"Mulder, you're sick, go home," Dana repeated for about the hundredth time that week. She was sitting at the one computer in the office, trying to type up a report. Trying. She had long since grown accustomed to some of her partner's annoying habits. While finding discarded sunflower seed shells all over the office, rental cars, motels, his apartment, sometimes even her apartment was frustrating it did not compare to this.

Mulder sniffled loudly and Dana visibly shuddered. Blow your Goddamn nose Mulder!

"I'm fine," Mulder grumbled, his voice hoarse and raw. He was across the room, flipping through images on the projector while he leafed through the case's files. He would highlight something here and there, compiling a pile to place next to her or find an image that looked about right to stop on and call out her name. Don't forget to mention this, have you put that in there, remember how it looked? He was being helpful, but did he have to touch absolutely everything?

"You've been saying that for a week. Just take a day," she tried to level with him, "get it out of your system so it doesn't last another week."

He didn't respond, his back to her. Dana let out a breath between tight lips and returned to the computer screen. She reread what she had previously written, trying to get back into the groove of writing. Finally, she had her fingers back on the keys adding on where she had left off.

"Don't forget about the foliage we found stuck to the underside of her car," Mulder rasped, placing a sheet of paper and an evidence bag with a pinecone in it on the growing stack precariously hanging off the desk corner. His face was pale and red underneath the eyes, sweat peaking at his forehead.

She looked up and he turned away, coughing up half a lung into his arm.

"If you don't care that you're sick, fine, but you're going to get me sick."

"guilt trip, nice tactic," he said with a half-smile that look more like a grimace as he moved back to the other side of the room. Her eyes returned to the computer screen.

With a tilt of her head she spoke, "it wouldn't kill you to take a half day and see a doctor."

"You're a doctor."

"Yes and I'm telling you to go home."

It was like pulling teeth, dealing with his stubbornness sometimes. She could consent to his stubborn behavior when it came to his out there beliefs and his casework, but in a situation like this there was no point to it. He refused to admit he was even remotely ill. Dana set her jaw, not forgetting about the pain killers and throat lozenges in her bag nor the pull in her own throat and the murmur of an upset stomach. It was different, she asserted to herself, at least she was doing something about it. Dana was certain Mulder had not taken anything for his ailments.

He took a seat by the projector, keeping his back to her. Dana returned to her work.

The minutes passed. Projected pictures clicked across the far wall. Keys clacked as a paragraph formed. Mulder stopped on an image of a body. "do you have your autopsy notes?" he asked.

She scanned the stack beside her and shook her head. "No, is it over there?" She watched as Mulder stood, slowly. He stood in place not moving. "Mulder," she eyed him, voice with trepidation, "are you okay?" He swayed on his feet for a moment, just a moment, before lurching towards the wastebin and vomiting.

Dana shook her head, the 'what did I tell you?' on her lips. Instead of scolding, she got up from her desk and knelt beside him. With a light touch she rubbed his back. "I'll get you home."

—-

Scully had been strict with him before she left his apartment that afternoon. Drink at minimum one glass of water every forty-five minutes. Start with foods like soup or popsicles and wait to make sure he could keep that down before trying some crackers (as he had tossed his breakfast and likely dinner the night before twice before she left). Keep a warm towel over his forehead and change it every thirty-five to fifty-five minutes. Take this bottle of pills (one! Two only if it's getting worse!) every four hours. Have something nearby in case he can't make it to the bathroom. Rest and do not get up from the couch (the day marked the first time his partner had ever seen the inside of his bedroom and found there was no way to get to the bed if one was even there in the mess of boxes and garbage) unless it was an emergency. Call her if he was feeling extra lightheaded or felt he needs to go to the doctor's office.

Mulder hadn't resisted too much. He felt too much like shit to protest past a stern look from Doctor Scully. Shit wasn't right. More like a hairless mammal like a weasel or a baby otter or maybe a little grey guy from plant Whatsit that unfortunately slipped and bumped its head and got stuck in a septic sewer in the middle of January in the freezing cold and stinky slimy muck water, that's how he felt.

He pulled his blanket up to his mouth absently while watching some gorgeously lame black and white horror flick Scully thankfully picked up at random and plugged into the VCR. From under the blanket his picked at his lower lip. Scully told him to keep his hands away from his mouth, which was probably the reason he was sick in the first place from picking up so strange bacteria at a crime scene and then digging his hands right back into a bag of seeds. She had a point but on that page he didn't really care. It was a habit, he barely felt conscious enough to understand the movie he'd seen four times previously, and he wasn't about to break it today.

Mulder would drift in and out of sleep for the next eighteen or so hours. Sometimes he would wake and be certain he would go back to work the next day, but then he would drift back into an exhausted sleep and wake up feeling even worse than he did a few hours before. After what felt like an eternity of half-sleep, half-nearly-unconscious-but-still-holding-on, Mulder stared at the time on the VCR. 5:00 AM. He blinked, and it was nine in the morning.

His hand poked out from the blanket, feeling the cool air of his apartment but still scorched with a throbbing inner heat. Mulder patted around the coffee table, clinking glasses and medicine bottles together as he searched for his phone. Scully would have arrived at work by now and handed in that report to Skinner. No news likely meant it had been met without too much trouble from the big men on top. Still he would like to hear it for himself.

The phone rang for longer than expected. He was about to hang up, Scully was likely still in the meeting with the Assistant Director, when she answered.

"Hmm…?"

"It's Mulder," he croaked, his voice dry and lips chapped.

"Mm, Mulder," her voice sounded wispy, like she wasn't totally there.

"Scully, were you sleeping?"

—-

Mulder had put up a fight and had held so strongly in his refusal to accept that he was sick until the moment the two of them had stepped into his doorway. As soon as he was home free and allowed to be ill he became a needy child, morphing from a rigid wall to a drama queen. He was sick with what appeared to be a particularly harsh strain of the flu, but he milked it. "Scully," he'd mumble from the couch with a blanket wrapped around him when only four minutes prior he had been speaking near his regular tone and standing almost perfectly upright, "hungry."

Naturally, Mulder hadn't a thing in his kitchen. She began to suspect, after catching the expiration date of the few contents in the fridge, that his symptoms were caused by some fungus or mold of unknown origin. When she reported her findings he pouted at her in the way he sometimes did and mumbled "if it's not too much trouble…"

Dana had, of course, relented. She came back from the nearby gas station with a few cans of soup, some asprin, and a box of saltines and Mulder was vomiting again before she could set the 'Thank You For Shopping' bag down on the counter.

Now, she was going through the same thing. After three quarters through the report, Dana barely made it home before getting sick all over the cab she'd hailed. Most of the night was spent in the bathroom or lying in bed with a horrible pain in her stomach. A list of medical queries ran through her mind as she lay there, haunting her in a waking nightmare.

Once she had finally fallen into a consistent sleep, she had woken not an hour later to Mulder's call.

Dana took a deep breath but realized that made her feel nauseous again and cut it short. "Yes, Mulder I was asleep."

"Aren't you at work?"

"I took a sick day."

There was a pause. "Sorry."

"We work close enough is was bound to happen. How are you feeling?" She asked, hoping it would be over soon.

"Like a stomach acid dragon." She smiled at that. "I'm guessing the report ?"

"Skinner extended the deadline." She heard the sudden faint sound of voices and music from the other end of the line. "What are you watching?"

"Uh," Mulder paused again. The music grew louder, sounding like strings. "Daytime soap."

"Anything interesting?"

Another pause. "Riveting." He said blandly. "Some guy's come back from the dead. His girlfriend is pregnant and he doesn't know if he's the father."

Dana glanced through her open doorway to the living room. She could make it to the couch. Pilling one of her blankets and grabbing the bucket that sat bedside, she started the slow and painful march.

"Oh," Mulder added into her ear. "Their relationship was a secret.

"…Seems like everyone assumes the baby's his. Must not have been good at hiding it."

She settled in on the couch, her stomach feeling like stone and relaxed back. Grabbing the remote she flipped through a few talk shows before landing on a cheap looking drama. "Does the guy have a suit on in a beach house?"

"Don't judge his fashion choices Scully, he just came out of the casket."

A/N: previously posted this on my tumblr a month ago.