Hey there! This is my first X-Files story, though I've been a lurker for a while. Let me know what you think, I love reviews! Enjoy:)
Her legs are still unsteady, her complexion still pale, but she walks to the car mostly on her own. She only leans on him once or twice, and does it begrudgingly when he holds her waist with a sure hand, making sure that she doesn't have to ask, because he knows that would piss her off.
She swats him away with one of her small hands when he touches her head and helps her into the car, but the look she shoots him lacks her usual antagonism, and the purse of her lips doesn't quite convince him that she's annoyed.
"Do you want another one of these before we hit the road?" He shakes a half-empty bottle of Gatorade at her as he slides behind the wheel, but she shakes her head once, firmly, and presses her lips together in a thin line, making them even whiter than they are.
It's unsettling to see her so discolored; normally her lips are colored a pleasant but not garish red, her cheeks swept with a rosy blush, her top eyelid thinly lined—things you notice when you work this closely with someone, he tells himself. But normally she looks alive, she glows with this sort of youthful spunk that's invigorating to be around, even when she's shutting him down.
And seeing her like this now, with a fading rash from the mites still present on her cheek and another on her chin, is all an unpleasant reminder of the four hours he spent pacing in the narrow space between their beds, waiting for her eyes to flutter open and slide into focus.
"Mulder, I'm fine," she sighs, because apparently he's been searching her face too long for what she wants but won't say out loud. They have a secret language already, a series of glances and sighs that characterize their interactions, both verbal and nonverbal. And right now she's trying to tell him that all she wants is a hot bath and her own bed, but she is tired, and so so pale, and he knows she won't say it, won't admit her exhaustion to him.
"For a minute there I thought we'd lost you," he says, genuine is his sentiment but not sentimentally, as the car pulls slowly out of the facility and onto the access road they were assured would take them right to the airport.
"For a minute there, I thought I'd lost myself," she volleys. Reluctantly, she reaches to the cupholder between them and unscrews the cap to the bottle. "Your can feel it, when your body is tired of fighting but your mind's not ready to give up."
He chuckles darkly, amazed at her ability to put into words the terrifying nebulous he's encountered more than once in his unusual line of work. "Yeah, I know what you mean."
"I don't like it," she says, tipping the bottle back and taking a small swallow of the red liquid, then making a face. "Ugh. This stuff tastes like sugar water."
"Electrolytes, Scully," he says. "The doctors said you were severely dehydrated when they found us."
She sounds almost childish when she huffs, "I don't know why it affected me so much more than you. We were out for the same length of time."
"If you haven't noticed, I'm at least a head taller than you," he teases. "I've got a hell of a lot more bodily fluids to keep me going when a swarm of sinister bioluminescent mites decide to make dinner outta me."
"You're not that much taller than me," she says, taking another swig.
"Okay, then how tall are you?" He loves baiting her, loves watching the way her eyes flick to him and then straight ahead as she resists the urge to get defensive.
"It doesn't matter." She juts her chin out proudly and lets a calm settle over her face that makes him smirk. A drop of red Gatorade rests at the corner of her lips, beaded dark against the pale white of her skin.
"You've got something…" He reaches out and wipes the drop away with his thumb at the same time her tongue darts out of her mouth to get it herself. She licks the side of his thumb for the briefest of moments, and if he didn't know better he'd say she blushes. He pulls away, the droplet of Gatorade sitting on the pad of his thumb, and for a moment he wants to taste it, but he knows that's crazy, and he doesn't.
"The damn bottle's got a wide mouth," she says, and then takes another sip so they don't have to talk. She drains the bottle and wipes a palm across the side of her head, trying to get her hair to stay in place. It is wavy and wild, not how she likes it, and he can see it agitating her.
"I'm six foot, for the record," he offers, not sure why he says it. Maybe to make her smile. Or laugh. Her smile is sweet and friendly, her laugh uncharacteristically free and silly, and he hadn't had much of either in his life for a while before they began working together.
"Six foot even," he repeats, and in the glance he gives her sidelong he sees that her eyes have rolled up in exasperation, but a smirk sits in the corner of her lips where the Gatorade was moments before.
"Are you trying to impress me?" she intones dryly.
"I'm just giving you the facts so you can do a proper analysis of just how much more—or rather, less—you had to lose up there. My six feet to your…" He raises an eyebrow hopefully.
"Five foot three," she admits resentfully, smoothing back her hair again and not meeting his eyes.
"Is that all?" He's teasing, but he knows she can take it. She can take anything, he's come to learn in the short time they've been working together.
"And though she be but little…" she quotes, giving him a pointed look.
"She is fierce," he finishes, smiling at her proudly. "Fierce indeed. You're a survivor, Scully."
"I don't know if I like that word," she sighs, and then her eyes squeeze shut as a yawn momentarily takes control of her body. Her small feet push at nothing against the floorboard and her shoulders scrunch up to her ears. Mulder averts his eyes, feeling suddenly that he's watching something very personal. "It makes it sound like you shouldn't have made it," she continues, the whine of the fading yawn making her voice uneven and high-pitched, "Like you were supposed to be beaten."
He shrugs. "Maybe we were supposed to be."
She smirks, but then her expression turns serious when she asks, "You've been doing this much longer than I have… At some point our luck has to run out, right?"
"Is that your medical opinion, Agent Scully?"
She shrugs. "Statistically, it seems like the things we're outrunning are going to catch up to us."
He waits a moment before asking, "And non-statistically?"
"I don't know." She looks over at him, very young all of a sudden. "You've made it this far, haven't you?"
He hums assent in the back of his throat and they drive in silence the rest of the way to the airport.