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English
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2025-07-19
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Reflex

Summary:

Just after the events of "Irresistible," Mulder finds himself caught in a slow spiral of realization. The case shook them both. Scully is quiet. Withdrawn. Mulder is many things—reckless, obsessive, difficult—but he is not indifferent. He knows what almost happened. And what it did to her. So when gunfire rings out in the basement of a high school during their next case, he doesn’t think. He just moves.

Notes:

I was stalking the Mulder x Scully tag on Tumblr, as one does, and I came across a gif of the scene™ from "Die Hand Die Verletzt," and the floodgates of memory opened. I remember watching the episode for the first time and absolutely screaming when this moment happened—because I was (am) shipper trash and it was 1996 (or 1995? who even knows anymore). These two already lived rent-free in my heart and soul.

Flash forward a few decades, and here I am: a functioning adult with a job and taxes and cookware I chose myself—and yet, show me one (1) gif of Mulder throwing himself over Scully while they're soaking wet and tied up, and I regress into a feral gremlin of romantic yearning. I will never be normal about these two. Not then. Not now. Not ever.

Anyway. Here’s a little fic about that moment. The moment that ruined us all.

Work Text:

It happened fast. Too fast for thought.

One moment they were bound, wrists tied behind their backs, the cold basement floor soaking through their clothes as sprinklers hissed overhead—

And then the gunshots.

It echoed hard and fast, metal on metal, a crack of chaos in the dark. And Mulder didn’t hesitate. He twisted, lunged, rolled his body across the slick cement until he was half over Scully. Tied, soaked, off-balance—but it didn’t matter.

His only thought: cover her.

Protect her.

Her breath hitched beneath him. She didn’t make a sound, but he felt the shift in her body—alert, tense. Her arm brushed his as she tried to turn, but he stayed where he was, tethered awkwardly by wet rope and the weight of everything that had come before.

She was shaking. Or maybe he was. Maybe both.

The gun clattered to the floor somewhere in the dark. A curse. A thud. A door slamming. Then—silence.

He didn’t move.

He could feel her now, the rise and fall of her chest beneath his. Her soaked blouse stuck to his shirt, her leg tangled with his. His forehead rested against her shoulder. She smelled like rain and smoke and adrenaline. He tried not to breathe too loudly. Every breath was an admission.

"Mulder," she said softly, her voice somewhere between breath and question.

"I’m okay," he whispered. "Are you?"

A nod. He felt it against his temple.

He didn’t want to get up.

He would. He always would. But for one suspended moment, he just let himself stay. Let his body remember that she was here. Alive. Under him, warm and shivering and real.

There was something about Scully that made it hard to look directly at how much he cared. Like staring into the sun. But moments like this didn’t give him a choice.

He shifted slightly, wrist brushing hers behind their backs. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t pull away.

They stayed like that for just a beat longer.

Then someone burst in. Lights. Voices. Movement. A flash of someone’s voice calling for medics. Hands on them, lifting them apart. Separating them.

And still—

He could feel the imprint of her against him long after they were cut free.

Mulder didn’t talk about Donnie Pfaster. Not to her. But he had thought about it every night since.

He thought about what almost happened. What she went through. What she wouldn’t say. He thought about how fragile she looked in the hospital hallway. How hard she tried to hold herself together.

And how close he came to breaking on her behalf.

He knew he was in trouble then. But it didn’t come with fireworks. Just this low, constant awareness: he was fucked. Irretrievably.

So when the shots were fired—when the chaos broke open around them—he didn’t think.

He just moved.

Because if someone hurt her, if someone took her from him—

There would be no coming back from that.

 

The water had been dripping for what felt like hours, cold and constant. Her hair clung to her neck. Her wrists ached from the ropes. Her skin was clammy, her clothes plastered to her body. Mulder lay beside her, breathing steadily, his eyes on the shadows.

And then the shots.

Scully barely had time to register them before he was on her, body twisting like instinct had taken the wheel. One moment he was beside her, the next—

He was over her.

Tied. Soaked. And wrapped around her like a shield.

The impact knocked the breath from her chest. His weight, his warmth, his heartbeat against her ribs. His shoulder pressed to her cheek. His voice in her ear.

"Are you okay?"

God. She shouldn’t feel this.

She shouldn’t feel the rush of heat beneath the cold, the way her stomach flipped when he whispered to her, the way her hands itched to reach for him despite the binding.

But she did.

This was what she’d never been able to name, wasn’t it? This unbearable closeness. This terrible knowing.

He didn’t have to say anything. She felt it in every tremor of his body, every breath that hitched against her. It wasn’t just duty. It wasn’t just protection.

It was him.

And something inside her ached with the weight of it.

Later, when they were free and dry and pretending everything was fine, she watched him from across the motel room. He had a towel around his neck, a file in his lap, and he was doing everything he could not to look at her.

The air between them was quiet, dense with things unsaid. Their clothes had dried, but she could still feel the soaked weight of him over her. Her skin remembered.

He didn’t leave. And she didn’t want him to.

She still felt his heartbeat against her skin. She wondered if he felt hers too.

She didn’t speak.

She just sat beside him on the bed, close enough that their shoulders touched.

And let the silence do what words couldn’t.

Sometimes silence was safer. But tonight, it felt like something else entirely.

Like a promise waiting to be kept.