i really like reading fanfiction about mulder and scully :(
lalalalalalala it is probably going to take a lot of effort for me to make any post that is not related to the X-Files for the next two weeks (IT'S NOT EVEN THAT! It's like a week and a half!) and probably maybe at least a month after that. I'M SORRY. Except I'm totally not.
Anyway anyway anyway, as my excitement has been building to this weird insuppressible level of anticipation and delight leading up to 07/25/08 I've been reading X-Files fanfiction. For the first time in... a long time? I used to be addicted to this stuff.
This isn't really meant to be a rec list (ALTHOUGH if you haven't read them? NOW WOULD BE THE TIME.) so much as it's... me, wanting to talk (a lot, as usual) about these stories I love in this fandom that writes more and better than any other. They're not hidden gems, a number of them are well-known (and all of them are, I think, in my del.icio.us. plus I think I probably mentioned a lot of these same ones when we did that rec list for eyeinfbi, ahahahaha. I'm a very predictable person) and I'm sure quite a few of you have read them all. These aren't all my very very favorites (I mean, some of them are, but others have been left off), this is just... a list of some stories that I happen to like. But: as my rereads has proven, there are some stories you never get sick of hearing.
The Unfinished Universe by revely
I love Revely SO MUCH. I love the way she writes (SERIOUSLY INCREDIBLE), the stories she tells, the emotions she pulls up, the way she understands Mulder and Scully. She's written seven stories and all of them are among my very very very favorites. Anyway I reread this one recently and and and it's just so beautiful.
The caps I picked actually don't even exist in this universe, they were just the... closest thing? Basically this story breaks off after "Badlaa" and while it references the continued search ("Scully had strapped him into his car seat, mindful of the soft spots of his head and the limp-noodle neck. They'd taken off for points unknown, chasing John Does, like she'd done since going on leave."), it begins with a Mulder found.
Fanfiction makes season 8 seem so much less terrible sometimes? It can almost convince me that those episodes were not the UTTER HEIGHT OF RIDICULOUS CRAP simply by existence. It reassures me that Scully was actually looking for Mulder between all those stupid useless things she did with Doggett and when the cases are just briefly referenced I don't have to do the ragey task of sitting through them. And I can pretend the pregnancy lasted a normal amount of time. (I also love that we get Mulder's perspective on all the super boring Scully-and-Doggett-go-and-investigate-some-lame-mutant cases here -- because the thing is, he would like to hear about man-bats and metalmen and had he been there, he would have been all over these cases and hell, we probably would've loved them too. He also makes a really necessary Mulder joke about the butt genie.)
This story is about getting Mulder back, I suppose, but more than that it's about the rediscovery process -- and oh it's so perfectly done here. I just love Revely. And this story. Also I mostly wrote up this entry so I could share this following excerpt:
She speaks carefully. "We can go to your place. It might be nice for you to be home again."
She is apparently unaware that she is home to him. His apartment is just a couch and boxes of porn and old records, as far as he's concerned. Everything important about the place has something to do with what she's done there - where she stood, sat, laid, or threatened to leave. He still avoids the hall tile he'd laid her on the night the bee had stung her, and there's a heart-blood stain wrought by a fictional killer on his hardwood floor. He is sentimentally attached to his kitchen countertop purely because she likes to sit on it. It's possible he's taking things a bit far.
He fell for her years ago, quietly, before he'd even realized it was happening. He fell toward her like an autumn leaf pulled gently to the ground. And now, after all these years, he thinks he should be past the swamping giddiness of it, but he isn't. She is like letting go on a roller-coaster.
Careful by Oracle
THIS STORY THIS STORY!!! It's another AU (again in the branching-off-from-canon sense and not the what-if-Mulder-and-Scully-lived-in-medieval-Romania sense, ugh) and also kind of a Never Again post-ep... in a what-could-have-been sort of way. Have I ever mentioned how fond I am of Oracle's writing? It's very whimsy and nice and I've always liked the short, simple, introspective stories she tells. Everyone always remembers "October Skies" -- the one where Mulder and Scully go to the halloween party which I do like too, but it doesn't quite have the same knack for character that some of the others (like this one) do. She's so good at miscommunication! Which is what this one is.
He's careful to divulge all information, not just what he thinks is necessary. He's careful to check out the quality of motels before booking and to tell her about upcoming flights in advance. He's careful not to investigate anything she might automatically scoff at. He's careful not to mention his opinions on religion. He's careful not to tell her what to do. If he does give her instructions, he's always careful to make sure she knows they're from Skinner.
He's careful and honest and professional and calm and neat and polite. He isn't cold and he isn't affectionate. He doesn't touch her anymore and late at night sometimes in motels she hears his shower running for hours, or him pacing around his room, or his TV playing infomercials. Never porn, not any more. He's so careful.
Ghosts by anjoufic
I'm so lame, I talk about this story ALL THE TIME.
I have this thing for X-Files babyfic. Well, no, that's not entirely true, but I have this thing for stories involving William and both of his parents. XF is so funny about the baby thing, because while children aren't even something they should be thinking about, the fact that they (yes, they) won't ever have them puts them at the top of the priority list and then it's saaaaaaad but they'd totally have enough with just each other? Except then there is a baby and IT'S JUST CRUEL THAT THEY DON'T GET TO RAISE HIM BECAUSE YOU CANNOT JUST GIVE PEOPLE THEIR HEART'S DESIRES AND THEN TAKE THEM AWAY????? WHY WOULD YOU INTRODUCE A BABY IN THE FIRST PLACE?
...ahem. Anyway I like well-written stories in which William is a well-adjusted (if psychic) kid who lives with his nice parents the alien-hunters and... life is good? Because I am a sucker.
Anyway, Anjou has this talent for... that. She's also really good at reconciling the mytharc in a way that actually makes sense, which is a MAMMOTH task, especially when you're acknowledging the last two seasons in which absolutely nothing makes sense.
So, yeah. I'd like to live in this universe. Pre-movie, this series was my ~canon~. And now... we will see.
(ALSO I CANNOT REMEMBER WHERE THIS WAS SAID, but somewhere I know I read Anjou's next project was installment #4 of this series and it's going to be a BONES CROSSOVER (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). Uh, YEAH.)
"We can't just return to Michigan with a toddler," Scully said. "We never mentioned we had a child and he looks too much like both of us to be a nephew."
Mulder opened his mouth to speak, but she continued on. "And don't suggest that we say that you had an affair with my cousin or something."
Mulder hoped his expression was sufficiently aggrieved, yet wounded. He didn't even bother to confront her with yet more evidence of her psychic abilities. She'd just rationalize it away with arguments about his predictability or the length of time they'd known each other.
Midnight Mark-Up by Louise Marin
I think I recc'd this one night in a xf_redux all-nighter and a little while later everyone was like "yeah, so I went and read that story! SO PREDICTABLE." Well, uh, I'M SORRY YOU ALL HATE FUN :( BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT THIS STORY IS.
Basically this story is about Mulder and Scully. And alcohol. And possessiveness. It's laugh-out-loud hysterical and I read it aaaaaaaaall the time. Because it is wonderful.
Actually now that I think about it I'm pretty sure I also recc'd this story anonymously more recently in a eyeinfbi all-nighter. So yeah. Lol constantly singing the same old tune.
Trying to focus on him, Scully saw that Mulder was still admiring his conquest. "This never happens to me," he said in a bewildered tone that Scully didn't buy for a second.
"Suuuure it doesn't," she said, wishing he would put his hovering hand back on her knee. But then she figured it would be for the best if he did not. He was tainted now with Ms. Breasts' damned black ink.
Finally, finally he dropped his hand to his own knee. When he looked up at Scully, it was with shock and a tiny bit of torment over her skepticism. She could also see that his eyes were beginning to droop and she guessed that his 'limit' had been hit, probably twice thus far.
The room was still spinning and swaying, but Scully swore that Mulder and his stool scooted again towards her and hers. He dipped his head down to hers conspiratorially.
"Really," he insisted. "I don't understand where you gets this idea that women are always throwing themselves at me, Scully, and that I'm always throwing myself at thems."
Scully tried not to laugh. The man actually seemed serious, in his own ridiculously inebriated way.
Recycled Virgins by Kel
I guess I'm now breaking from the emotionally magnificent stuff and more just that purely silly happy stuff but uh uh uh uh I love this story? It's funny and it makes sense and is basically about that stretch of time after the sex happens. I don't have a lot of words for it, but I read it aaaaaaall the time. (Also, Kel is pretty great in general? She has this one story, I think it's hers, about season 1 Mulder and Scully in an airport waiting room and it's pretty much my favorite thing ever.)
"Listen to this, Scully. From Jakarta. Mysterious ninjas able to transform into animals, accused in the murder of suspected sorcerers."
"Surely that article goes on to relate the violence to suspicion and rivalry between the Muslim majority and the ethnic Chinese," Scully said reasonably.
"Of course that's the obvious interpretation," Mulder said.
"Mulder, has it escaped your notice that Indonesia is a multi-ethnic country now in the throes of economic collapse and political upheaval? Do you fail to perceive that these murders are driven by such classically mundane motives as greed, resentment, and bigotry?" She gave him the works, arched eyebrow and all.
"No, Scully, I am not unaware of the political context. But wouldn't this kind of turmoil also be reflected in increased activity among the more supernatural inhabitants? Is it inconceivable that there are real ninjas and sorcerers among the fakes?" He looked at her hopefully, almost begging her to consider his point of view.
Scully was mute with frustration. How could this brilliant man be so stupid?
"Humans with the ability to transform into animals are featured in folklore from around the world," he continued blandly.
"Unfortunately, Mulder, the practice of persecuting those who are different, especially during times of poverty and uncertainty, is also known worldwide," she said heatedly.
"The Celts believed that witches could appear as cats or hares, whereas the Welsh and Germans held that they could assume the form of serpents." He could go on like this forever.
"Mulder, this is utter bullshit!" she exclaimed.
"Okay. Just checking." He grinned at her. She stared at him.
"What?" she said.
"I used to wonder if you argued so much just cause you needed to get laid," he said. "Now that we've taken care of that, I wanted to make sure you hadn't lost your edge."
Subcutaneous by Maria Nicole
Maria Nicole is another one of those authors that has a gift for mytharcy things. This story is basically the cancerarc: revisited except with twists and turns and complications and ugh, it's just SO GOOD AND SO SAD and the UST nail has totally been hit on the head. Plus bonus appearances by all our favorite secondary characters and... I don't know. It treats the Mulder/Scully thing just... perfectly. Which is the way to be.
(This story also has a totally stand-alone sequel you can find on gossamer if you are so inclined, FYI. Subcutaneous II: Splinter.)
He picked the lock at Mulder's apartment when there was no answer, and quickly toured his apartment, praying silently to any power who would listen.
Please, please, please let Mulder be in the same condition as Scully. Let this be some woman with a grudge and a paranormal gift, one woman who can be stopped.
But Mulder wasn't there. The red light on his answering machine was blinking, several times. Skinner paced restlessly around the living room, noting the cell phone lying on the coffee table.
He didn't see Mulder's gun, though; at least the other man was smart enough to always carry that.
Twenty minutes later, he was still pacing when he heard the footsteps, and the key turn in the lock. The door swung open, and Mulder entered, balancing a laundry basket, a bottle of Cheer, and two plastic bags in his arms.
"Mulder," he began, and the other man gave a start of surprise, losing his grip on everything. The bottle of Cheer thudded and bounced slightly, and something in one of the bags clinked together. Neatly folded t-shirts and sweatpants and bed sheets came tumbling out as the laundry basket fell to the floor. Mulder reached back for his gun, processed that it was Skinner, stopped, and did a double take.
"It's just me," Skinner finished, and the phone rang.
Mulder looked at him, at the clothes on the floor, over at the ringing phone. "Dammit," he said mildly, giving the bottom of the laundry basket a small kick. "I knew I was gonna drop something at some point; I just didn't think it was going to be because my boss broke into my apartment. What the hell?"
"You've been doing laundry?" said Skinner, irrationally furious. How could Mulder not have known, not have sensed, that something was wrong with Scully? Behind him, the phone rang again, and he heard the machine click to pick it up.
Night Giving Off Flames by jetfic
JET writes beaaaaaautifully, but this is the only one of her stories that has ever really stuck in my head. It's the only post-colonization story I have read a million billion times. And it isn't one of those stories -- you know, the ones where Mulder and Scully run off and fend off colonization as best they can together -- it's much more than that. Anyway anyway anyway oh my god this is one of those heart-breaking things you can't ever really forget or let go of? I... can't quite explain the emotions it creates in me. BUT OHMYGOD.
He touched her last night, once, to help her out of the van, and she flinched away violently, unwilling to meet his eyes. He glanced to Krycek then, who shrugged and offered casually, "They always look like you."
"They who?"
"Them. The shifters. That was part of the game, to see how she'd react to something that looked like you."
"To several somethings that looked like you," Krycek's associate said.
Mulder couldn't quite keep the revulsion out of his expression, and Krycek reassured him, "Don't worry. I hear she's very cooperative these days."
His throat burns now with the memory. The bruises on her arms are old and fresh both, and streaked with brown blood rubbed out from under her skin by the rope that had bound her. Her ankles are rimmed with similar lavender-green bruises.
Pillar of Salt by Nascent
I discovered this story so much more recently than the others? But JESUS. It's one of those epic casefiles with an incredibly well-conceived case, but (seeing as I'm not one of those people whose interest can be drawn simply with a mystery) it's very very character-driven. It's got this hint of betrayal but mostly it's about surrender and the inevitable clash when you have two very strong-willed people who believe not only in each other, but in very separate kinds of faith. I DON'T KNOW, I LOVE IT.
The ironic thing is that I think he prays even more than I do. He prays for my safety, for his sister's return, for an irrefutable scrap of truth which doesn't come with pain attached. He just doesn't recognize it as prayer because his vocabulary is different. So how could he not understand that I would react as I did to his ridiculous scheme?
If he were dead now, what would I do?
It was a question I'd asked myself before without resolution, and the answer was no clearer today. Life without Mulder is unthinkable, not because it would not go on (it would), but because it is simply impossible to imagine.
What hurt the most was not Mulder's stupid idea or even that he hadn't told me what he was doing. And though it hurt tremendously to know that the stain on last night's wonderful and rare shared evening could never be washed out, that was minuscule compared to the accusation in his words as I'd left the room.
"I need you," he'd said, but what he meant was: "How could you abandon me?" Somehow he'd managed to pervert his (also painful) knowing compromise of my character into a betrayal of my loyalty to him.
Endeavors too Short of Desires by leiascully
I'm running out of praising words but this story is incredible. There's this deep, searing tension underneath the comedy of season six that has everything to do with Mulder and Scully both being so close to some kind of breaking point in their partnership -- and I love love love stories that can acknowledge without being entirely about THE DIANA FACTOR. You know? Diana only really brought light to things that were already wrong with them -- things they had to fix before they could move forward. Anyway, that's what this is about. And that's why I love it.
He remembers when he met her, the cool firmness of her handshake and the bad cut of her suit. She is leaner now. Honed is the word he would use: it suits the way they scrape against each other. She has the clean compact lines of his Sig and he reaches for her the same way in a crisis. She isn't pretty. The word isn't in her vocabulary, with all the frou-frou softness it implies. If he can say she is beautiful, it is the beauty of the scalpel's edge.He feels softer by the day, his hand always half-extended to her. There are weekends he orders two coffees just because he forgets she isn't there. He drinks the second and buzzes for hours, having learned to tolerate cream in his coffee rather than face the shades his brain creates.
He dreams about picket fences and Scully with a fond palm cupped over the head of a blond boy. He wakes in a sweat. She deserves more. Not just someone who calls to say, "Hey, I found a musty old file, want to get takeout and give up your weekend?" She merits someone who calls to say instead "I was thinking of you" and leaves it at that. She deserves to be the sign and the signifier. He still loves the hunt, too, with a modern man's shame over the thrill of the chase. Dress it in a suit, give it a pistol, and call the hunt a puzzle or a profile or a case, but she's right: he gets off on it. She rides with him, but it doesn't take her to the same place. Bad motels, bad food, his everloving need to track the villain to his last hideout. Or maybe she does feel the call of it these days: he's guilty about that too. What has he made of her, this serious woman whose family hardly recognizes her? The two of them in coordinating blacks, him stooping along in the shadows with her ramrod-straight and stern beside him.
Who would she be if she weren't his Scully? How many hours of laughter has he stolen from her? How many years of ease? He feels the weight of his debts as an ache when he runs, a tug between his shoulders when he drives.
Yeah so um... yeah. Is anyone else madly in love with these stories? Any favorites you'd like to ramble about? PLEASE DO. The amount of time I could (and have) spent rambling about these two people!
OH BY THE WAY you know what's really hilarious to me about (one of) the TV spot(s) for this movie (YES IT DID JUST POP UP ON TBS AND I'M PRETTY PLEASED TO HAVE SEEN IT. ...again.) is that it um, ends with the music for "O Verona"? There are like seven hundred ridiculous ~dramatic~ faux-promo vids to that song AND THEN THEY USED IT FOR AN ACTUAL PROMO.
P.S. This stupid emergency maintenance better have been for a damn good reason >:(
Anyway anyway anyway, as my excitement has been building to this weird insuppressible level of anticipation and delight leading up to 07/25/08 I've been reading X-Files fanfiction. For the first time in... a long time? I used to be addicted to this stuff.
This isn't really meant to be a rec list (ALTHOUGH if you haven't read them? NOW WOULD BE THE TIME.) so much as it's... me, wanting to talk (a lot, as usual) about these stories I love in this fandom that writes more and better than any other. They're not hidden gems, a number of them are well-known (and all of them are, I think, in my del.icio.us. plus I think I probably mentioned a lot of these same ones when we did that rec list for eyeinfbi, ahahahaha. I'm a very predictable person) and I'm sure quite a few of you have read them all. These aren't all my very very favorites (I mean, some of them are, but others have been left off), this is just... a list of some stories that I happen to like. But: as my rereads has proven, there are some stories you never get sick of hearing.
The Unfinished Universe by revely
I love Revely SO MUCH. I love the way she writes (SERIOUSLY INCREDIBLE), the stories she tells, the emotions she pulls up, the way she understands Mulder and Scully. She's written seven stories and all of them are among my very very very favorites. Anyway I reread this one recently and and and it's just so beautiful.
The caps I picked actually don't even exist in this universe, they were just the... closest thing? Basically this story breaks off after "Badlaa" and while it references the continued search ("Scully had strapped him into his car seat, mindful of the soft spots of his head and the limp-noodle neck. They'd taken off for points unknown, chasing John Does, like she'd done since going on leave."), it begins with a Mulder found.
Fanfiction makes season 8 seem so much less terrible sometimes? It can almost convince me that those episodes were not the UTTER HEIGHT OF RIDICULOUS CRAP simply by existence. It reassures me that Scully was actually looking for Mulder between all those stupid useless things she did with Doggett and when the cases are just briefly referenced I don't have to do the ragey task of sitting through them. And I can pretend the pregnancy lasted a normal amount of time. (I also love that we get Mulder's perspective on all the super boring Scully-and-Doggett-go-and-investigate-some-lame-mutant cases here -- because the thing is, he would like to hear about man-bats and metalmen and had he been there, he would have been all over these cases and hell, we probably would've loved them too. He also makes a really necessary Mulder joke about the butt genie.)
This story is about getting Mulder back, I suppose, but more than that it's about the rediscovery process -- and oh it's so perfectly done here. I just love Revely. And this story. Also I mostly wrote up this entry so I could share this following excerpt:
She speaks carefully. "We can go to your place. It might be nice for you to be home again."
She is apparently unaware that she is home to him. His apartment is just a couch and boxes of porn and old records, as far as he's concerned. Everything important about the place has something to do with what she's done there - where she stood, sat, laid, or threatened to leave. He still avoids the hall tile he'd laid her on the night the bee had stung her, and there's a heart-blood stain wrought by a fictional killer on his hardwood floor. He is sentimentally attached to his kitchen countertop purely because she likes to sit on it. It's possible he's taking things a bit far.
He fell for her years ago, quietly, before he'd even realized it was happening. He fell toward her like an autumn leaf pulled gently to the ground. And now, after all these years, he thinks he should be past the swamping giddiness of it, but he isn't. She is like letting go on a roller-coaster.
Careful by Oracle
THIS STORY THIS STORY!!! It's another AU (again in the branching-off-from-canon sense and not the what-if-Mulder-and-Scully-lived-in-medieval-Romania sense, ugh) and also kind of a Never Again post-ep... in a what-could-have-been sort of way. Have I ever mentioned how fond I am of Oracle's writing? It's very whimsy and nice and I've always liked the short, simple, introspective stories she tells. Everyone always remembers "October Skies" -- the one where Mulder and Scully go to the halloween party which I do like too, but it doesn't quite have the same knack for character that some of the others (like this one) do. She's so good at miscommunication! Which is what this one is.
He's careful to divulge all information, not just what he thinks is necessary. He's careful to check out the quality of motels before booking and to tell her about upcoming flights in advance. He's careful not to investigate anything she might automatically scoff at. He's careful not to mention his opinions on religion. He's careful not to tell her what to do. If he does give her instructions, he's always careful to make sure she knows they're from Skinner.
He's careful and honest and professional and calm and neat and polite. He isn't cold and he isn't affectionate. He doesn't touch her anymore and late at night sometimes in motels she hears his shower running for hours, or him pacing around his room, or his TV playing infomercials. Never porn, not any more. He's so careful.
Ghosts by anjoufic
I'm so lame, I talk about this story ALL THE TIME.
I have this thing for X-Files babyfic. Well, no, that's not entirely true, but I have this thing for stories involving William and both of his parents. XF is so funny about the baby thing, because while children aren't even something they should be thinking about, the fact that they (yes, they) won't ever have them puts them at the top of the priority list and then it's saaaaaaad but they'd totally have enough with just each other? Except then there is a baby and IT'S JUST CRUEL THAT THEY DON'T GET TO RAISE HIM BECAUSE YOU CANNOT JUST GIVE PEOPLE THEIR HEART'S DESIRES AND THEN TAKE THEM AWAY????? WHY WOULD YOU INTRODUCE A BABY IN THE FIRST PLACE?
...ahem. Anyway I like well-written stories in which William is a well-adjusted (if psychic) kid who lives with his nice parents the alien-hunters and... life is good? Because I am a sucker.
Anyway, Anjou has this talent for... that. She's also really good at reconciling the mytharc in a way that actually makes sense, which is a MAMMOTH task, especially when you're acknowledging the last two seasons in which absolutely nothing makes sense.
So, yeah. I'd like to live in this universe. Pre-movie, this series was my ~canon~. And now... we will see.
(ALSO I CANNOT REMEMBER WHERE THIS WAS SAID, but somewhere I know I read Anjou's next project was installment #4 of this series and it's going to be a BONES CROSSOVER (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). Uh, YEAH.)
"We can't just return to Michigan with a toddler," Scully said. "We never mentioned we had a child and he looks too much like both of us to be a nephew."
Mulder opened his mouth to speak, but she continued on. "And don't suggest that we say that you had an affair with my cousin or something."
Mulder hoped his expression was sufficiently aggrieved, yet wounded. He didn't even bother to confront her with yet more evidence of her psychic abilities. She'd just rationalize it away with arguments about his predictability or the length of time they'd known each other.
Midnight Mark-Up by Louise Marin
I think I recc'd this one night in a xf_redux all-nighter and a little while later everyone was like "yeah, so I went and read that story! SO PREDICTABLE." Well, uh, I'M SORRY YOU ALL HATE FUN :( BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT THIS STORY IS.
Basically this story is about Mulder and Scully. And alcohol. And possessiveness. It's laugh-out-loud hysterical and I read it aaaaaaaaall the time. Because it is wonderful.
Actually now that I think about it I'm pretty sure I also recc'd this story anonymously more recently in a eyeinfbi all-nighter. So yeah. Lol constantly singing the same old tune.
Trying to focus on him, Scully saw that Mulder was still admiring his conquest. "This never happens to me," he said in a bewildered tone that Scully didn't buy for a second.
"Suuuure it doesn't," she said, wishing he would put his hovering hand back on her knee. But then she figured it would be for the best if he did not. He was tainted now with Ms. Breasts' damned black ink.
Finally, finally he dropped his hand to his own knee. When he looked up at Scully, it was with shock and a tiny bit of torment over her skepticism. She could also see that his eyes were beginning to droop and she guessed that his 'limit' had been hit, probably twice thus far.
The room was still spinning and swaying, but Scully swore that Mulder and his stool scooted again towards her and hers. He dipped his head down to hers conspiratorially.
"Really," he insisted. "I don't understand where you gets this idea that women are always throwing themselves at me, Scully, and that I'm always throwing myself at thems."
Scully tried not to laugh. The man actually seemed serious, in his own ridiculously inebriated way.
Recycled Virgins by Kel
I guess I'm now breaking from the emotionally magnificent stuff and more just that purely silly happy stuff but uh uh uh uh I love this story? It's funny and it makes sense and is basically about that stretch of time after the sex happens. I don't have a lot of words for it, but I read it aaaaaaall the time. (Also, Kel is pretty great in general? She has this one story, I think it's hers, about season 1 Mulder and Scully in an airport waiting room and it's pretty much my favorite thing ever.)
"Listen to this, Scully. From Jakarta. Mysterious ninjas able to transform into animals, accused in the murder of suspected sorcerers."
"Surely that article goes on to relate the violence to suspicion and rivalry between the Muslim majority and the ethnic Chinese," Scully said reasonably.
"Of course that's the obvious interpretation," Mulder said.
"Mulder, has it escaped your notice that Indonesia is a multi-ethnic country now in the throes of economic collapse and political upheaval? Do you fail to perceive that these murders are driven by such classically mundane motives as greed, resentment, and bigotry?" She gave him the works, arched eyebrow and all.
"No, Scully, I am not unaware of the political context. But wouldn't this kind of turmoil also be reflected in increased activity among the more supernatural inhabitants? Is it inconceivable that there are real ninjas and sorcerers among the fakes?" He looked at her hopefully, almost begging her to consider his point of view.
Scully was mute with frustration. How could this brilliant man be so stupid?
"Humans with the ability to transform into animals are featured in folklore from around the world," he continued blandly.
"Unfortunately, Mulder, the practice of persecuting those who are different, especially during times of poverty and uncertainty, is also known worldwide," she said heatedly.
"The Celts believed that witches could appear as cats or hares, whereas the Welsh and Germans held that they could assume the form of serpents." He could go on like this forever.
"Mulder, this is utter bullshit!" she exclaimed.
"Okay. Just checking." He grinned at her. She stared at him.
"What?" she said.
"I used to wonder if you argued so much just cause you needed to get laid," he said. "Now that we've taken care of that, I wanted to make sure you hadn't lost your edge."
Subcutaneous by Maria Nicole
Maria Nicole is another one of those authors that has a gift for mytharcy things. This story is basically the cancerarc: revisited except with twists and turns and complications and ugh, it's just SO GOOD AND SO SAD and the UST nail has totally been hit on the head. Plus bonus appearances by all our favorite secondary characters and... I don't know. It treats the Mulder/Scully thing just... perfectly. Which is the way to be.
(This story also has a totally stand-alone sequel you can find on gossamer if you are so inclined, FYI. Subcutaneous II: Splinter.)
He picked the lock at Mulder's apartment when there was no answer, and quickly toured his apartment, praying silently to any power who would listen.
Please, please, please let Mulder be in the same condition as Scully. Let this be some woman with a grudge and a paranormal gift, one woman who can be stopped.
But Mulder wasn't there. The red light on his answering machine was blinking, several times. Skinner paced restlessly around the living room, noting the cell phone lying on the coffee table.
He didn't see Mulder's gun, though; at least the other man was smart enough to always carry that.
Twenty minutes later, he was still pacing when he heard the footsteps, and the key turn in the lock. The door swung open, and Mulder entered, balancing a laundry basket, a bottle of Cheer, and two plastic bags in his arms.
"Mulder," he began, and the other man gave a start of surprise, losing his grip on everything. The bottle of Cheer thudded and bounced slightly, and something in one of the bags clinked together. Neatly folded t-shirts and sweatpants and bed sheets came tumbling out as the laundry basket fell to the floor. Mulder reached back for his gun, processed that it was Skinner, stopped, and did a double take.
"It's just me," Skinner finished, and the phone rang.
Mulder looked at him, at the clothes on the floor, over at the ringing phone. "Dammit," he said mildly, giving the bottom of the laundry basket a small kick. "I knew I was gonna drop something at some point; I just didn't think it was going to be because my boss broke into my apartment. What the hell?"
"You've been doing laundry?" said Skinner, irrationally furious. How could Mulder not have known, not have sensed, that something was wrong with Scully? Behind him, the phone rang again, and he heard the machine click to pick it up.
Night Giving Off Flames by jetfic
JET writes beaaaaaautifully, but this is the only one of her stories that has ever really stuck in my head. It's the only post-colonization story I have read a million billion times. And it isn't one of those stories -- you know, the ones where Mulder and Scully run off and fend off colonization as best they can together -- it's much more than that. Anyway anyway anyway oh my god this is one of those heart-breaking things you can't ever really forget or let go of? I... can't quite explain the emotions it creates in me. BUT OHMYGOD.
He touched her last night, once, to help her out of the van, and she flinched away violently, unwilling to meet his eyes. He glanced to Krycek then, who shrugged and offered casually, "They always look like you."
"They who?"
"Them. The shifters. That was part of the game, to see how she'd react to something that looked like you."
"To several somethings that looked like you," Krycek's associate said.
Mulder couldn't quite keep the revulsion out of his expression, and Krycek reassured him, "Don't worry. I hear she's very cooperative these days."
His throat burns now with the memory. The bruises on her arms are old and fresh both, and streaked with brown blood rubbed out from under her skin by the rope that had bound her. Her ankles are rimmed with similar lavender-green bruises.
Pillar of Salt by Nascent
I discovered this story so much more recently than the others? But JESUS. It's one of those epic casefiles with an incredibly well-conceived case, but (seeing as I'm not one of those people whose interest can be drawn simply with a mystery) it's very very character-driven. It's got this hint of betrayal but mostly it's about surrender and the inevitable clash when you have two very strong-willed people who believe not only in each other, but in very separate kinds of faith. I DON'T KNOW, I LOVE IT.
The ironic thing is that I think he prays even more than I do. He prays for my safety, for his sister's return, for an irrefutable scrap of truth which doesn't come with pain attached. He just doesn't recognize it as prayer because his vocabulary is different. So how could he not understand that I would react as I did to his ridiculous scheme?
If he were dead now, what would I do?
It was a question I'd asked myself before without resolution, and the answer was no clearer today. Life without Mulder is unthinkable, not because it would not go on (it would), but because it is simply impossible to imagine.
What hurt the most was not Mulder's stupid idea or even that he hadn't told me what he was doing. And though it hurt tremendously to know that the stain on last night's wonderful and rare shared evening could never be washed out, that was minuscule compared to the accusation in his words as I'd left the room.
"I need you," he'd said, but what he meant was: "How could you abandon me?" Somehow he'd managed to pervert his (also painful) knowing compromise of my character into a betrayal of my loyalty to him.
Endeavors too Short of Desires by leiascully
I'm running out of praising words but this story is incredible. There's this deep, searing tension underneath the comedy of season six that has everything to do with Mulder and Scully both being so close to some kind of breaking point in their partnership -- and I love love love stories that can acknowledge without being entirely about THE DIANA FACTOR. You know? Diana only really brought light to things that were already wrong with them -- things they had to fix before they could move forward. Anyway, that's what this is about. And that's why I love it.
He remembers when he met her, the cool firmness of her handshake and the bad cut of her suit. She is leaner now. Honed is the word he would use: it suits the way they scrape against each other. She has the clean compact lines of his Sig and he reaches for her the same way in a crisis. She isn't pretty. The word isn't in her vocabulary, with all the frou-frou softness it implies. If he can say she is beautiful, it is the beauty of the scalpel's edge.He feels softer by the day, his hand always half-extended to her. There are weekends he orders two coffees just because he forgets she isn't there. He drinks the second and buzzes for hours, having learned to tolerate cream in his coffee rather than face the shades his brain creates.
He dreams about picket fences and Scully with a fond palm cupped over the head of a blond boy. He wakes in a sweat. She deserves more. Not just someone who calls to say, "Hey, I found a musty old file, want to get takeout and give up your weekend?" She merits someone who calls to say instead "I was thinking of you" and leaves it at that. She deserves to be the sign and the signifier. He still loves the hunt, too, with a modern man's shame over the thrill of the chase. Dress it in a suit, give it a pistol, and call the hunt a puzzle or a profile or a case, but she's right: he gets off on it. She rides with him, but it doesn't take her to the same place. Bad motels, bad food, his everloving need to track the villain to his last hideout. Or maybe she does feel the call of it these days: he's guilty about that too. What has he made of her, this serious woman whose family hardly recognizes her? The two of them in coordinating blacks, him stooping along in the shadows with her ramrod-straight and stern beside him.
Who would she be if she weren't his Scully? How many hours of laughter has he stolen from her? How many years of ease? He feels the weight of his debts as an ache when he runs, a tug between his shoulders when he drives.
Yeah so um... yeah. Is anyone else madly in love with these stories? Any favorites you'd like to ramble about? PLEASE DO. The amount of time I could (and have) spent rambling about these two people!
OH BY THE WAY you know what's really hilarious to me about (one of) the TV spot(s) for this movie (YES IT DID JUST POP UP ON TBS AND I'M PRETTY PLEASED TO HAVE SEEN IT. ...again.) is that it um, ends with the music for "O Verona"? There are like seven hundred ridiculous ~dramatic~ faux-promo vids to that song AND THEN THEY USED IT FOR AN ACTUAL PROMO.
P.S. This stupid emergency maintenance better have been for a damn good reason >:(