A/N: I'm watching TXF from the beginning, after joining the fandom with Season 10. I've made it through Season 4 now. SO MANY FEELS. SO MANY. This is unapologetic Sculder fluff, trying to make myself feel better (just be happy already, you two!)—enjoy, and let me know what you think!
All rights belong to the creators.
She stood with her back to him, next to the hospital bed, and he paused in the doorway. She was dressed again in her sharp black suit, packing her overnight bag with her customary precision. The wound of worry that had been bleeding out in Mulder's chest for days seemed to mend itself a bit more. It scared him when Scully wasn't sure of herself, when she wasn't as determined and pointed as a north-facing compass. She had every right to be vulnerable, he knew that, and even though he wished she felt more comfortable letting her guard down, it still scared him. Scully being lost was like someone announcing that gravity wasn't working this week.
Scully zipped her bag and then picked up the slim black journal from the bedside table. Mulder remembered the words she hadn't wanted him to read, her eloquent phrases etched by panic into his brain. She regarded the cover for a moment, then slipped the journal into the outside pocket of her bag.
Mulder knocked on the doorjamb and she turned, the frown sliding from her face at his entrance.
"I didn't know you were leaving today," he said, looking from her bag on the bed to her mother's coat and purse thrown over the visitor's chair.
"I need to get back to work," she said simply, and Mulder nodded.
"I brought you these," he said, awkwardly presenting her with a bouquet of sunflowers and daisies.
She lifted a brow. "Stealing from the infirm again, Mulder?"
"Hey, I paid for these."
"So now you're bribing the infirm." She brushed a finger over the daisy petals. "It's a slippery slope, Agent Mulder."
Mulder grinned. At least her sense of humor was returning.
Margaret Scully breezed into the room pushing a wheelchair. "We're all set, I've brought the car around—why, hello. Dana didn't say you were coming."
"I was just heading back to D.C., and I stopped by to drop these off." He waved the flowers and set them on the bed.
"How nice." Maggie touched his arm and held his gaze, looking into his very soul, it seemed, with that disturbing talent all the Scully women possessed. "Thank you, Fox."
"Mom," Scully protested, "I told you not to call him that."
"I've spent too many years around Navy boys," her mother said. "I refuse to call one more person by their last name."
"It's fine, Mrs. Scully," Mulder said. "I don't mind."
"See? He won't call me Maggie, even though I keep telling him he can."
"That's because he's scared of you, Mom," Scully said.
"No! Is he?" Maggie paused in the act of hustling Scully toward the wheelchair. "You're not scared of me, are you, Fox?"
Mulder waited a beat too long to answer. "No, ma'am."
Scully laughed, and gently extricated herself from her mother's clutches. "I don't need a wheelchair, Mom. I feel fine. My legs feel fine."
"The nurse said it was hospital policy for patients to be wheeled out to their cars," Maggie said firmly.
"Did she really say that, or do you just want me to ride in that thing?"
"Do you want to take the time to ask?"
Scully sighed and sat in the wheelchair.
"Oh, Fox?" Maggie looked back in the doorway. "Would you mind carrying our bags out to the car?"
"Of course." Mulder picked up the flowers and Scully's bag and followed them out of the hospital.
The fish were singularly unimpressed with Mulder's arrival home. He fed them. They continued to ignore him. He wondered if he'd ever gotten around to naming them. Winken, Blinken, and Nod, he decided, fully aware he'd forget those names by tomorrow. He eased down onto the couch, not bothering with the light, and leaned his head back against the wall.
The glass tube marked with Scully's name, hidden now behind the fish sticks in his freezer, chased his circling thoughts. He dreaded telling her, dreaded what it might do to her now. She was just regaining her equilibrium—how could her tell her the details of this violation?
But how could he not tell her, and still call himself her friend? Because most of all, he knew he dreaded her anger, and the loss of trust when she found out he'd known something of what happened to her—and he hadn't told her right away.
Scully's words echoed in his mind, the last she'd said to him before that awful phone call from the hospital. Sitting at odds in his—their—office.
"Not everything is about you, Mulder."
His coat pocket vibrated with the muffled ring of his cell phone. He dug it out and snapped it open, recognizing the number. "Mulder."
"Mulder, it's me." Scully's voice sounded tired. "Where are you?"
"At my place." He leaned forward. "Did you and your mom get back okay? I lost you on the freeway."
"We did." Scully paused. "I sent her home after a few hours. She wanted to stay the weekend, but she kept hovering and tidying and asking how I felt—"
"A mother's prerogative."
"I know." She sighed. "I know, but it's exhausting. I was never the sick one growing up. That was always Melissa. Or Charlie."
"There's a Charlie, too? I don't think I've had the pleasure."
"He used to eat things he found in the yard."
"Early medical training for you. I hope that's not still a hobby of his."
"I wouldn't know." She paused again. "I keep staring at the windows, Mulder. And the floor beside the armoire."
He rubbed his eyes. "I don't know why you stay in that apartment."
"I don't think I can stand it tonight." Her voice rose higher. "Mulder, would you—I don't know, like to come over for a cup of coffee or something?"
"You don't think I'll hover?"
"No, I think you'll eat all the sunflower seeds out of my trail mix and then make me sit through a forty-five minute slide show about the Wolf Man of Toledo, Ohio." She breathed out a laugh and then sniffed, and Mulder's chest hurt to think of her alone and crying.
Alone and unprotected.
"You know what, forget it, Mulder, it's late, I don't—"
"No no no. I'm coming."
"You're sure?"
"Just let me get my Wolf Man files and I'll be right over."
He paused by the front door before he left, thinking of the glass tube behind the fish sticks. Then he walked out and locked the door behind him.
Scully buzzed him in and left her door unlocked. He found her in the kitchen, clutching a mug of coffee and staring into the sink.
"Lose a fork down the disposal again?" he asked.
She shook her head. He pulled out a chair at the dinette and she set a mug down in front of him. "It's decaf," she said, as if in warning.
"Since when do you drink decaf?"
"Since I want to get to sleep sometime in this millennium. I've already had five cups."
She sat down across from him and sipped her coffee. Half her face disappeared into the mug. Swathed in her blue robe, her face scrubbed of makeup, she looked younger than thirty-two.
The silence stretched. Not the uneasy silence of the desk-argument, more like she didn't know what to do with him now he was here. With a jolt, Mulder remembered he was supposed to be distracting her. He picked a topic out of the air.
"Willie, Babe, and Joe miss you."
She frowned at him. "Who?"
"The fish. They miss you feeding them. They say I don't do it right."
"Well, I'll be sure to stop by." She smiled into her mug. "You're not allowed to name things."
"What would you name them? Moby, Dick, and Nemo?"
"At least that would be thematically appropriate."
He leaned back in his chair. "You know, I came over here on the promise of sunflower seeds. Where are they, Agent Scully? Are you hiding them?"
"I lied. There are no sunflower seeds. It was a ruse to get you into my apartment." She lifted her chin at him. "I don't see a slide projector hidden in your coat. Did you leave it in the car?"
"I didn't bring it."
"Aha."
"I brought you something else, instead."
She raised her brows and looked to the daisies and sunflowers drooping on the table, and the aging roses on the counter. "I'm going to run out of vases."
"Not flowers this time." He pulled a battered brown plush bunny out of his overcoat and laid it on the dinette table.
Scully reached for it. "What's this?"
"When I was little, I couldn't get to sleep unless I had him."
She cradled the little bunny in her hands, rubbing her thumb over his cream-colored tummy. "You held onto it all this time?"
"I found him in a box I brought back from Mom's basement. Sometimes I would lend him to Samantha when she had a bad dream."
"What's his name?"
"Amos."
Her lips twitched. Then she smiled her beautiful crooked smile and pressed the bunny to her chest. "It's very sweet, Mulder. Thank you."
"Come on." Mulder stood up and shrugged out of his coat. "You and Amos and your decaf coffee should go to bed."
"Are you going to straighten my couch cushions, too? Because that's already been done four times tonight."
"No, I'm going to un-straighten them by sleeping on them." He held his breath and her gaze, waiting to see if he'd stepped over a line.
"Going to protect me from my windows?" she asked, rising.
"I'm going to try."
"You're hovering, Mulder."
"I know."
"I will remind you, I am an armed and dangerous woman."
"I never forget it."
Her eyes searched his, and he let her inside, hoping she would see everything that stood unspoken between them.
She tucked Amos into the pocket of her robe. "Then I guess you can stay."
Scully directed him to the trunk at the end of her bed and disappeared into the bathroom. The extra blankets and pillows in the trunk smelled like oranges and vanilla, a scent Scully carried with her throughout the day. Mulder resisted the urge to bury his nose in the pillowcases like someone on a detergent commercial.
Back in the living room, he removed his shoes and tie and made up the couch as best he could. He was searching for the remote when Scully padded out of the bathroom. She silently produced it from the table behind the couch.
"Thanks," Mulder said, taking it. "I'll keep the volume down."
She shrugged. "I'll just pretend we're at a motel, and you've fallen asleep in the next room with the tv on. Again."
"Sometimes I think we might know each other a little too well."
"That's what happens in four years."
It didn't happen to all partners, they both knew that. Not every pair of agents in the bureau bonded the way they had. Their connection went beyond the bounds of professional respect, beyond even friendship. They were the most important people in each other's lives, in this life and all the ones before it. And even if they were destined to find each other in the next life to come, Mulder wasn't anywhere near ready to let this Scully go.
"Good-night, Dana," he said softly.
She nodded and walked on to her bedroom, but she turned in the doorway and looked back. "Are you sure I can't call you Fox?"
"Positive, Mrs. Scully."
"Good-night, Mulder."
"Sleep well."
Mulder woke four hours later, cramped on the blue striped couch, with the feeling a ghost had just wafted past his ear. The black and white people on the tv screamed in muted terror of some late-night horror. He sat up. Scully's bedroom door was open, and the bathroom light was on.
Walking stiffly, Mulder approached the bathroom door. He nudged it and it swung open slightly. "Scully?" he called. "You okay in there?'
She started to speak, but interrupted herself with a moan. Retching sounds came from inside. Mulder pushed the door open. Scully was crouched on the floor by the toilet, her robe bunched around her, shoulders heaving.
"Hey," he murmured, sinking down behind her. "Hey, now." He brushed her hair back from her cheeks and framed her shoulders with his hands. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, trying to keep from throwing up, her eyes wide.
"Breathe. Deep breath. Come on," Mulder said, and she nodded. She pushed her own hair back and scooted away to lean against the wall. Mulder stood up and ran the hot water, dampening a washcloth. He sat down beside her and dabbed gently at her mouth. She turned her face away.
"I'm fine, Mulder," she insisted, her voice hoarse.
"Scully." He held her chin and dabbed again, this time under her nose. He showed her the cloth, red smears bright against the white terry cloth. "You're not fine."
"Yes, I am," she whispered.
He let go, and sat with her in silence. "It's just residual nausea from the treatment," she continued after a moment. "The nurse said it would clear up in a day or so."
"What have your doctors said?"
"I haven't—I'm establishing with an oncologist tomorrow. Skinner set it up. Apparently, the FBI is paying for everything. He—insisted."
"Do you want me to go with you? Do you need a ride?"
She shook her head.
"Scully, you don't have to do this alone."
"Yes, I do." She faced him. "Ultimately, I have to do this… completely alone."
"You're never completely alone, Dana. Never."
Scully pressed her lips together and nodded, tears standing in her eyes. "You can call me afterwards," she said quietly. "I would—I would appreciate that."
"I will, then."
"And on Monday, when we go back to work—"
"On Monday, I will remember that you own three guns, know where all my vital organs are located, and can kick my ass from here to Bethesda. And we will drive to some weird town in the middle of nowhere and you can tell me all the ways I'm wrong about science. But tonight," he said, standing up and helping her to her feet, "you are going to sit with me on the couch and watch The Germ That Ate Japan and explain to me, in great detail, how it is scientifically inaccurate. Okay?"
She gave him the smallest of smiles and leaned into his side. "Okay."
He guided her out to the living room, picking up an extra blanket on the way. They settled together on the sofa, Scully tucked into Mulder's side, her feet wrapped in the blankets. The ears of Amos the bunny peeked out of the pocket of her robe.
Mulder turned the sound up a bit, and after a few minutes the scientist in Scully couldn't take it any longer and she started talking about how it was genetically impossible for a microbial organism to evolve into a bipedal vertebrate in a matter of days. Mulder only understood about a third of what she was saying. Every so often, he would bend his head and kiss her hair, and she would nestle deeper beside him. If gravity had been turned off for now, Mulder figured, they would just have to hold onto each other until the world fell back into place again.