Visitor (3/13)
by leiascully

Email: leiascully@gmail.com
Distribution: Ask, please

Rating: T for non-explicit sexual situations and some swearing
Categories: SRA
Keywords: Mulder/Scully romance
Spoilers: XF Revival speculation (spoilers through series and 
IWTB)

Summary: Mulder tries to put his life back together after Scully 
leaves him.  

Disclaimer: The X-Files and all related characters are the 
property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No 
profit is made from this and no infringement is intended.

Author's Notes:  I had to get all of my feelings out somehow.  
Stories from all fandoms are archived at 
http://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully.

+ + + + 

3 - Influenza

There's something wrong. He's hot and he's dizzy. He hurts all 
over. It's like coming back from the dead, feeling the aches of 
god knows what that had been done to him, sweating in a cool 
room because his body didn't know what temperature it was 
supposed to be. In the mirror, his skin is greyish. His eyes are 
dull.

He has to look for his phone. It's on the coffee table, under 
the book he was reading last night. It takes him a minute to 
find her number as he squints at the screen.

"Scully," she says, cool and crisp as the weather outside.

"Sorry," he says. "I'm sick."

"What are your symptoms, Mulder?" she asks.

"Hot," he says. "I hurt. I don't look right. I don't feel 
right." His tongue is thick in his mouth. His lips are dry and 
chapped.

"I'll be right there," she says. "Just lie down."

She still has a key to the house. He had no reason to change the 
locks. He wants her to come home. He drags himself to the couch. 
The texture of the leather almost overwhelms him. The rustle of 
papers as the heating kicks on is loud in his ears. He hates the 
way the heat from his breath lingers on the pillow, but it hurts 
too much to move.

He's dozing when she comes in. The sounds of her are so familiar 
that for a moment he forgets that he's sick, he forgets that 
she's gone. It comes back when he tries to lift his head and the 
blood pounds behind his eyes. She kneels down next to him and 
touches the backs of her fingers to his forehead.

"Sorry," he says.

"You don't have to be sorry," she tells him. "Mulder, you're 
burning up."

"Am I dying?" he asks.

"No," she says. "No, Mulder. I think you have the flu."

"You might not know," he says. His throat is sore and the words 
rasp out of him.

"I'll do a flu test," she says, "but you look pretty textbook to 
me." She moves away. The loss of her is like the feel of velcro 
separating. He hears her in the kitchen. Her movements are sure 
and certain. She only has to open one cabinet to find a glass, 
and one to find the acetaminophen. She brings back three tablets 
and a glass of water. He fumbles the pills into his mouth and 
she helps him steady the glass.

"Mulder, I'll be back in a little while. Just try to sleep, and 
drink your water."

"Scully," he says into his pillow. She rests her hand on his 
foot.

"I need to make arrangements for my class this afternoon, and I 
need clothes, and I need to pick up a few things from the 
pharmacy."

"Sorry," he says, and it feels like it's all he's been saying.

"It's all right," she says. "Just sleep."

He does, but not willingly.

"Open your mouth," she says, later, and he's rewarded with a 
cotton swab in his throat. He swallows painfully. "That's going 
to tell me that you have the flu. Normal, human, terrestrial 
flu. Did you get your vaccine?"

He shakes his head wearily.

"Next time, I'll order them in advance and give them to you 
myself," she says. She isn't smiling. She used to smile when she 
said things like that, indulging him in his need for her.

She stands up and walks back into the kitchen. There's a rattle 
and then the sound of the faucet. The stove clicks and catches.

"That explains where my tea kettle went," she says, loud enough 
for him to hear.

"Never went anywhere," he says in the pillow. Not like you, he 
thinks.

She comes out again with a hot mug of something that doesn't 
smell right, even to his limited senses, and one that smells 
like peppermint. It's the wrong one that she sets on the table 
in front of him. "Let that cool down."

He watches her go to the bookshelf and pick up something from 
the shelf where he put all the things she left. She kicks off 
her shoes and curls up in the big chair in the corner, setting 
her tea on the side table they bought together in a little 
antique mall.

"What's happening?" he asks.

"Mulder, I'm not going to leave you alone," she says calmly. 
"You have the flu. You need someone to take care of you for a 
few days."

"No, it's okay," he says, struggling to sit up. His head spins.

"It's not a problem," she says. "You're just lucky your doctor 
still makes house calls." There's a flicker there of her old 
humor, but he's too busy slumping back down to comment. He naps 
and she reads and drinks her tea. She nudges him awake at one 
point and makes him slurp down the nasty-smelling stuff from his 
mug. It tastes as bad as promised. She's carrying a bundle of 
something in her arms - the sheets from his bed. Their bed. He 
hears the washer start.

"You're staying?" he asks.

"You're sick," she says. "Just rest."

He wakes up again when she's carrying the clean sheets back. The 
rustle of cotton as she shakes out the various layers carries 
down the stairs. He lies there, restless and drowsy, listening 
to her make their bed. He helped her do it enough times over the 
years to know her particularly way of folding the corners of the 
sheet under. It always stayed put when she did it. When he made 
the bed it all came undone as soon as they shifted. "Navy 
family," she said once, when she saw him watching. "Everything 
shipshape."

His life is not shipshape. It yaws like a dory in a storm. He's 
not sure the couch isn't rolling under him. He puts his arm over 
his eyes as she comes back down the stairs.

"Could you eat some soup?" she asks.

He frowns at his forearm. "Do I have to?"

"I'll go and make you some," she says. "It would be good if you 
could get some calories into you."

"I can do it," he says. "If you just leave me the soup and the 
medicine. I can take care of myself."

She doesn't even say anything. She just goes into the kitchen 
and he hears the snap and creak of a can opening. In a few 
minutes, he has a mug of soup. He's going to be out of mugs 
soon.

"What are you going to eat?" he asks. He sniffs at the soup, as 
if he isn't too stuffed up to smell it now. Campbell's standard. 
At least it tastes familiar.

"I'll find something," she says, settling into her chair again. 
He struggles to get the soup down as she watches him with eyes 
that give away nothing. He manages to eat all of it, but then he 
sets down the mug and there's nothing to do. She goes back to 
her book. He picks up one of the articles from the coffee table, 
but he can't focus on the words. He reads the same sentence five 
times before he gives up. He taps his fingers wearily on the 
couch. She turns the page of her book.

"Read to me," he says.

"Mulder, I'm not going to read to you," she tells him, but for a 
second he thinks he hears a smile in her voice and he remembers 
the Florida woods and her tuneless croon.

"I can't sleep," he whines, and hates himself for whining. Her 
presence is a precious gift; he can't drive her away.

"Do you want the tv?" she asks.

"I want you to read to me."

She gazes at him for a moment and then down at the page. "'"Oh, 
you get used to anything," I said, annoyed with myself, for 
actually I was proud of the place'," she begins, and keeps on.

He can't follow the story, but just the sound of her voice 
soothes him. He watches the way that her hair slides over her 
face. She looks thinner, now that she's not striding around in 
charge. Her cheekbones cast sharp shadows. She reads to him and 
he drinks her in. Nothing from the pharmacy will soothe him as 
much as having her here does. She's always been his panacea, his 
cure-all. She's always put him back together when he's broken 
down. But this, he thinks, is fixing the cracked mirror on the 
car when the real problem is that the transmission won't shift 
gears. He's trapped again in a vehicle that's hurtling down the 
highway and he wants to stop, he does, he wants to get out of 
the damn car but he doesn't know how and he's afraid that it's 
always been too late. But Scully reads to him and things slow 
down, and if he can't get out of the car, he can at least enjoy 
the scenery.

His life is a car. His life is a boat. He's mixing his metaphors 
and he's too dizzy to care. He runs his fingers over his face to 
feel the heat. The scars on his cheeks have faded, but he 
remembers where they were. Scully's voice goes up and down and 
he just lets it rock him.

When he's drowsing again, she lays him down with gentle hands 
and covers him with a blanket.

"I'd put you to bed, but it will be easier for you down here," 
she tells him.

He thinks or he dreams, that he asks her, "Do you think about 
coming home?"

She pauses at the bottom of the stairs. The light haloes her 
head. She's changed her hair; the red is the glint of sunshine 
now, not of foxfur. "I think about you," she says. "I think 
about us. But I don't say it anymore. I don't want to hurt you."

His heart aches more than the rest of him. When he wakes up, his 
pillow is damp, but he's not sure if it's sweat or tears. She 
doesn't mention talking to him, just takes his temperature and 
makes him drink orange juice and eat toast. She goes out to 
teach a class in the middle of the day after dosing him with 
more nasty medicine. He sleeps, and wakes, and stumbles to the 
bathroom, and remembers to call his therapist to cancel his 
appointment. She sounds disappointed in him.

"Dana's with you?" she asks.

"Not at the moment," he tells her. "She went to work."

"I'm not sure this is healthy for you, Fox," she says.

"I'm not healthy," he snaps. "And I'm her only patient who's 
currently alive. Apparently she has an interest in keeping me 
that way. I didn't ask her to come."

"I hope you feel better soon," his therapist says soothingly. 
"I'll see you next week."

Scully comes back with a book on CD and soup from the deli that 
he likes. "Watership Down," she says. "Although apparently it 
isn't about ships." This time they eat together, him on his 
couch, her in her chair, listening to the book. They've had 
probably thousands of meals together, in the office, on the 
road, in diners and truck stops and whatever restaurant the 
hotel front desk recommended, at their own table in their own 
house. Even when they were sick of each other, they would eat 
together, a moment of detente. This feels like that, and he 
relishes it. There are truths he doesn't need to seek. At least 
this isn't the couch from his old apartment, with the sum of 
their history stuffed down between the cushions.

She stays for the better part of a week. One of the days is his 
birthday; she brings him a black and white cookie and a book 
about string theory. "Happy birthday," it says inside the front 
cover. She signed it "Dana." He tucks it under his pillow so it 
won't get lost among the heaps on the table. Every night she 
takes his temperature and then climbs the stairs to their 
bedroom. He wonders how well she sleeps, if she sprawls across 
his side of the bed. He doubts it. She's always been such a tidy 
bundle of a person. She tells him that his immune system could 
use a boost, that he should start taking vitamins. He promises 
to do as he's told. He doesn't ask her about any of the things 
he'd like to ask her about. He doesn't talk about William. He 
doesn't talk about therapy. He doesn't ask her about work.

"Scully," he says as she's packing her things. He's well enough 
to walk around again. He watches her eye the teakettle and then 
resign herself to abandoning it again. It's got his fingerprints 
on it. Maybe she wouldn't want to carry them into her new place, 
which he hasn't seen. He is trying to give her space. He is 
trying. He hopes she knows.

"Hmm?" she says. "This bread will go moldy if you don't keep it 
in the fridge."

"Thanks," he says, wishing his pajama pants had pockets he could 
put his hands in. He settles for crossing his arms. "For taking 
care of me."

"It would be unethical not to care for my patient," she says, 
and he can't help recoiling just a little. She looks at him and 
softens.

"I do care, Mulder," she says, keeping her distance. "I just 
can't be with you right now. I can't live in the darkness all of 
the time. There has to be some kind of respite. And I can't be 
your only light. I want you to get better. If I stay, then 
nothing ever changes. We just play the same roles and fight the 
same fights and both of us deserve more than that."

He feels weak all over again.

"I'll call you to see how you're feeling in a few days," she 
says. He knows she will. She is assiduously interested in his 
health. She's written journal articles about his recovery. He 
makes a better specimen than a significant other. That isn't her 
fault.

"Take your vitamins," she tells him, shouldering her bag.

The door closes behind her with a sound like a coffin lid.

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Feedback is welcome at leiascully@gmail.com.  Stories from all 
fandoms are archived at 
http://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully.  Scully is 
reading Breakfast At Tiffany's. I have taken liberties with a 
quote from Marguerite Duras.