Work Text:
He doesn’t even attempt to make it himself. Calls ahead to Loeb’s with his order, which he accepts from a stylish young Mexican man whose name tag reads Pierre.
“A shaynem dank,” Mulder says, echoing the grandmother who called Samantha a shaineh maideleh.
Pierre nods. “Bitte, baby,” he says. “De nada.”
***
Mulder clomps up her stairs with Puritan determination. He feels that since he did not cook the food himself he must exert some other effort for it. His soul is at eternal war with itself.
He doesn’t knock; lets himself in with the Home Depot key Scully had made for him around the time that Tooms wanted into her pants for all the wrong reasons. It sticks a little still, even after so many years. He’s rarely had to use it - when aren’t they together?
A hacking noise from her bedroom, something wet being coughed. Spat.
Mulder helps himself to a bowl, a plate a spoon.
“I’b arbed,” she rasps from down the hall. “I’b a Federal Agent.”
“Don’t shoot,” Mulder calls back, hunting down a napkin. “I am a poor boy from a poor family.” Her mother wears Revlon and his wears Guerlain.
He tips some soup and two of the matzo balls into a bowl, wedges one of the challah rolls next to it. He puts the leftovers in the fridge.
Mulder carries the plate down the hall, the nearly-full bowl sloshing dangerously atop.
He enters Scully’s bedroom. She’s been upgrading over the past couple of years, replacing her IKEA basics with good secondhand finds in cherry and walnut. The candle she’s lit smells like white flowers with thick, creamy petals.
Scully is tucked into bed like an Austen heroine, all delicate pallor and genteel unhappiness. Her nose is pink-tipped and raw, hair in a ponytail. She’s wearing a gray sweatshirt instead of her usual pajamas.
Mulder sets the food down on her nightstand, next to a vase of dried roses and her Yaqui slide holster. A speed loader. There’s a well-framed Monet print over the bed.
Pat Conroy’s Beach Music is open face down on her lap, surrounded by crumpled tissues. She doesn’t look happy to see him, her purple-shadowed eyes narrowing a bit.
“Go away,” she says. Sneezes.
“Brought you some soup,” he says, unnecessarily. Points at it, also unnecessarily.
“Bulder,” she sniffs. “Go hobe. I don’t like being fussed over. I have a cold, not hantavirus.”
“Too bad,” he says. “I’m going to. Do you have Vick’s Vapor Rub? You really should have Vick’s Vapor Rub.”
She closes her eyes. Pinches the bridge of her nose, centering herself. “It’s dot your fault I’b sick,” she says, looking back over at him after a moment.
“I dragged you into the woods again. You fell down a hole full of corpses! You’ve been in remission for like…twenty minutes.” He jabs the spoon at her.
She rolls her eyes. “You don’t get a cold frob being in the woods. Or frob being chilly. You get a cold frob a virus.”
He feigns outrage. “Excuse me, but are you contradicting noted excellent mother-slash-world-class-epidemiologist Doctor Elizabeth Mulder MD?”
This sends Scully into a flurry of coughing. She swats at him in annoyance. “Ugh,” she says at last. “You see why I can’t have you here, you’re a lousy durse.”
Mulder takes her hand, pale as a kid glove. He shoves the spoon into it, squeezes her fingers about the handle. “Eat the soup or I’m calling your mom. I’m calling BILL.”
She narrows her eyes again. “You wouldn’t.”
“I think you’re well aware that I’m capable of being overly dramatic when the wind is southerly and the fancy strikes.” He holds the plate before her like an offering to a goddess.
Scully considers him. “You did get us out of the teabwork sebidar,” she observes. “Techdically.”
“I did,” he agrees.
“You bade be sing,” she adds. Reproachful.
He grins. “The angels all were singing out of tune, And hoarse with having little else to do, Excepting to wind up the sun and moon, Or curb a runaway young star or two.”
Scully looks at the spoon in her hand for the first time, as though wondering how it got there.
“Byron,” she murmurs, a little smile. She picks up the roll, examines it. Peers at the soup. Sneezes again.
“Mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” Mulder replies. He doesn’t point out that Caroline Lamb had been Byron’s lover, that she’d sent him a clipping of her pubic hair in the mail. He certainly doesn’t think of the juncture between Scully’s thighs at all, whether it matches the drapes, whether it tastes like kettle corn and Vineyard whitecaps in July. Lobster rolls and saltwater taffy.
He’d meant it, about the sleeping bag. He wishes there had been a sleeping bag and he is so, so grateful there was no sleeping bag.
Scully sniffles again, defeated. “You got be batzo ball soup?”
He thumbs an escaped tendril of hair back from the sweep of her extraordinary cheekbone.
“I did,” he murmurs back. He sets the plate down between them. He peels the roll open, yeasty and fragrant, and dunks it into the golden broth.
He raises it to her mouth.
Scully sucks at it, draws it past her lips. She bites. Chews, swallows. She holds his eyes with hers. She catches an escaped droplet with her tongue.
“Good,” she mumbles. Watches him dip the dry part back into the bowl. “Thank you.”
He feeds her another bite. Her mouth opens like a snapdragon, like an oyster in the tide. She drops her gaze this time. Her guard.
They complete the entire roll this way, and one matzo ball. Silent, slurpy. Scully’s lids droop, her lashes brushing her cheeks.
“Sleepy,” she mumbles, curling onto her side. Her paperback falls to the floor.
Mulder returns the food to the night table. He strokes her hair until she’s out cold, snoring a little. He curls into the bed as well, his nose to hers. He touches her philtrum with his pointer finger. He traces her the tender pink whelk of her ear.
They sleep for hours until she coughs awake, gasping, her thin chest heaving. Mulder rubs circles between her scapulae.
“Go hobe,” she says, knees drawn, leaning against his chest. “You deed to sleep.”
He puts his arms around her, drops a kiss on her tangled head. “Okay,” he agrees.
She’s out again in moments. He holds her upright until he drifts off as well.
They sleep until morning. He feeds her soup for breakfast.
He calls into work with a case of Ebola.