on. point.

A randoms words prompt for you, love: Striped, throat, muddled, heady, bath As usual, use one, use all, use none. Just hoping they inspire you. Xo.

Thank you, I needed that.  I call it, Divide and Conquer.  A post-En Ami drabble.

thoughts are muddled as she turns every which way in the empty office that had only days ago been swarming with people.  She knows now that everything about the weekend was staged for her benefit, but how?  Was there no end to what that cigarette smoking bastard would do?  

“Mulder, I…”

“Don’t.”  

She watches him walk away from her, watches him disappear down the hall and leave her behind.  She has to wonder if this elaborate ruse was even about a disc or if it was something much more insidious.  

When she pushes open the exit door to the abandoned parking lot, she doesn’t expect to find Mulder waiting for her, but he is.  The car is already running and he’s slumped against the door plucking at his lower lip.  He doesn’t look at her when she slips quietly into the passenger seat, but waits until she latches her seatbelt to drive.

Never has silence felt so loud.  It takes twenty minutes for him to take her home, but it seems interminable.  She can only count the streetlamps that send striped bands of light sliding up the windshield in slow succession and try not to cry.  There are a hundred and ninety four streetlamps between the abandoned office and home.  Who knew?

Mulder does not shut the engine off when he double parks in front of Scully’s building.  He’s not coming up with her, that much is clear.  She still hesitates as though they’re playing that game that ended months ago where she’d bashfully ask if he wanted to come up for awhile and he’d pretend he was surprised by the invitation.  Her fingers absently graze the side of her neck where he’d kissed her goodbye on his way to the office only a few days ago.

Finally, she fumbles for the door handle and steps out of the car, one foot at a time, knees weak.  She doesn’t remember getting from the car into her apartment, only that one moment she was there and the next she was running a bath, sitting in the darkness of her bathroom next to a single flickering candle.

Suddenly, she shivers, and pulls at her clothes.  She wants them off and wants them out of her sight.  They smell of smoke.  It’s in her skin and in her hair.  Her stomach rolls.  Naked and shivering, she crawls into the embrace of hot water and slides down, down, down until she’s fully enveloped.

When she comes up for air, the smoke is gone and there’s only the scent of geranium oil.  Eventually, she stops shivering.  Eyes closed, she lets her arms relax and float at her sides.  This is what she needs - to clear her mind and to think of how to correct the damage that’s been done.

She’s so still that there’s nary a ripple in the bathwater, nor a drip from the faucet.  In the quiet, her ears detect the soft scrape of shoes against carpet and she braces her hands on the lip of the bathtub and opens her eyes.  She smells him first, that heady brand of cologne announcing his presence before he softly calls her name.  Relieved, she relaxes into the sloped back of the tub with a sigh.  

“In here,” she answers, just above a whisper.

He fills the doorway, a dark figure in shadows, but she can see his shining cheeks in the glow of the candlelight.  He steps inside and after a deep breath, deflates little by little to the floor, first with his knees to the bathmat, then to all fours, and finally with his cheek leaning against the side of the tub.  He puts his hand up next to hers, close, but not touching.

“You have no idea how scared I was,” he says.

“But, I do,” she whispers.

Their eyes meet.  He lowers his gaze for only a second and then looks back up at her before he nods.  His lips push together and for a moment she’s afraid he’s going to ask her to forgive him.  She silently implores him not to.  He holds a breath instead and sweeps his thumb a little closer to her hand.

“I won’t let him break us,” he says.

“I won’t either.”

She waits a few moments and then she reaches her pinkie finger up and over his thumb.  He curls it into hers, holding on.

The End

pre-relationship (but almost there) msr on scully's couch getting a little touchy / frisky but not acknowledging it because they're both nervous that the other isn't ready to move forward with the relationship

There were a lot of factors playing into how this situation managed to escalate. 

- 2 cold agents seeking warmth.

- 1 large old blanket that needed to be shared.

- 3 movies into a marathon.

- 12 hours of a workday weighing down their inhibitions.

- 8 inches of a longstanding curiosity throbbing against her lower belly.

- 2 unconstrained breasts smashing into his chest, nipples straining.

Take 1 suggestion from Mulder to use his body as a pillow, marinate until they’re melted together, laying flat on the expanse of the sofa.

Throw in a heaping spoonful of unrepentant sexual tension, and the results were Scully letting her full weight rest flush on top of Mulder’s body while they both silently begged the other to make a move.

She could tell he was holding his breath in an attempt not to disturb her, because when he gave in the expansion of his chest lifted her whole body up lightly. Even though no one had touched the remote, the volume of the movie felt muted, as if even the sound particles had paused to see what would happen next.

Keep reading

41 and/or 55?

41. “Go back to sleep.”

55. “I don’t mind.”

Post Tithonus:

“Are you okay?” she asks, her voice raspy and cracked.

The coughing fit after she was extubated was long and painful, making the wound in her stomach clench and flare. He watched, his face pinched to mirror her discomfort as she struggled to settle herself. The medical team had finally cleared the area when it was assured that she’d not torn her wound closures and she could maintain her oxygen levels. They’ll be moving her from the ICU to a private room in an hour or so. Hooked to all manner of monitors, tubes and drains and the first words from her mouth are to ask after him.

“You’re something else, you know that?” he chuckles as he drops into the chair next to her bed.

“You look like you’re gonna pass out,” she whispers.

“I’m okay,” he says. “I think I was holding my breath.”

She nods, her eyes fluttering as she thumbs the morphine button.

“Hurting?” he asks.

Nodding, she closes her eyes and swallows hard. No use in putting on a show, she’s gutshot. She can admit that yes, it hurts and yes, she wants heavy doses of narcotics to make it stop.

“How long was I in surgery?” she asks.

“About 5 hours,” he answers.

She frowns a little at that. The surgeon hasn’t been in to tell her what damage was done, if she got to keep all her vital organs or not. The drugs are starting to kick in, so she really doesn’t care that much.

“Time izzit?” she mumbles.

“A little after two,” he says.

“In the morning?” she asks.

“Yeah, in the morning,” he says, a little chuckle in his voice.

“You should go get some sleep,” she sighs. “That chair looks terrible.”

“I don’t mind,” he says, shifting performatively, as if the chair really isn’t that uncomfortable.

“What about Fellig?” she asks, starting to feel light, her head buzzing pleasantly.  

He reaches out, picks up her hand. There’s blood under her fingernails. He smoothes her hair with his other hand, tucks it behind her ear. They’d attempted to clean her up in recovery, but she’d lost nearly half her blood volume between the gunshot and the surgery and there are remnants nearly everywhere he looks, the corner of her mouth, along her jaw and behind her ears.

The surgeon said there was no explanation for why she was alive. The bullet lacerated her renal artery. She should’ve bled out before the ambulance even arrived. She should’ve, but she didn’t. She just didn’t.  

“Don’t worry about that right now,” he says, trying to placate her. Maybe trying to placate himself as well.

She nods, shifts restlessly. Her breathing deepens after a while and he’s certain she’s fallen asleep, pulled under with the anchor of trauma. He feels himself deflate, uncoiling after hours and hours of tension. When the word came that she’d been shot, he reacted to so quickly that he dropped his coffee on the floor of the bullpen and took off at such a sprint that papers on the desks nearby flew up in his wake.

The whole way to New York, two words: stay alive. Stayalivestayalivestayalivestayalive…A cyclical mantra of words strung so close that they became a prayer necklace, a secret radio transmission meant only for her, the Scully emergency channel.

And the signal reached her, somehow. Because here she is, breathing and whole. He feels something like gratitude well up, although he knows it’s not to God. He doesn’t believe in God. So maybe he’s grateful to her, for not dying, even though dying really, really hurts. She would know.

“You should go get some rest,” she murmurs, eyes still closed.

“I will, I’ll ask for a recliner when they get you into a room,” he assures her. He watches a long moment, waiting for her to argue, to tell him that she’s fine.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she sighs.

The surprise pushes the first breath of a laugh out of his nose, but it never fully forms. 

“Me too,” he says. “Go back to sleep, okay?”