Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When they finish up the case in Ohio, Scully gives Kevin Kryder her card, with her personal number written neatly on the back, and tells him to call her if he needs anything at all.

"Seriously, Kevin," she says. "You're not alone."

He smiles up at her, tired, and she's struck with the realization that when she was ten years old, her biggest problem was the deeply-held, secret worry that she was not as beautiful as her sister. He hugs her before she leaves, one sharp cheekbone pressing fiercely into her stomach. He probably can't tell that she's about ten years younger than his mother. She wraps her arms around his angular shoulders and finds it difficult to let go.

Later, fifteen minutes into the long drive back to DC, she surprises herself by saying, aloud and without reservation, "don't you think he looked a little bit like Missy?"

"Huh?" Mulder's eyes flick over to her, registering that she's curled herself into a human pretzel in the passenger seat, her sensible heels kicked off and abandoned in the footwell. She wraps both her hands around her seatbelt and wiggles so she's facing him, even though he can't do the same. Something about going to confession has made her feel younger, slightly smaller. Not necessarily in a bad way. All of the global conspiracy stuff seems a little further away, as if maybe her sister was hit by a car, as if maybe she and Mulder are driving back to DC after doing something terribly normal together, and nothing horrifying might be waiting for them at home. She knows that she chose this life, the FBI, the X-Files, but sometimes it's nice to imagine.

"Kevin- I think he looked a little like Missy."

Mulder swallows. "Oh. I guess I didn't notice that, but I can sort of see the resemblance."

Scully hums and lets her eyes close. She feels tender, her emotions uncharacteristically close to the surface. He could ask me anything right now and I think I'd tell the truth, she realizes. How strange is that? It's almost enough to make her breath catch, how safe the shitty rental car seems, with Mulder steering them closer and closer to home. She knows that he's been worried for her since Missy died (standing closer than usual, offering to escort her to places where such chivalry is unnecessary), but she hasn't minded much. There's something that aches inside her these days, and although she's been unwilling to examine what it might mean, she knows it feels good when she can make him smile. Lord knows, she doesn't go out of her way to make herself feel good.

You hold yourself so rigidly, Dana, Missy had told her once, tapping her fingers against the stem of her wine glass. You need to melt a little.

The car stops at what Scully assumes is a red light. Mulder is watching her, she knows. She knows this with the same certainty that tells her how her hair will frizz when it rains. She opens her eyes to find a small smile playing across his face, and it broadens when she yawns.

"Sleepy?" he asks, reaching out to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. Behind them, somebody honks, and Mulder rolls his eyes. "Ass."

"Prick," she adds, yawning again. He laughs in surprise at that, his face lighting up in a way that it ought to do more often. She thinks of Kevin, surprising herself- this boy who blows spitballs in class, suffering something as solemn as the stigmata. Would he even know that word, if she told him?

"That kid really got to you, huh?" Mulder says, more of a statement than a question. Scully startles, and he pats one of her knees. "Sorry."

She sighs. "Yeah… yeah. I'm not sure why."

All she knows for sure is that the farther away they get from Ohio, the more something deep in her chest wants to go back there, to make sure he's okay. She's always known that she wants to have kids, known with the deepest certainty inside herself that she has to do everything- write up reports and kick down doors and cut open bodies and nourish a child inside her own. There's no part of life that she hasn't wanted to experience. And yes, as she approached thirty her father had begun to look at her and wonder aloud what she was waiting for, and she'd tried to remind him that it was the 90s now, and she wasn't going to marry as young as her parents had, but part of her has always wondered with him: when am I going to have the time? The last date she went on was shortly after she'd met Mulder, and she'd found herself counting down the minutes until she could reasonably excuse herself and bolt.

Mulder hums next to her. "Got any theories?"

She smiles. "He looks a bit like Missy, but I don't think that's it."

"Want any sunflower seeds?"

She wrinkles her nose at him, and he grins. "You know I'm never going to take you up on that."

"Hey, partner," he shrugs. "Gotta watch your blood sugar."

"Do you- " she begins, before cutting herself off. All of that honesty feels like it's leeched its way out of her, pooling in the footwell with her shoes. She curls tighter around herself, thinking of Missy and her own rigidity, and begins examining her nails, which do not need examining but give her something to look at besides Mulder's face.

Mulder's eyes flick over to her. "Do I… ?"

"Do you ever think about having kids?" It rushes out of her, softer and more tremulous than she intends for it to sound. She watches as Mulder swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing like one of her father's ships in the Pacific.

"Yeah, sure. I mean, I've imagined it. I don't know if I'd be any good at it, though. It's purely a hypothetical, you know?"

Scully nods. You'd be good at it, she wants to say, but all of that courage is in the footwell with her honesty. We both know you have so much love inside you.

Kevin calls her every night. She gets the feeling he has no one else to call. One week, she tells Mulder that she's driving over to Ohio to visit him on Saturday, and she'll be back for work on Monday, so if he shows up at her apartment and she's not there, he shouldn't lose his mind. He nods, and on Friday night he shows up at her door with a stack of comic books and two packs of baseball cards.

"I don't really know if he's a comics kid or a sports kid, so I just got both," he says, shuffling his feet. "I was both. I figured if he doesn't like them he could give them to another kid in the group home, or trade them for something."

It's so thoughtful, so unnecessary, that for a moment she considers kissing him, right there on the stoop where the universe could see them and take him away from her.

"Thanks," she breathes, feeling as though the only words she can think of are profoundly inadequate.

He quirks a smile at her and it's a little easier to pretend that she isn't falling apart, just a little. The government is out to get them, and her sister is dead, and this little boy needs her, and she has so many feelings about all of it, and they've been getting harder and harder to suppress. At least things feel more normal when he smiles at her, when he plays keep-away with the comics for just a few seconds.

"Let me know how he likes them," he says, shrugging. She knows beyond words that she wants him to come with her, but she doesn't know any words to ask him with.

The woman who speaks with her at Kevin's group home lets her know that there's a cold going around, but Kevin hasn't caught it yet. Kevin beams up at her and proudly proclaims that he never gets sick. Scully privately wonders if his impressive immune system originates, perhaps, from somewhere beyond, like the stigmata, which appears to have vanished away entirely.

"I have something for you," she tells him, when they sit with his social worker in a shabby booth belonging to the local diner. "Are you a comics kid or a sports kid?"

Kevin shows her a smile that utilizes his whole face. "Both!"

His social worker, a perpetually exhausted older woman named Marie, nods feverishly, as though she may have heard a lot about comics and sports over the past few weeks, and might be nearing the end of her rope.

"Well, these are from Agent Mulder." She slides the small stack of comics and the baseball cards onto the table. She's been almost giddy in her excitement to give him these, but now it's tempered slightly by nervousness, and she takes a gulp of her coffee. She needn't have worried, however, because Kevin's eyes grow to the size of saucers.

"No way!" he exclaims, shoving his plate of half-eaten pancakes out of the way so he can pull the pile towards him. "I love Spider Man!"

Scully smiles, feeling warmth fill her chest. Seeing him again… he doesn't look as much like Missy as she remembered, or perhaps imagined, but she watches him tear open the packs of cards with slightly thoughtless delight, and that's all Missy. He turns to Marie and asks if she wants any of them, since there are so many, and that's Missy too. She feels a lump forming in her throat, so she takes another swallow of her coffee.

"I guess we'd better write Agent Mulder a thank-you note, right Kevin?" Marie prompts, diplomatically turning down Kevin's proffered baseball cards.

"Oh yeah," Kevin assures her, nodding enthusiastically. He reaches across Marie to where his pancakes were earlier banished and grabs a piece of bacon to stuff in his mouth. "He's your boyfriend, right?"

Scully chokes, and proceeds to spend the next two minutes coughing up coffee into her napkin while Marie tells Kevin that he knows better than to ask nice Agent Scully questions like that.

She calls Mulder when she gets back to the motel that night, tired and happy and full of new facts about Spiderman. He seems surprised when he picks up the phone, but she rolls her eyes and reminds him that he'd wanted to know what Kevin thought of his gifts.

"So, is he a sports kid or a comics kid?" he asks, voice crackling over the phone.

She drags the phone onto the bed with her, kicking off her shoes and curling up on her side. "Both, like you. He was really excited about them."

Mulder chuckles, and it warms her. "He oughta be, if he likes Spiderman. Those are some classic issues."

"Where'd you get them?" She's not really all that interested in his answer, but she's used to his voice, and she's sleepy, even though it's not that late, and the thought of Mulder talking her through something as mundane as shopping is strangely appealing. Suddenly, she realizes that there's been silence on the other end of the line for a little too long. "Mulder?"

Somewhere- on his couch, probably- he shifts. "Yeah- yeah, I'm still here. They, uh- they're mine, actually. Well, they're Kevin's, now. And I don't want them back- I want them to be his, I mean. After my dad died, my mom, uh, gave me a box of my old stuff that I guess had been knocking around his house for years. It's just been sitting in my hallway, so… yeah. Anyway."

"Mul-der," she says, softly. "That was really sweet…"

She hears him laugh, and she can imagine him, embarrassed, sweeping a hand over the back of his neck.

"What did you do today?" she asks, feeling suddenly as though she really wants to know.

"Ah, I went for a run and then I mostly just sat around. It's after dark and I think you're the first person I've spoken to all day."

She yawns, and then feels a little bad about it, because his answer makes her sad.

"Am I boring you?" he asks, and she can hear him smiling through his teeth.

"Well," she responds, yawning again, this time half on-purpose, "you didn't have a very interesting day, did you?"

He chuckles, and it's like he's cradling her face between his hands. She can hear Missy in her head, saying you need to melt a little, and she feels herself relaxing groups of muscles that she's not even sure she can remember the names of at the moment.

"Scully?" He almost whispers it, his voice husky. "You okay? You sound a little under the weather."

"'m fine. Just tired."

She knows he's smiling again. She doesn't remember falling asleep.

Chapter Text

When she wakes up in her motel on Sunday, the first thing she registers is that she can't breathe. Immediately, her adrenaline starts pumping, and she reaches for her gun, hoping that Mulder will at least hear the shot through the shared wall of their adjoining rooms, but as she swings her legs out of bed and sits up, she realizes that her head is spinning, and the suffocation she's experiencing is from the worst head-cold she's ever felt. Furthermore, Mulder can't hear her labored breathing because he's home in D.C.

Slowly, she lowers herself back onto the mattress. The duvet has been kicked onto the floor, and the sheets are soaked beneath her. Apparently Kevin can't get sick, but he can definitely be contagious. She lets herself groan, pressing her palms against her closed eyes, and even though there's no one to hear her, it helps a little.

Taking stock, she decides that she has two options:

1. Take as much ibuprofen and acetaminophen as is medically recommended for the fever that she definitely has, buy some cold medicine at the closest gas station, and soldier on.

2. Go home, somehow.

Realistically, she should leave. There are kids in Kevin's group home who aren't sick, and neither is Marie, so it would be selfish of her to knowingly infect them just because she wants to spend more time with Kevin. Groaning again, she rolls to the other side of the bed, where the sheets are cool and dry. She's shivering, she knows- freezing, even though her camisole is sticking to her skin. The longer she's awake, the more she's conscious of the fact that her whole body hurts.

She has to get home. She has to, really. She's been so looking forward to seeing Kevin, and the fact that she shouldn't, combined with how her throat feels scraped raw and her limbs feel like lead, makes her want to cry. She dislikes driving for hours on the best of days (she lets Mulder do it, with the seat pushed all the way back to accommodate his lankiness, one arm thrown lazily over the wheel), but today she knows that she can't- she just can't do it, and knowing that she can't do something is not a feeling that has historically sat well with her.

Mom is visiting Bill, she tells herself. You can't call her because you can't call Bill. Charlie is too far away. Dad is dead. Missy's dead. You know what needs to happen next.

Face flushing, she screws her eyes shut and reaches for the phone. Apparently, she can punch in the numbers without looking anymore, and she isn't sure how to feel about that. It only rings once before there's a loud shuffling on the other end, and then she can hear his breathing. Daring to open one of her eyes, she glances at the alarm clock and registers that it's 6:17am. On a Sunday. She knows they've called each other at worse times, for cases and life-threatening situations and the comfort of knowing that someone out there understands the horrifying things one can relive only in sleep. Still. Embarrassment has been a close friend of hers since adolescence, so this only happens when she needs- when the terror wins out and no one else would understand, and even if they did, she has no one else to call.

"Scully?" His voice is dripping with the soft edges of sleep, and it would make her smile if she didn't feel so sick and so guilty.

"Mulder? It's me," she rasps. Her throat screams, and she swallows heavily, which only seems to make it worse.

"Hey, what's going on?" She opens her mouth to reply, but stops when he pushes on. "You sound weird."

She tries to roll her eyes, a knee-jerk response, but it's very painful and her head is pounding. "I'm sick."

"Yeah, you sound like it."

"No, I'm really sick, Mulder. There's this bug going around Kevin's group home, and I think he gave it to me. I know I'm just going to get sicker, and my fever is too bad for me to responsibly drive for six hours, so I- "

"I'll come get you."

"What?"

"I'll come get you." She can hear him standing, probably tugging on his jeans.

And she wants that- God, she wants that, but it doesn't stop her eyes from burning with the mortification of her own need. There's a part of her- a weak, traitorous part of her, likely in league with Missy- that thinks maybe if she's sick (not too sick, not as sick as the chip in her neck threatened to make her), she'll have an excuse to melt a little.

"What about my car?" she croaks, pushing a stray lock of curling hair behind her ear.

There's a loud rustling, and she realizes he's probably pulling a t-shirt over his head, the phone cradled by his shoulder against his cheek. "I'll fly to Ohio, and then we'll take your car home."

She opens her mouth to say something, to thank him, but before she can, he's speaking again. "Just hang on, Scully- I'll call you from the airport when I get there."

A few hours later, Scully is awoken again, this time by a soft knock on the door of her room and Mulder's voice calling for her. She tries to shout that she's coming, but it catches in her throat and kickstarts a coughing fit that doubles her over as she rolls out of bed and lurches towards the door. She shivers as she slides aside the deadbolt and undoes the lock, and it's only when her eyes meet his that she realizes how she must look, wearing a giant t-shirt she'd had since med school and soft cotton shorts, her hair curling, sticking to her face and the back of her neck. Sweaty, shivering, spent. She suddenly thinks to be grateful that she's not wearing one of his shirts, loaned to her for one reason or another and then forgotten about. They're soft and large, perfect for sleeping in, and if she's at all disappointed that they now smell like her laundry detergent and not his apartment, it's not anyone else's business, is it?

When Scully calls him, he's dreaming about Samantha. Ever since last year, when he'd thought for maybe two days that she wasn't entirely lost to him, when he'd looked at that young woman who'd called herself his sister and seen something true within her, he's had the same dream in different permutations. Not every night, but more than once a month. Sometimes she's still eight, missing a tooth and tripping on the long nightgowns that their mother buys her, but more often she appears as she did that day on the porch, when they'd had their first conversation in 20 years. She has thick, curling hair and she's tall- long, like him. It makes him wonder when her growth-spurt would've been. It makes him wonder if his hair would curl, if he let it grow. In his dream, she calls him Fox. It only makes sense- she is also Mulder.

When Scully calls him, he's dreaming about Samantha, but Scully is there too, like always. It doesn't make sense, but it's only a dream, so it doesn't have to. They're on the Vineyard, the three of them. They're staying in the house he and Samantha had grown up in. Sometimes his parents are there, happy in the silent way they were when he was young. It's always summer.

When Scully calls him, Samantha is inviting her up into the attic. Laughing, she says that he's allowed to come too if he promises not to be mad.

"I'm sorting your old comics," she says. "Dana's going to help me."

"You don't like comics," he tells her, and he realizes as he says it that he has no idea what adult Samantha likes or dislikes.

"I always wanted to read these when we were kids, but you never let me." She flops a stack of comics onto the floor of the attic. "You thought I'd let something happen to them. Now we're picking out comics for Kevin Kryder."

Seated cross-legged next to his sister, Scully looks up from her stack, tuts at him, and pulls a face. Despite himself, he smiles.

"You've got it bad, don't you?" Samantha cries, grinning. He sputters and his head swings over to her, and then back to Scully, expecting to see her blushing and indignant, but she doesn't seem to hear them. She pushes a few issues of Spider-Man into a stack together, taps them neatly on the floor so they lay flat against each other, and exits down the stairs.

He shakes his head, feeling Samantha's eyes on him. "How obvious is it?"

"You'd rather spend time with her than spend time alone, so, yeah, that makes it pretty obvious."

When Scully calls him, he's dreaming about Samantha, but she needs him, so (immediately, instinctively) he's pulling on his clothes and grabbing his wallet, and then he's at the airport, and then he's in Ohio, and then he's outside her hotel room, and then he's staring at her, small and sick and someone he would fly anywhere for, if she even intimated that he would be wanted there.

“Hey,” he says, softly. “How do you feel?”

Her lips, paler than normal (but still more lovely than they have any right to be, much like the rest of her), part gently. She’s flushed, blue eyes hazy with sleep and what he thinks is probably pain. She looks down at the floor and seems to realize that she's called him here on a plane from Washington, and he's heard her horrible, racking coughs through the door. She can't hide this, and there isn't much point. "Not great."

He lamely holds up the shopping bag in his left hand. "I come bearing gifts."

Her mouth twitches with the beginnings of a smile and she steps back so he can enter the room. It's a utilitarian affair, with all the basic necessities covered: bed, nightstand, chest of drawers. Her belongings (most of which he recognizes, to his own, private delight) are scattered across the room in a way that they never are when he's in her apartment, and when he turns to her he finds her biting her lip, eyebrows furrowed.

"Sorry about the… " she waves a hand to gesture around the room as the words escape her. "All this."

He goes to assure her that she's allowed to have a messy hotel room during the only vacation he's ever known her to take, even if it's only a weekend in Ohio spent visiting a stigmatic 10-year-old, but she's speaking again before he can, one hand tugging absently on a rapidly frizzing curl.

"I guess I fell asleep after I called you, so I didn't have time to clean up or anything. And I look about as put-together as the room does. So. Sorry about that."

"Scully, you have a fever," he reasons, setting his plastic bag down on the bed. "I could tell you were sick over the phone. I think that's a pretty good excuse not to look your best."

She wrinkles her nose as if she's planning to argue, but he watches as a shiver works its way through her and leaves her trembling. He knows that she's unused to asking for help and even less used to receiving it, so he decides to take action. Springing forwards, he organizes the pillows into a small pile that he hopes will be comfortable to lean against, patting the mattress when he finishes. She smiles gratefully and sits, settling back against the pillows with a soft sigh of relief.

Scully realizes, watching Mulder putter around her space (setting up her new box of tissues, putting batteries into the brand-new thermometer from the convenience store, stealing the quilt from the empty room next door) that it was silly to doubt that he'd come.

Chapter Text

Scully still feels awful- she has to wait for her fever to break and her cold to clear up before she can get any real relief- but it comes as a surprise to her how much easier she breathes when Mulder is inside the room. Think maybe you need more than just a ride, Dana? Missy chides, hovering smugly somewhere near her amygdala. Or maybe a ride is just what you need-

"Shut up," she mutters softly to herself, making a fist around a small section of the quilt wrapped around her shoulders.

"HUH?" Mulder shouts from the bathroom.

She tries to shout back, but she can't make her voice loud enough, so she just exhales angrily through her nose and tries to pretend everything is normal. A few moments later, Mulder pops into the bedroom again, drying his hands on a towel.

"Hey, did you say something?" he asks, tossing the hand towel over onto the chest of drawers and coming to sit on the edge of the bed in front of her.

She shakes her head, feeling a flush creep traitorously up her neck. This is hardly the first time he's seen her without her burnished shell of professionality- they're always traveling together, and neither of them keep their work life and their home life particularly separate anymore. It's not unusual for him to knock on the door of her hotel room with a new idea, and she'll almost always answer it, even after she's changed out of her office attire. It's a level of intimacy that they reached at a certain point, the acknowledgement that they were friends- close friends- as well as partners.

This, though- she's never looked like this in front of him before. Not unless they were in a life-threatening situation and she had bigger things to think about than her own insecurity.

His general intensity is definitely a part of it. When he sits on the bed in front of her and rests his gaze on her face, ducking his head to meet her downcast eyes, there's no doubt in her mind that he is looking and no part of her will go unnoticed. Mulder has many flaws, but a lack of attention paid to her is not one of them. Sometimes it gets in the way, but in general she allows it, resolutely ignoring the warm flutter of delight that licks its way up her spine at the thought. Right now she is gross and sick and even though she needs him there and she's very grateful that he came, she fervently wishes she felt well enough for a bath.

"Scully?" he asks. She looks up. "Whats the matter?"

A lot of things, she thinks, looking down again. "Nothing."

She hears him sigh, and some latent piece of childhood begins throbbing inside of her at the thought that she has disappointed him. She realizes (knows) that he wants the truth about her just as much as he wants the truth about everything else in the world. Mulder spills out, overflows, feels it all again and again, but she isn't like him. The words don't come. She envies the beauty of his cracked-openness, for all the pain she knows it causes him. She opens her mouth, and her throat dries up, and the words don't come, and she is small and twisted-up and tightly-wound. Suddenly, though, she feels his thumb pressing gently into the furrow that has formed between her brows, smoothing it, and when his fingers find their way beneath her chin, she finds that she's ready to meet his eyes again.

"Hey," he says, smiling. "There you are."

She takes a long breath. "Here I am."

"I was gonna run you a bath." He angles his head towards the bathroom, and she could almost kiss him for that.

"I probably can't take one," she tells him. "Since I have a fever, I mean. The heat makes me feel sicker."

His face falls and leaves her wishing more than anything that she'd summoned him here under false pretenses. In a perfect world, she isn't sick at all- she can let him draw her a bath, however unorthodox that might be for two purely platonic coworkers.

"If I could just wash my hair…" she mutters.

He reaches out and wraps a stray curl around one of his fingers. "I like it when it gets like this."

"What, messy?"

He pulls the curl lightly and lets it go, so it springs back into shape. She'd spent her teenage years praying for hair like Missy's- straighter, more auburn and less red- before feeling guilty and praying for an end to world hunger.

"If you want," he begins, pulling back his hand, "I can help you- we can do it over the sink or something."

She considers it. Her knee-jerk response is no, but she's aware that it's probably a good idea, and Mulder looks so hopeful. She sighs. "'Kay."

Their journey from bedroom to bathroom is rocky. She sways as she stands, and the world tips beneath her. When he wraps an arm around her waist to steady her, she sighs miserably, even as she sinks into him.

"This okay?" he asks. "You alright?"

She huffs. "This sucks, and I feel like death warmed over."

He laughs at that, so heartily that she can feel it where they're pressed together, and it doesn't suck quite as much.

Mulder decides that Scully's pseudo-bath will be room-temperature; not so cold that it's uncomfortable, but not hot enough to make her queasy. He guides her towards the closed lid of the toilet once they're in the bathroom, but she makes a small noise of dissatisfaction and he can't have that, so she stays pressed to his side, a trembling lick of flame, as he turns on the faucet of the sink and waits for the water to warm.

"Thanks," she sighs, her slender hands grasping the sides of the basin before them. He doesn't respond. To say you're welcome seems to somehow imply that thanking him is necessary, which it isn't, as far as he's concerned.

"Do you- how do you want to do this?" He mimes taking off his shirt and then gestures towards the sink. His instinct is to make some sort of joke- something dirty to make her roll her eyes at him- but she already looks so miserable that he thinks better of it.

She sighs again and gives a small shrug, blushing. "I'll just keep the t-shirt on. It'll get soaked, but I can change."

He nods too many times, like the mental image of Scully in a wet t-shirt doesn't do anything to him. Clearing his throat, he waves a hand towards the running water.

"Ladies first."

She smirks. "Chivalrous." Ducking her head beneath the faucet, she eases her mess of curling hair under the stream.

As the water reaches her scalp, she lets out a soft hum of satisfaction, and he can feel that sound within his own body, as it crawls inside him and makes a home for itself somewhere inside his chest. He's suddenly overwhelmed by such a terrible fondness for her- a feeling even stronger than the one that surges within him every time he finds that she has fallen asleep on his shoulder- and he just has to do something with it, has to use his hands, so he slides his fingers into her hair.

Scully stiffens, and he stills, but then she's saying "no, no- it feels good."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, the fascia there can carry a lot of tension."

I don't want you to carry tension anywhere, he thinks. I want you loose-limbed and comfortable and happy in all the ways you deny yourself.

Instead, he says: "I oughta give you a massage sometime. I've been told I have a gift."

"Mmm," she murmurs. "Big hands."

"Big everything," he replies, and she scoffs. He lathers her up with shampoo but forgoes conditioner or anything fancy, because she's beginning to seem tired. Leaving one hand lingering in her hair, he shuts off the taps and reaches for the towel. As she straightens, wiping her nose furtively and glaring at him when he smiles, he realizes that the top half of her giant t-shirt is soaked, clinging to her like saran wrap.

He coughs and points back towards the bedroom. "I'll grab you something else."

"NO- " He stares at her. She starts again. "I mean, you don't have to. Could you actually… "

She seems to lose her nerve. He almost laughs when she buries her face in the towel and groans loudly, but she clearly feels so awful that he manages to restrain himself. Anything, he thinks. I'd do anything for you. The clarity with which he knows this is almost frightening, but he's known it for so long that it's lost some of its edge.

"What is it, Scully?" he asks, pulling the towel away from her face.

She shuts her eyes tightly. "Could you… pick up Kevin from his group home? And bring him here? Just for a little while, before we leave."

He's about to tell her that of course he can do that, even though the idea is a little daunting, but she rushes on, apparently under the misapprehension that he might need a reason other than Scully wants me to.

"It's just that I know he was looking forward to seeing me today, and he really doesn't have anyone, Mulder. I'd feel so bad if I just left- " Her voice breaks, and she begins coughing- awful, rattling coughs that seem too big for such a small person. He rubs her back until it's over, but he leaves his hand there as she seems to deflate, sinking back against him again. "I don't want to let him down."

He brings a hand down to cup one of her cheeks, warm with fever and exertion. "You couldn't, Scully. I'll go get him."

Chapter Text

By the time he and Kevin are halfway to Scully's hotel, Mulder has decided that someone must've given this kid coffee or something, because he has not stopped talking since Mulder re-introduced himself back at the group home. He'd quirked his head to one side (reminding Mulder absurdly of Queequeg) when he'd noticed that Scully wasn't there, but then he'd smiled and asked if Mulder had come to steal his comics back. He's a clever kid, Mulder thinks. Resilient. Losing people at around that age is something Mulder has experience with, and he's not sure he coped with it nearly as well. Although- he looks over to Kevin, who is attempting to brace the bottoms of his sneakers against the door of the glove compartment- maybe it's just easier for him to laugh than cry. Wincing, he notices a streak of dirt that Kevin's shoe has left on the airbag paneling. He chuckles and swats at Kevin's legs.

"Hey, get those off there."

Kevin's eyes widen when he notices the dirt, and he tries to wipe it away with the sleeve of his flannel. "Are you gonna tell Dana? You probably are, right?"

Mulder laughs and shakes his head. "Hey, I won't if you won't, but she's so sick right now that I bet she won't even notice."

Kevin perks up at that, before wrinkling his nose at the dirt on his sleeve, which makes Mulder smile.

"So, are you and Dana, like, together?"

Frankly, he's lucky he has so much practice driving under terrifying conditions, because when that question comes out of nowhere and hits him like a freight train, it's all he can do not to slam on the break. Swallowing, he focuses on not white-knuckling the steering wheel, and attempts to give Kevin something resembling a casual answer.

"No, why?"

Kevin shrugs. "She just always talks about you, is all."

"Yeah?" He's never been so grateful for his natural monotone. "What sort of things does she tell you?"

Grinning, Kevin waggles his eyebrows. "Why d'you wanna know?"

That makes Mulder laugh aloud, even though he can still feel his heartbeat in his throat.

Kevin leans forward, apparently drunk on his newfound power. "Do you like her- do you like Dana? Is that even allowed? Wouldn't the president have to kill you or something?"

"Oh yeah, I'd have to die," he deadpans.

Kevin narrows his eyes. "Dana says her brother hates you- is this why?"

Mulder laughs again, louder and with more genuine feeling behind it than he can remember doing in awhile. "You're a funny kid, you know that?"

"You didn't answer my question," Kevin posits, smugly. "Either of them."

"Kid, we're not getting into why Dana's brother hates me," Mulder says. "Okay, what are you doing?"

Beside him, Kevin is scrunching up his forehead and frowning while the muscles of his face twitch. He brings his hands to his eyebrows and begins to move them. "Dana can do thi- "

He's cut off when Mulder breaks into raucous laughter. "You're trying to do Scully's eyebrow thing!"

Kevin huffs, suppressing a smile. "I keep trying to do it, but I can't get only one to move, you know?"

"Hey, I'll give you five bucks if you finally get it down," he says, shaking his head.

"Really?!"

Mulder looks over at him and finds him grinning, blue eyes lit up with excitement. I guess he does look a little like Missy. "Sure- I don't know how she does it. All I can do is make my tongue into that weird clover shape."

Kevin shrugs. "Well, I can't do that either."

You've literally been in two places at once, thinks Mulder, knowing he won't bring it up. You've bled from your hands with no wounds. Scully thinks it might be God and I don't know what I believe.

It's only after Mulder sets off to go get Kevin, leaving her propped up against a tower of carefully-constructed pillows, her damp hair slowly frizzing, that Scully truly feels just how sick she is becoming. By the time she hears the frenetic thunking of ten-year-old feet sprinting down the hallway, she's almost completely filled the tiny hotel garbage can with the fancy, lotion-infused tissues that Mulder had foisted upon her. Someone begins knocking very loudly on the door, but then Scully hears a small scuffle (presumably the knocker being forcibly pulled away from the door and chastised).

"Scully?" Mulder calls. "Someone out here is even more excited to see you than Agent Pendrell."

"HI DANA," shouts Kevin.

"'s open," she rasps, as loudly as she can. Immediately, something wearing a green flannel and jeans is flying onto the bed, and she hears Mulder going "woah, woah- " but she doesn't really care. She doesn't know what it is- whether there's something about this kid in particular, or whether there really is something in that biological clock nonsense- but she has so much feeling for this lonely kid, who is currently leaving streaks of dirt on the hotel sheets. She's talked with him almost every day since they wrapped up his case, and now she knows that his middle name is Michael, but sometimes he tells people it's Danger. She knows the names of the friends he had to leave behind when he moved into the group home, how the kids there are scared of him because he speaks in tongues while he sleeps. She knows he misses his mom, even though he doesn't like to talk about it. So even though he's staining the sheets while he squirms closer to her, she doesn't care at all. In her periphery, she can see Mulder hanging up his jacket, staring at nothing out of the window, collecting her toiletries from the bathroom. Thank you, she tries to tell him. Thank you for doing this for me.

"Hi Dana," Kevin says again. "Sorry I got you sick."

"I know you didn't mean to," she says. "I'm just sorry that we can't do something fun today."

Kevin shrugs and looks down at his hands. "I wish you didn't have to leave."

Something tightens inside of her (her father saying goodbye before going off to sea again, telling her to keep her grades up; her father saying goodbye just after Christmas, leaving her with too many questions and not enough faith in the world he left behind). "I wish I didn't have to leave either."

Kevin shrugs again. He already knows that people leave, and he already knows that they don't always come back.

"Hey kid," Mulder says. "Want to help me pack up Scully's stuff? I'll let you look through her medical bag."

"Can I see her gun?" he asks, hopefully.

"NO- " Scully starts coughing again.

Mulder winces, striding over to her so he can rub circles into her back. "Yeah, you touch that thing over my dead body. Probably yours too, if we're being honest."

Scully swats at him with one arm, but she can't really do much more than that. Her coughs taper off with a groan, and she sinks gratefully back into the pillows.

"I'm okay, I'm okay." Pinching the bridge of her nose, she sighs. "Ugh. Man."

Mulder, seemingly satisfied that she isn't about to imminently expire, gives her shoulder a squeeze before moving over to Kevin.

"'Kay, little man, let's get this room picked up. Think you can get it done faster than me?"

Kevin rolls his eyes. "I know how that works. I'm not a baby."

Mulder grins and holds his hands up in surrender. "I got it- you can help me clean because you're a cool guy and you want to give Scully a break."

Kevin seems to think that this passes muster; he climbs off the bed and begins picking things up as fast as he can.

"Hey- " Mulder is elbow-deep in her suitcase, eyes twinkling. "Is this my shirt?"

"Mom," she says, staring miserably into her tea, which has been, for the last fifteen minutes, stubbornly refusing to cool to a drinkable temperature. "He saw. It was awful. Mom, I know you're trying not to laugh."

Her mother puts a hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking slightly.

"Mom- "

"I'm sorry, honey!" she exclaims. "I know, I know. If that happened to me, I would be mortified."

Scully allows herself a pout. The drive back to D.C. with Mulder had been pleasant enough, and she'd slept through most of it, anyway, awakening to find herself covered with Mulder's jacket. Things are fine. Things are fine. Mulder had found his own shirt in her suitcase, neatly laundered and brought to Ohio with her, and, somehow, things are fine.

Snow is swirling outside the windows of her mother's house, and they've settled on the sofa in front of the gas fire. Mom, can I come over? she'd asked, knowing the answer would always be yes no matter how infrequently she asked out of the blue. She doesn't even know what she's doing- the last time she'd told her mother about something like this, she was fourteen and sobbing, because even though she'd pretended to Missy that she hadn't cared about homecoming, she had harbored a secret hope that Paul from biology would ask her and give her an excuse to go. Later, after her mother had kissed her and tucked her into bed with a prayer like Scully hadn't let her in years, she'd heard Missy come down from her room, a vision in blue gossamer on the staircase.

"Why did you keep needling her, Melissa?" her mother had asked. "Every morning over breakfast, every evening over dinner; we both knew she wanted to go to homecoming- what was the point of trying to get her to admit?"

"Mom, why do you think she's crying?"

"Hon- "

"No, I know she cried in your lap for at least half an hour."

"Melissa."

"She's always been like this, Mom! She thinks she shouldn't want something so she just pretends she doesn't, but it doesn't work- you know it doesn't work, Mom."

"That doesn't mean you have to goad her into admitting it, Missy."

"It's just that she's done it forever and she's gonna keep doing it until someone makes her stop."

And then the doorbell had rung, heralding the arrival of Missy's corsage, and Scully, who had stopped sniffling long enough to eavesdrop, began to cry again.

So, no. She does not talk to her mother about these things until she feels like she's fourteen again and there's nothing else she can do. Usually, if she's in desperate need of advice, she swallows her burning embarrassment and tells Missy. Missy would be howling with laughter over this, and by now would've had to drag Scully back to her seat to stop her from running away.

"Mom," she begins, feeling the confession resting in her mouth, pendulous and fragile, "there's this boy- "

"-is it Fox?" her mother interrupts, and Scully sputters wildly.

"Mom, NO. What? No. Also, Mulder is a man, Mom- I'm talking about a boy."

Settling deeper into the sofa, her mother sighs. "If you say so, Dana. Who is this boy, then?"

After finally taking a sip of her tea, Scully tells her all about Kevin, only leaving out the more lurid details of the case itself. I love him, Mom, she wants to say. Somehow, I am changed from knowing this.

But I am too afraid of sounding foolish, so I cannot tell you.

"Mom, can I ask you something?" She swallows. "It's silly."

Her mother smiles, the gentle crow's feet around her eyes crinkling. "I like silly, Dana."

Scully swallows again. "I know Christmas was just going to be you and me, since Bill and Charlie live so far away now, but- well, Kevin really doesn't have any family now, and I hate the thought of him spending the holidays in a group home where I'll just be thinking about him, and… can I bring him to Christmas, Mom? You wouldn't need to get- "

Maggie Scully is already nodding, and suddenly she's fourteen again, but when her mother reaches out and cups her cheek it reminds her that she's thirty and she has a life of her own and it includes a mother who loves her beyond all reason. She sniffs loudly, and her mother smiles.

"You know, honey," her mother says, "if you want to bring Fox as well, he's always welcome."

That shakes a laugh out of her, loose and surprised. She rolls her eyes, says that'll be the day. Her mother raises a single eyebrow, and Scully sees herself.