FIC: First/Second (MSR, NC-17, WARNINGS)

[amalnahurriyeh]

Title: First/Second
Author: Amal Nahurriyeh (amalnahurriyeh)
Summary: First times are usually a disaster.
Pairing: MSR
Rating: NC-17 (sex, mental trauma, angst)
Warnings: This is potentially the most triggery thing I've written; please do check out the warnings if you need to know this sort of thing, or PM me or comment if you need more details. ( skip) This is

Comments

[leucocrystal]

Oof, I love this. (Of course, I always love your stories, so why wouldn't I?) As usual, you also manage to take a concept that I imagine I probably wouldn't enjoy (or even want to read to begin with) usually, and make it not only readable, but something I can and do love. How do you always do that?

I caught just a couple of tense errors, if you don't mind my pointing them out ("She know she has to at least look like she isn't having a nervous breakdown", the "know" needs an s; "back down as quickly as she could" should probably be "can" instead to maintain the tense of that sentence; "and realizes that it isn't at all what she had meant to say, that it is, unfortunately, the truth"... this one I'm not sure about, but should there be a "while" somewhere in there? as in "while it isn't at all what she had meant to say"?)

OKAY, enough nitpicking, I really hope you don't mind that. (I can never turn off my internal editor, it seems, no matter what I am reading. It can be kind of maddening, especially when reading books at work.)

I loved this. You always jump in with both feet and go where the characters demand they need to be taken, and I like that, because it's not always an easy place to go, or to navigate once you get them there. I love that your Mulder and Scully are always so familiar to me, even if the circumstances may be new or ugly or complex or confusing. They always tie it all together, as they should. Style note: I liked the repetition of "You're fine" in Scully's head; it's an interesting twist on her typical "I'm fine" mantra, this time relating to trying to talk down a panic attack, which kind of puts a new spin on the whole defense mechanism.

but that was always the same, wasn't it. He's been saying it that way for years.
Killer ending, you really sucker punched me with that one. (Also, I just noticed the tags. LOL.)

[amalnahurriyeh]

Thanks for the edits--I have a terrible tendency to switch tense mid-paragraph, or even mid-sentence, which means my shit's terrible to beta.

I think Scully would absolutely be the type to reassure herself that nothing is actually wrong when shit is actually really, really wrong. She very much needs to keep going in the face of whatever, and "I'm fine" works perfectly well as a mantra for that.

Thanks, dear!