crack_van | A Cold Angel Eye by jordan (R)

Fandom: THE X-FILES
Pairing: Scully/Skinner, Scully/Mulder UST
Length: approx. 60k words

Author on LJ:

notreallyjordan
Author Website: jordan's fic on Gossamer

Why this must be read:

jordan's later story Oyster has already appeared here on

crack_van, but A Cold Angel Eye is a classic, the fic that everyone would point to when a newbie showed up on the boards looking for Sk/Sc. Appropriately, this fic was the 1998 Spooky Awards Winner for Outstanding Skinner/Scully Romance, but it is so much more than that. jordan has created a mesmerizing casefic with creepy supernatural overtones that resonates with the long-ago loss of Mulder's sister and used it to illuminate Scully's heroism as well as her complicated feelings for the two men in her life.

Pleasure. He'd had no more than a few seconds
himself, a rush of intensity, a locomotive roaring
through his head and a groan wrenched out of him.
He fell away from her, his blood singing, and lay
panting beside her. She was not trembling now.
He put his hand between her legs and worked his
fingers, sustaining her pleasure as long as he could.
And even though her hips moved against his hand,
and her breath still came in gasps, he knew he was
already losing her, that regret was filling her like
poison, and that she was slipping away from him,
smoke whirling away into the night, and there was
no word on earth he could use to call her back to him.

Mulder, Mulder, Mulder. Found alive, heroically
freeing himself and another agent from a hostage
situation with Baxter, killing the son of a bitch in the
process in what was obviously self defense to
everyone but the local police, who were still having
problems identifying that other body.

Scully, scolding Mulder furiously for frightening her
so badly, until he hung his head like a dog, and then
throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him
as hard as she could, and then finally letting him go
and cuffing him on the back of the head, promising him
bitter death if he ever EVER did something like that
again. Dazed Mulder, whose very brilliance made him
blind to the things going on right under his nose, his
partner's obvious adoration, and her sudden quiet spells
when she had to deal with
their boss.

For Skinner there would always be that one
moment he would carry with him forever, one light
against all the lonely darkness to come; he had touched
her. He had made Scully come. In that instant of
crying out against his throat and arching so powerfully
she lifted him from the bed, he had given her a release
from fear and anguish, and in return she had given him
back his soul.

Of course she had avoided him after that. There had
been that brief period of insanity that followed, when he
could not think of anything but her, of sending her
flowers...No, taking them to her apartment. She
would hesitate, then let him in, shy and ashamed.
He would sit in her kitchen and drink tea and listen
to the liquid gold of her voice, and then later somehow
he would bring his lips to hers, and she would stiffen
in shame and fear, and then she would remember
how he had made her feel, and her mouth would
open again under his. And this time he would do
it right. He would make her feel such pleasure she
would mistake it for love, and then--

No.

And so now here they sat, and he breathed her
fragrance, a scent so imprinted on him that his
stomach would tighten when he smelled her in the
hallway where she had passed, unseen, moments
before. It never failed to fill his head with dizzy longing.

But no.

Fucking her was the biggest mistake of his life. He
would give his right arm to take it back. He would give
both arms to do it again.

A Cold Angel Eye (in three parts; please scroll down)