CHAPTER FIVE B:

At 9 PM sharp, Scully was finally out of his bedroom, out of his back, and out of his neck. For a second, he thought she was breathing fire right into his central nervous system. She was irritated the rest of the day: sniping comments at him, taking time from reading the daily paper to just glare at him, while he sat there on the bed, still grinning like he won the million dollar jackpot in The Price Is Right.

When the clock ticked 8:32 PM, she closed the adjoining door with an earth- shattering bang to illustrate her just how irritated she was.

Mulder found opportunity behind the closed door. He sat up straight on his bed, stretching his arms up above him, getting reacquainted with the feel of using his muscles again. A few bones cracked, as did his rib a while ago. It was due to the whole day he spent in bed. His active body was not used to loafing around. He moved a lot.

The awakening of his unused flesh was heavenly. Mulder stretched a few more times before shoving away the thick covers with his feet. Without any more hesitation, he stood up, touching the soft carpet with his toes. He sighed - a sound that quickly turned into a gulp. He grabbed onto the closest thing he can catch. A sudden drop of nausea threatened to overwhelm him, probably due to the healing wound on his head and from staying too much in bed. He needed to move around. Desperately. If he felt like jumping at that moment, that was what he should have done. Unfortunately, that plan had to be foregone, lest he wanted for Scully to hear him.

As the hour sank in, Mulder made the most of his freedom. He changed into pajamas, grimacing at Scully's favorite boxers. He even checked on the wound, assuring himself through the mirror that it did not look as bad as it appeared. At least the Doctor didn't have to shave his head to stitch it up. It was not even stitched up. More like iced out.

He was all spick and span when the hour ended, and he was pretty sure that Scully was also done drooling over the Moonlighting guy.

Mulder opened the door, peering into the small crack to make sure that everything was good. He saw Scully at the vanity table, brushing her chin- length hair slowly.

The way she stroked up and down her frizzy locks mesmerized Mulder. She constantly kept blinking, suppressing some unshed tears at her reflection. The yellow light from the bedside table illuminated her face, showing him more than he should even see. She seemed too tired for a 20-year-old.

Scully dropped the comb down on the dresser, and to his shock, she began sobbing.

Mulder did not know what to do. He was there, standing in the adjoining door, prying at her privacy. Did she do this every night? What would she think of him if he entered and tried to offer some assistance?

There were so many things he did not know about this woman, but his heart told him to help her, so that was what he did. His head did not really have the capacity to argue.

He entered her hotel room and quickly found himself at her heels, kneeling. He smoothed away hair from her face while trying to grab a hand that was covering her eyes.

"Scully? Are you okay?"

Scully pulled back from him, almost toppling herself down from the chair. The astonishment on her face made him rise up to his heels.

He thought she was going to start punching him square on the stomach when she lifted her arms, so he shielded himself in reflex. However, she only used them to wipe her tears. He waited until she gathered herself together, before asking once again if she was okay.

She scratched a spot below her red- rimmed eyes. "I'm fine, Mulder."

Mulder shook his head. Was that even an answer?

"Scully, you're not supposed to be crying your eyes out and then tell me that you're fine. Something's obviously wrong," Mulder pushed. When she did not answer that, Mulder resumed to his former position: down on his knees, both of his hands on her lap. Scully tried removing his hands, but he did not budge.

"I'm sorry, but I think you forgot a certain characteristic that I own: I never quit while I'm ahead. I'm ahead... 10- 12 steps ahead from my bed, so you better tell me what's wrong."

Scully opened her mouth in a gasp. "You should be in bed, Mulder -"

"Too late. I'm not in bed anymore. You're not going to make me waste those 10- 12 steps I took in SUCH pain and just push me away, will you?"

She closed her eyes in defeat. "I won't." Just before he was able to do his "triumphant" snicker, Scully revealed her inverted British flag from inside of her. "And I also won't divulge my whole book for you, Mulder. We both don't deserve that." Whatever she meant by her last statement was lost on Mulder.

She once again tried to remove his hands off of her lap. She only accomplished halfway, because Mulder covered her smaller delicate fingers with his larger ones before she could even move.

That made her laugh. "Christ, you are persuasive."

"Of course I am."

Scully sighed, and he squeezed her hands. There were a few fleeting seconds before she started talking. "I miss my... I'm home... sick, I guess."

Mulder nodded slowly. Scully inhaled and rather than exhaling, she smiled through her tears. He caressed the skin over her thumb, encouraging her to go on talking, but rather than doing what he was expecting her to do, she straightened up on her chair. Breaking off their skin contact, Scully sauntered over to the adjoining door.

"C'mon, hop over here and I'll put you back in your bed. You need your rest, Mulder."

Mulder, still kneeling before the vanity table, rose up, steadying himself. "No. I don't want to go back to bed, Scully. I'm sick and tired of lying all fucking day." He began to literally drag himself over to where she was standing, and through the dim lighting of the room, he saw that her cheeks were still glistening. She was still crying, counting on the dark to hide her anguish from him.

He should probably just do what she wanted, but that would not resolve his irritation with the bed, anyway. He would be staring at the ceiling all evening wondering why his star was crying. Homesickness was not the real answer - he saw it plain as day in her eyes, no matter how flooded they were.

Racking up his brain for a suitable excuse, he found one just in the nick of time: Scully was halfway towards him, with sheer determination jutting out of her eyes.

"Let me return what you've done for me, Scully. Umm..." He patted the queen- sized bed near his knee to express his point. "I'm tucking you in. You're in no condition to take care of a nosy son- of- a- bitch tonight." That made her smile, even if she still looked like unresolved shit.

Mulder tugged at the covers, flapping the velvet blankets open for her. "It's okay. I'm not going to pressure you if you don't want to tell me about your problem. At least give me some resolution. You're going to kill me all night if you let me sleep without letting me do something for you."

Scully rolled her eyes. Through bit lips, she agreed with his plan. Mulder grinned. He kind of expected that she would. When Scully's emotions were wasted beyond her realms, she was more compliable. She would lose that "Spunk."

While he held the quilt for her, she slid right onto the bed, tucking her chin over a stray pillow and spreading her red hair on the opposite white pillow. The contrasting white and redness reminded Mulder of an angry sunset, her slightly flushed face being the pseudo- sun. He paused, while she was trying to make herself comfortable, to admire her. The smallness of her body only captured less than half of the whole bed. Her frailty frightened him, because it was there when he didn't want it to be there. She was frail because she was probably inwardly vulnerable. When would lose that "Spunk," she also lost Scully. She would lose the person Mulder met the first day they met.

He didn't want that. Sure, that would be to his advantage, but he still did not want that.

Covering her exposed flesh with the quilt that was in his hand, he indulged his fingertips with her hair and closed one bedside lamp, leaving the other one open.

He was about to leave her room when he felt a tug on the tail of his pajamas.

"Huh?" he stupidly conveyed, squinting his eyes at her.

"Don't -" Scully started, her lower lips trembling. "Don't leave. I... I'm going to get nightmares."

Mulder chuckled good- naturedly, unhooking her fingers from his shirt. "I'm only a few steps away, Scully... You won't get nightmares. I promise you that." He was on her last finger, when her hand doubled- over and held his wrist with a death-grip.

"Please. I'm begging you. Don't leave," her voice quivered, making something inside Mulder also shudder. She was so afraid. Through her cold fingers, her blinking blue eyes, trembling body, dry lips. She was so afraid. He could not leave her like this.

Scully told Mulder (as a way of an explanation) that from the first time they settled an arrangement for her quarters that she had been getting vivid nightmares. Personally, from the upstairs room of his Beverly Hills manor, he had not heard her screaming or crying out loud. She was even graced with one of his personal murky dreams himself, but it was never vice versa. Not that he doubted her statement - since during their car ride towards his house that same day, she had further explained the dreams. Scully told him that she cried a lot, she could get noisy, and she fretted in her dreams. During one occasion, she recalled with an unreadable façade, she even almost fell out of a window. He did not ask her to elaborate, since, as usual, he never saw her as the "elaborating " kind.

Mulder silently did what she wanted. He walked over to the opposite side of the bed and sat cautiously on the end - doing a Goldilocks impression by awkwardly testing the hardness or softness of the cushion.

Scully's hand once again found his wrist, and she pulled him towards her. He sat beside her, with his head gently resting on the wall behind him (on a spot a few inches above the wound); his legs were sprawled before him, one arm was propped on his elbow to support his stature, and another was inside Spunk's arms. She curled against his bicep like a lost puppy. He could feel her breath tickle the hair of his skin.

He should not tell Frohike about this. The poor guy will flip.

He felt reasonably uncomfortable with this position, even if his companion seemed quite content with his body heat. Mulder swallowed nervously. He should speak. They should talk. Get into a normal conversation - one that did not require biting each other's head off - within the next cruising minute. They should. He would disintegrate into pure weird distress if they did not.

"Is this... r- really necessary, Scully?" he could not help the stuttering. He had not been really this intimate with a woman for the last ten - well, not really TEN - years. In one bed, they were so close he could feel her heartbeat on his knuckles. Call him pathetic, but the last time he and Diana had been sleeping in the same bed was ten years ago. It took them officially 7 years before they grasped that if they wanted to stay married, they should at least sleep in one bed - that was the final heroism for their crumbling marriage. This, however, was a different woman, a Spunk, a Scully - not any one remotely related to Mulder. Something was definitely askew.

She sighed, the sound heavenly. "Yes. I need to be assured that I have someone beside me so that I could sleep without a nightmare onwards."

"Is that what your psychiatrist told you?"

"No. It's what I discovered myself. I don't need a dodgy psychiatrist."

He should have figured that out. He forgot that she was still holding the "Spunk" title, even at the current state she was in.

"Is this... how you want me to be? Should I just stay here until you fall asleep?" Mulder motioned with his other hand, more to help himself than to make her understand. Scully paused from nuzzling his skin and then proceeded.

"Talk. Tell me about yourself."

Damn... "I don't want to make like a slum book."

Strike one for the Spunk.

Positive about herself, she pitched him a ball, going 100 KPH right into his face. "How about Emily? Your daughter? Tell me all about her."

Home run.

He figured that the ball would smack him on the face, but he hit it right out of the park.

"Sure." With his answer, Scully went back to his arm. He wondered what she found so fascinating about it.

"Emily was born when I was 18 - I was barely into college. It was a year of freedom chaos, you understand, the 60's and everything rad about it. I met Diana during a pot-smoking session in John's van. John was still my party animal and I was his personal John Travolta. We did crack, smoked, drank ourselves silly … all that jazz. Diana was one of those college ladies who decided that they wanted to have unprotected sex that day for no reason at all. I remember that I wasn't really into the hippie- thing, and I'm glad that she also wasn't. She shaved, you know." He suppressed a laugh, while Scully let hers out. "So the inevitable happened, we did and did and did, without really having a real relationship. Until boom. She came to me and told me she was pregnant."

Mulder clenched his teeth, pushing the image of his ex- wife out from his head. "I didn't know what to do, really. I was young, high on crack, doping myself good, happy that way."

"Then why did you marry her?"

"Her father's a strict disciplinarian church- goer who does not take NO for an answer. Get the picture?"

"Oh. Oh. Bollocks. Uh- huh. I do."

"It wasn't really bad. We get along okay, we sleep fine, and we act normal. Not happy, just normal. I thought that was happy then. I forgot ... that equation when Emily was born. She almost didn't make it; they had to do a C- section to get my Emily out of Diana. When I held Emily in my arms, my slap- happy days were over.
"Emily- came from the French word emotionnel, because my emotions were overpowered that day. Happy was over- happy. Normal was perfect. Emily sealed our marriage, and I didn't care if Diana's guts were going from bad to worse or if mine were ... Emily was my life. She pulled me through college, pulled me through everything. I'm lucky, very lucky to say that my very own daughter is one of my best friends.
"Divorce with Diana was not a big issue. It was bound to come; even Emily wasn't disappointed when it happened. I believe that we both waited as adults until our own child was old enough to understand our decision. My daughter was given the choice between both of us, and she chose my custody - not that she really would be staying that long. She was already in college. She's a smart girl, was accelerated during her Junior High ... I'm damn proud of that. Em graduated last year with honors. She's ... getting married in a few months. I shouldn't really be here in Vegas, while at home, Emily's probably planning her wedding. I should be there, helping out ... however, call me selfish and all those chocoholic titles you want to crown me with ... I don't want to walk Emily to the altar YET. I don't want to lose my daughter YET. She's the only one I have, Scully. I still need her. She doesn't know that, I don't think I'll ever let her know ... how much I need her ..."

The small listless breathings beside him told Mulder enough. Grinning to himself, he gently detached his arm from Scully's embrace and wiped away some drying tears off of her paleness. The image of his college English professor flashed in Mulder's mind. That particular man told him to stop dreaming about scriptwriting ... his sentence structure could put anyone out to sleep.

Now that he was here with a living proof of that claim, it was not as insulting as he used to think it was. Scully was so peaceful as she slept, her lips tugging at the corners into a lazy smile.

Mulder caressed her soft auburn frock, then leaned into her ear:

"Bonne nuit, Amadou," he whispered, loving the way his lips scraped against the flesh under her ear.

Good night, Spunk.

END OF CHAPTER FIVE B