#feeling wildly and flagrantly self-indulgent tonight

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

HERE IS A PROMPT FOR YOU: scully’s a little sick maybe and mulder tries to be helpful? (maybe he makes her instant ramen bc it’s the only thing he can really make that isnt in the microwave and also hey its got broth? that means it’s nutritious for the sicklies right? :’))

unabashed self-indulgence here because my brain is,,,, slightly rotting shdjdbsj. I fully believe Melissa Scully dragged her little sister out some weekend in mid-1993 to gossip about cute, jerk FBI partners and watch the silly dinosaur movie. you can pry this pointless headcanon from my cold, dead hands.

stop to think if they should

1k words | mid-s2 | tagging @today-in-fic :)

"Mulder, it's me," says Scully's stuffy-nosed voice across the phone line, and Mulder chuckles at how peeved she sounds.

She is the latest casualty to the latest cold bug going around, and had left work early the day before because of it, glaring at him when he called after her to get some rest. He supposes she must be sick of hearing that, after the last few months. First her abduction and subsequent recovery, then the quarantine after their fiasco at Mt. Avalon, then Pfaster. She's back in the field, but it hasn't been an easy time and she's probably going stir-crazy, if not crazy otherwise. She laughs louder now when she laughs, and he can't complain about that, but it's a little desperate, like she's looking for light she can't quite reach.

"Hey," he greets, "How you feeling?"

She sighs. "Achy, congested, and bored out of my mind," she says, then too-quickly adds, "But I'm fine, I promise." Which is when he knows she's not.

He's leaving the office a little late, tosses a bundle of files into the back of his car. "Want me to come over?"

"I said I'm fine, I don't need-"

"I know," he assures her. "But I've heard I'm an entertaining guy, so..."

She hesitates, a silence so thick he can practically hear it over the phone line. "Okay," she eventually says, a little quieter than before. "Sure, if you want to."

"Want me to pick anything up on my way?" He asks, smiling to himself at her acquiescence. "Some food, a movie?"

More hesitation, practically her trademark, and he's already pulling into a supermarket that he knows makes great soup. For someone with a large, obviously caring family, Scully is terrible at allowing others to take care of her. Maybe the old adage about doctors making the worst patients is true, after all. She mumbles a title and he laughs out loud, backtracking when she stammers a quick, embarrassed "nevermind".

"I got it, Scully. Half an hour, tops." He barely shuts his mouth on the casual, instinctive love you that nearly slips out, stunning himself to stillness momentarily.

He does — love her, that is, even if he can't quite pin down what that means. Her abduction proved that; she's quite possibly the most important person in his life and he's still not sure what to do about it. He buys a big container of chicken soup, enough for Scully to have leftovers for the next day, grabs a carton of ice cream — neapolitan, because he doesn't know what kind she likes best — and rents a movie. For now, he can do this for her.

She's curled up in a corner of the couch when he lets himself in, dangling the plastic supermarket bag from one hooked finger. "The party," he says by way of greeting, "Has arrived."

Scully gives half a smile over her shoulder, wrapped in a tassel-ended blanket and draped in an oversized souvenir sweatshirt he'd bought her as an apology in the Anchorage airport, after their disastrous trip to Alaska last year. That, he thinks, feels like something out of a movie. Her nose is red and her freckles are a little hidden by the flush of her cheeks, and she looks a little bit miserable, but miserable is better than genuinely ill.

"I meant to ask," she says, wobbling back and forth on the cool tile of her kitchen floor as he hunts around for bowls and spoons, "Who, exactly, has said you're entertaining?"

Mulder stops his kitchenwide search and fixes her in his gaze for a moment. She's teasing him, yes, but she's also got a hint of genuine curiosity in her bleary blue eyes. "Mostly strangers," he says with a sheepish chuckle. "In bars."

That gets a little bit of a laugh from her, then she coughs raggedly into her elbow and tugs the blanket — which she's holding like a cape, clasped around her shoulders — a little tighter. She points to the drawer where she keeps her silverware, then retreats back to the living room. After presenting her with a bowl — or cup, since it has a handle, but it's too big for him to be sure — of soup, he unveils the last item he brought and watches, maybe a little too pleased, as she flushes even redder.

"I thought you were more of a horror film person," he teases, glancing over his shoulder at her as he fiddles with her VCR. "The Exorcist and all that. Not so much Jurassic Park."

Scully shrugs, embarrassed, and Mulder flashes her a smile so she knows he's just teasing, trying to keep her distracted from her stuffy nose and watery eyes. "Melissa made me go see it with her last year," she offers as an explanation. "Some things are just... fun, I guess."

Mulder is taken off guard by the way she shifts and leans against him when he sits down beside her. Scully has never seemed to be as tactile as he is; she's never rejected his touches, even when his heart gets the better of him and he's probably pushing his luck, but the only time she's openly sought him out was after Pfaster. Now, though, with the television playing and blanket tightly around her, she curls against him almost instinctively.

He can feel the warmth of her slight fever through the fabric of his shirt, can feel her gradually go more and more limp. She's going to fall asleep on him, to the sounds of rain and dinosaurs roaring, and maybe to the sound of his heartbeat, also. He wonders for one fanciful moment if she could hear the way he feels about her through a stethoscope.

Eventually, hesitantly, he slips his arm around her back and draws her closer, her hair frizzing out across his chest. "This okay?" He asks softly against the warm top of her head, and she nods, humming sleepily and sniffling. He thinks she mumbles something about Hollywood science making no sense, and Mulder smiles with his lips still against her hair. If he told her he loves her right now, she might be too out of it from sleep and cold medicine, too preoccupied with what little of the movie she's absorbing as she drifts to sleep, to remember it in the morning. His heart beats a little faster at the thought, and he only says it in his mind. For now, this is enough.