A continuation of my post-Amor Fati scene:
(I feel like Scully would not cope entirely well with the idea that Mulder heard her thoughts.)
She does not change his bandage before she leaves. She changes his bandage and promptly resumes her spot on the couch. She’s acting like she doesn’t want to go home, he thinks, and then he realizes: Scully doesn’t want to go home.
And he really, really doesn’t want her to. He had been in the hospital for a week, in and out of CT scans and fMRIs and other various and more complicated attempts at neuroimaging that Scully had illuminated for him with gentle bedside pedagogy. There had only been fleeting opportunities for this sort of nuzzling they’re doing. And before that, she’d been on the Ivory Coast. No nuzzling for miles.
He doesn’t even want to think about where he’s been. It does not, could not, compare to his sofa, right now, as Scully dozes next to him.
She’s worn out. Scully carries her fears alone, and they are weighty. This afternoon, partial relief had made her guilty. She had cried for him after Diana’s death, and he had felt the ferocity of her love for him burgeoning under her practices of platonic care, as strongly as he had heard it in her head after their encounter with the artifact.
“Scully,” he whispers. He touches her shoulder.
She turns her head and opens one eye. “You ‘kay?”
Jesus Christ, she loves me. He can’t shake it. “I… I’m good,” he says. Then he gets nervous. “I’m sorry to wake you. Go back to sleep.”
“No, I’m up, I’m up. Whaddizzit?” she asks, rubbing her eyes. She turns toward him and leans her cheek on the back of the couch. Then she yawns, too comfortable to cover her mouth, and he grins.
She blinks at him. Her regard is still and strong and quieting.
“Do you believe that I could… hear… thoughts, when I… after the rubbing came into our possession?”
“I need to know, Scully.”
“Do you believe that you could hear thoughts, Mulder? That the artifact truly caused your injury? You—you were taken, operated on, and the damage to your brain is almost surely—”
“Scully,” he says. He realizes he is breathing hard. But he doesn’t explain further. He only says her name.
“What, Mulder?” He cannot read her mind. But he can feel her trepidation. He knows that she sees him, seeing her, and he knows that she is afraid.
Scully is reluctant to give her truths away, and easily dissuaded.
“I know you were in the hospital, Scully. That you came to see me and that they wouldn’t let you, because I was a danger to myself and others, and that you wanted to see me even after—”
“Mulder, I don’t know what Diana told you. I don’t know what Skinner told you. But you were not dangerous. You were in pain.”
“No one told me anything. I knew you were there the moment you walked in the door. I felt you, Scully,” he breathes, and her chin wrinkles, and she takes on that look she gets when compelled to cry.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she tells him. But she does not sound sure.
“I heard you in the elevator,” he says.
“No, Mulder. You didn’t hear me. You—your eyes glazed over, you were experiencing symptoms of seizure!”
He leans closer. Puts his hand on her thigh, and looks at her fiercely. “I don’t mean that I heard what you said, Scully. I heard you. I know I did. I know it was you. It had to have been you, Scully, I—I’ve never felt that—”
“Mulder,” she says, voice tight, like she needs him to stop. He grabs her shoulders and rubs her biceps with his thumbs. He leans his forehead close to hers. “I know it was you,” he whispers.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she protests, and when she blinks, tears come down her cheeks.
“I know you,” he tells her, vehemently, and he feels like a bully.
She shakes her head futilely. “You were with Diana.”
He takes her chin and makes her look him in the eyes. “I know you. I screamed for you. And I heard you screaming out for me.”
“You’re the only one who feels like that,” he says. “For me.”
“The only one who protects me.” He tries to swallow around the lump in his throat. “I know that, now.”
He leans to kiss her, just to the right of her nose, and he feels her flinch. “Scully,” he whispers, heart breaking. He pulls her to him, pressing her head to his shoulder, and she cries harder, in earnest. His strong girl. Fighting it to the death. “I’m not gonna make you say it,” he soothes. He pets her hair.
She does not deny there is something, indeed, to say.
He presses his lips to her ear and whispers. “Look at me.”
“I need you,” he tells her. He kisses her forehead, once.
“I love you. Just…” He clears his throat. “Just tell me when, okay?”
She nods, wipes her eyes. “Okay,” she says, quiet. Still disrupted, but less. “Okay. Yes.”
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