Fox Mulder has nightmares often- flashes of memories, of a young girl with an innocent smile brown curly hair, of her helpless shrieks and the ensuing guilty darkness. He awakes with the same regularity of the dream: panting between twisted sheets, heart racing. Conscious now, he can still remember his sister's pleading and his own inability to to make her fears go away.
He sits for a minute, holding in his sorrow. The door to the ajoining room gapes open invitingly, so he pads barefoot though the threshold, to his partner.
An orange glow from an outside bulb cuts a strip of light across the smooth white sheets. Carefully he slides into bed, spooning alongside her sleeping form. She stirs a little when he wraps his arms around her waist.
"Hm?" Her voice is slow, like her words are sleepy too, "Mulder?"
He pulls her a little closer to his chest and murmurs, "please, just let me hold you."
Wordlessly she settles into him. He tucks his nose behind her ear and knows: that's what he protected, moments like these in the still of the night.