolish mistakes?
It’s a woman, dark-haired and anxious. Her hands fiddling anxiously at her abdomen, rocking back on her heels. She’s wearing a pantsuit, crisp sharp lines… but it hangs oddly on her. As if she’s too thin for it… or un-used to wearing formal clothes.
Panic slides through Scully, easy as water. An old friend. Her hand twitches—first towards her weapon, then towards her abdomen. Towards the new life inside.
Baby. New little stranger. Nothing but dividing cells—but her cells… and his. She hasn’t told him yet. He will never be the first to know.
Tears prick Scully’s eyes, and she blinks hard. Tries to sit up—to assemble something of a commanding presence with what little she has. “Who are you?” she snaps, no efforts at friendliness, her mind still racing with possibilities. She’s too raw, too unguarded at this moment… Skinner, where’s Skinner? He said he’d be right outside. He’d call her mom.
Something flashes in the woman’s eyes… pain, maybe. Or regret. Scully doesn’t know; if she were better at reading emotions, maybe she wouldn’t be here. But there’s something so—
“Miss Scully,” says the woman—awkward. Formal. “I’m… sorry I scared you.”
Those eyes. Sorrows, apologies. A deep grief she’d never be able to touch.
“You are—Dana Scully, aren’t you?” the woman adds, quickly, tripping over her words. “I have the right room?” She’s stumbling backwards, towards the door, too nervous to be a threat, perhaps.
“I am Agent Scully,” she says, evenly. “Who are you?”
The woman goes pale. She drops in one of the plastic chairs, bent forward like a broken flower—“Fuck.” Her face in her hands… She’s seen that, before. That exact slump of the neck. The woman laughs, hollow. “If there was a good way to go about this… I don’t—”
Something flickers inside Scully. I know those eyes.
“Ma’am?” she tries, her voice quivering. It can’t, it can’t… she can’t…
Not when he’s gone…
The woman looks up at Scully. Her eyes are wet, her face hard with resolve. “I’m sorry,” she blurts. “I’m sorry I scared you… I didn’t know how to best go about this…”
“It’s all right,” says Scully, so quick she doesn’t have time to wonder if she means it.
“I knew this would be a—oh, shit, there’s no good way to say it. I just thought that… Fox—”
Oh, Mulder.
Scully swipes the tears from her eyes. Wipes her damp, shaking hand on the sheet, before she extends it towards the other woman. “Samantha?”
Her head jerks up, hair falling back to reveal her face. She’s crying, too.
“Shit,” she says. “Nobody’s called me that in…”
Twenty-seven years.
“They told me he’d be safe,” says Samantha, her voice thick. “If we stopped the search… made him think—”
Scully makes a choked sound. The camp in California. Handprints in the concrete. I’m free. But then, in the hotel, he’d wept like she had never seen before.
“I had to come,” Samantha adds. And her voice is strong now, not shaking; she sounds the most certain since coming in the room. “When I heard… I had to…”
Scully takes the other woman’s hand. It’s easier than she thought it would be. “We’re going to find him,” she says.
Samantha smiles thinly, squeezes Scully’s hand.
There is nothing else to say. Only things to save for later… things to tell Mulder, when they see him again.
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Thanks for reading and commenting! Chapter 12, under the cut, and on AO3 here.
The door clicks shut and Scully stares at the space where Diana stood, outrage pulsing through her, white-hot. Against the hardwood, Mulder’s breathing is labored, and she presses a shaking hand between his shoulder blades, finding him slick with sweat.
His muscles tense and he drags his eyes up, meeting her worried stare.
“I’ll be fine,” he whispers, “once you are.”
She blinks, the comment drawing her mind from Diana’s parting words and refocusing her attention on his illness, a mystery that’s unraveling in her mind. At the outer limits of her understanding, she senses an answer, one that she’ll find if she tugs on just the right thread.
Nodding to herself, she takes a deep breath and schools her thoughts, trying to bring order to the chaos of her emotions.
“Better,” Mulder breathes.
“Can you make it to the couch?” she asks, fighting a tremble in her voice.
He gets there with her help, and when she tucks a blanket around him and turns to retreat to the other side of the room, he stills her with a hand to her wrist. His eyes speak for him, begging her to stay. Realizing they don’t have anywhere to go but forward, she settles at his hip, her thigh pressed to his side.
She finds calm in caretaking, their most natural form of communication. With two fingers pressed to his carotid artery, the space between them shrinks to a comfortable predictability.
“You’re feeling better,” she notes as she pushes hair off his forehead, the sweat there cooling as his breathing regulates.
He nods and the movement sends her fingers skittering across his cheek, down his jaw. In her exhaustion, she allows herself a moment of vulnerability, and lets her palm rest lightly against his skin, feeling for just a moment how peaceful this could be between them, how easy.
Mulder’s face settles into a mirror of her own contentment, and the change is enough to bring her back to the present moment. Removing her hand, she licks her lips and closes her eyes, trying to allow her thoughts to go there and let her theory take shape.
After years of working strange and unexplainable cases with Mulder, it shouldn’t surprise her to encounter a set of facts that don’t align with her understanding of the world. But there’s an implausible working theory prodding at the edges of her mind, and she only knows one way to test it: with evidence. As her science-trained brain begins to rationally lay out each fact she’s gathered tonight, the scales tip towards her hypothesis being accurate. The thought causes her breath to leave her body in a rush of fear.
At her side, Mulder flinches. Her eyes fly open and she sees pain creasing his forehead. An apology escapes her before she can rein it in.
Even through his discomfort, Mulder watches her with all-seeing eyes.
“You’ve figured it out,” he says simply.
She shakes her head softly, unwilling to believe it completely just yet. “It’s . . . impossible.”
“No. Just implausible,” he retorts, a small smile undercutting the comment. His pinky finger finds hers in her lap and he hooks them together. She looks down at their joined hands and is embarrassed at the way such a small gesture makes her cheeks warm.
Mulder hums in satisfaction and she glances up at him. The pain has receded from his face, replaced with something like contentment. Cause and effect. Her theory holds.
“May I . . . try something?” she asks, a scientist at work. He studies her face and it’s as if he’s able to read every thought in her head. Eyes full of trust, he nods. She hesitates. “Will I—will it hurt you?”
“Probably.”
She swallows.
“But a scientist must always run her experiment if she’s to find the truth,” he adds, and his eyes are blessedly devoid of any contempt, any malice.
Amusement tugs at her mouth. After a moment, she straightens her shoulders, summoning her courage. “You ready?”
Another nod, his face calm and trusting. She’s about to untangle their hands when he grips her a little tighter. She shoots him a questioning look.
“If it’s too much for me,” he says, placing his other hand on top of hers, “will you think of this?”
Her eyes flit down to where their hands are clasped. She instinctually knows what he’s asking. If the feelings get too intense, focus on our bond. Come back to this place of trust. Remember everything we are to each other. And Mulder has been everything to her: a hand to hold in the darkness, a friend and protector, a trusted companion, a lover.
The last thought is unintentional, but before she can stop herself, she’s met with images of their last time in bed together, of the way he pressed his fingers—these fingers—inside her and made her come—
“Oh,” Mulder inhales sharply, squeezing her hands so hard that she yelps. He huffs a laugh, clearly flustered. “I didn’t realize we’d begun the experiment.”
Shame burns her cheeks, and she watches in fascination as Mulder’s face takes on the sting of humiliation.
“Jesus, Scully,” he breathes, “be gentle with me.”
Heart thumping in her chest, she slams her eyes shut and focuses her breath, drawing her emotions inward, securing them behind the wall that she has carefully constructed over years of being the daughter of a naval captain; of being the only female in her class at Quantico; of being on the edge of unrequited love with Mulder for years.
She opens her eyes, and his breathing has regulated and the pain has left his expression.
His eyebrows jump suggestively. “So, Scully, care to share with the class?”
She arches a brow.
His voice is a low rumble. “I’d love to have an image to attach to that particular emotion. Felt tingly in all the right places.”
She rolls her eyes good-naturedly, but mortification threatens at the back of her mind. “Don’t you have a picture-perfect memory? I’m sure you can fill in the details yourself,” she deflects easily, realizing too late that she’s not in a position to hide anything from him right now. Straightening her shoulders, she decides she’s ready. “I’m going to start now.”
He grins dangerously. “I liked your little test run.”
She stifles a smile but can’t contain the tiny thread of delight that ripples through her. “Stop distracting me.”
His eyes crinkle warmly and he raises their joined hands, pressing them briefly to his heart, a gesture that brings her face close to his. “Mmm, but I like the way that one feels. Warm.”
She tilts her head in question, allows herself for a moment to feel the affection and joy she experiences when she and Mulder are like they are now, vibrating at the same frequency. In fascination, she watches as warmth pools into his eyes, melting his expression into something close to bliss.
“Ooh,” he hums, his eyelids drooping, “do that again. Feels like heaven. Like you.”
She studies him a bit longer, letting pure, unadulterated affection run over her in waves, before she takes a breath and slams that door shut. As well-practiced as she is in repressing her feelings, it’s still hard to watch the way Mulder’s expression turns from blissed-out to deadened in a matter of moments.
He squints at her and she pulls away, out of his immediate vicinity. “Not so much a fan of that one, Scully. Is this feeling called hardened-shell-of-a-man? Because it feels like my soul’s left my body.”
He doesn’t mean to hurt her; she knows that. But what he may not realize is that this is her standard operating procedure, the emotion she operates on much of the time she’s with him: “hardened shell” may as well be the only emotion she can tolerate when she’s trying to work a case and not be distracted by how desperately she loves the man beside her.
“Ouch,” he whispers, interrupting her thoughts, and she meets his gaze. He’s as wounded as she is in this moment. One of his hands leaves hers to lift briefly to her cheek. Running a finger across her jaw, he looks stricken. “So that’s what your pain feels like,” he murmurs. “That’s what I do to you.”
She nearly protests, nearly tells him no, no Mulder, you don’t hurt me. But it isn’t true. As deeply as he’s cared for her, as fiercely as he’s protected her, as loyally as he’s supported her, he has just as badly hurt her.
“Sometimes, yes,” she concedes.
Shooting him a warning look, she decides to go for the crux of her experiment: that night. The one she hates remembering. The night after he’d visited Diana in the hospital, when he’d flipped her onto her stomach and taken her too roughly, so roughly she bled. When he hadn’t even seemed to notice she wasn’t enjoying it.
She lets herself relive the mortification of that night, the brutality of realizing that she’d mistaken sex for love.
He holds her gaze as her pain rakes over him, and she watches in captivated horror as tears rise to his eyes, mirroring her own.
“This is how I make you feel,” he says, almost to himself, and a tear escapes his eyelash to land on his cheek.
She wants to pull back, wants again to comfort him with denial, but something makes her push a little harder. She refocuses, bringing her emotions now to the day he laughed at her in the graveyard after she fell in the mud; to finding Diana’s lingerie strewn out boldly on the motel bed; to hearing him say he made her come out of obligation; to watching him make dinner plans with Diana.
“Stop,” he whispers, eyes creasing in near-agony, “stop.”
She may relish—just slightly—the way she holds him in the balance right now, but she will always love him first, and she shutters her emotions just as quickly as she brought them on. Diana did take the rest of the antidote with her, so there’s no safety net if she pushes too hard. Her feelings flee behind the wall again, and Mulder’s face slowly relaxes.
He takes a moment to recover, then blinks at her. “What was that?” he asks, stupefied. “What were you thinking about?”
She shakes her head, unwilling to have this discussion now. “Let’s take a break.”
He opens his mouth to protest but she rises abruptly from the couch, dropping his hands.
“Scully,” he protests, but she shakes her head.
“We’ll talk,” she promises, “about it all. But not right now. It’s four in the morning, and you’ve had almost no rest in God knows how long.”
“Do you believe it, then?” he asks, expression penetrating, intense.
She dips her chin, taking a moment to marvel at the way her strait-laced science continues to encounter the most extraordinary, most unexplainable phenomena on the planet.
“A drug that makes you physically experience the emotions of others,” she finally concedes.
He nods in confirmation of her theory, relief softening his features.
“For all the incredible things we’ve seen in our work together,” she says, “this one might just take the cake.”
He smiles slightly. “You have more questions.”
“I could fill a book with my questions,” she admits, “including why you would ever put yourself through that willingly?”
His eyes pin her like a butterfly to a wall. “I’d argue the more salient question is why it’s only you whose emotions I can feel.”
Her traitorous heart skips a beat, and for a moment, Mulder’s face mirrors the hopeless desire she feels. Glimpsing the way love looks on his face, longing steals her soul. Before she lets the emotion overtake her, though, she clasps her hands together.
“Sleep,” she commands, gesturing towards his bedroom.
Mulder nods slowly, unconvinced by her abrupt turnabout. Avoiding his watchful eyes, she helps him up, trying to ignore the fact that he understands her more intimately in this moment than he ever has before.
Once he’s settled in bed, she busies herself shutting off the lights and locking up. She brings him a glass of water and when he’s done drinking, he takes her hand and tugs, suggestion in his eyes.
She shakes her head. “Not tonight.”
“Not that. Just sleep.” His voice is rough with the need to be near her.
Wrecked from the night’s events, she can’t help herself when she pushes his hair out of his face, relishing how nice it feels to give affection after inflicting so much pain.
“Not now,” she murmurs, withdrawing her hand. They need space, she reasons, at least a few hours of distance to retreat from the chaos of her feelings.
“But you’ll stay?”
She nods. “I’ll be on the couch if you need me.” She hesitates. “And in the morning, we’ll sort this out.”
His hand finds her waist, squeezing in acknowledgement. “In the meantime,” he says, a teasing lilt softening his exhausted voice, “I hope your dreams are devoid of any strong emotions.”
She laughs in spite of herself. “For your sake and mine,” she agrees.
