Green Tea and Mint

Fanfiction
Title:	Green Tea and Mint
Author(s):	ML
Date(s):	2003
Length:	51K
Genre:	Mulder/Scully UST, rated R
Fandom:	The X-Files
External Links:	posted here
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Green Tea and Mint is an X-Files story by ML.

It was the winner of several 2003 Spooky Awards.

Reactions and Reviews

Started.

Stopped.

Didn't like.

I'm okay with fics where one kind of physical contact leads to another, or where physical contact is initiated for an outwardly nonsexual purpose with both wondering/hoping it's going somewhere else, etc., etc. I'm okay when they're distanced, when they approach. I know and appreciate the dance in its many forms.

But Mulder asking for help to put on lip balm? Maybe if I stuck with it the pay-off would be worth it, but I can't. I won't.

I read this twice in the last few days. I thought it okay but a little dull the first time. I liked it a little better the second time around. I agree the lip balm device is contrived, but I've read worse. I thought it was kind of sweet, and well, sexy, to me. I like the descriptions of them putting the lip balm on each other; they seemed sensual without being over the top.

My problem with this story is that is is too long. I think the story could have ended in two different places, and been the better for it. The author could have ended the story without them having sex, while making it clear that they would. I think that ending would have been more in keeping with the rest of the tone of the piece. Or, having decided to go all the way, so to speak, the writer could have ended the story there, after the act, in the afterglow. Another natural stopping point, right?

Instead, she takes us into the next season, I guess, Where It All Goes Wrong, and then splices her cute little first time sex story into the stupidity of the sixth and seventh season story arc about the Consortium and Mulder's Brain. This was a bad idea. Forgive me, if there are folks out there who just loved that part of the series, but I thought it was incoherent. So, because of that ending, I have to give it a thumbs down.

I'll take on both smut biscuits at once, the better to vent my personal prejudices.

Both by accomplished, literate writers: check. Both sweet, spiritual, gentle exercizes in self-gratification and fan-satisfaction: check. Both about the sex: check, check, check.

Neither one bit sexy.

Okay, this is really a personal prejudice. I don't enjoy reading about sweet, gentle, life-affirming sex any more than I enjoy reading about teasing, jocular sex between people who should more properly be experiencing joint nervous breakdowns. (See Bright White Place. Well, maybe if the jokes were better...)

I like edgy, insecure, driven, highly individualized sex, preferably with Mulder breaking the tension with Mulderwit. I don't like it when the two of them act like almost-virgins following a mental textbook for the politically correct First Encounter. (Ask what she likes, ask if it hurts, say you love her, make her come, ask if she came. Too damned tentative. Fuck, make mistakes, pay for it later.)

I'm also not thrilled with all the secondary sensuousness that so many consider erotic. Soapsuds. Foodstuffs. In the case of, what, Green Tea and Mint, I just irritably wondered why the guy couldn't pick up his own Chapstick.

I'm starting to scare myself with my crabbiness. Maybe I'm too old for this romantic stuff. But let me clear one thing up right now.

I'm not a guy.