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“Don’t,” Scully snaps, shoving herself up on shaky arms, though her voice remains clear and harsh. And her eyes, blazing oceans, “don’t start, Mulder.”
Mulder opens his mouth but can form no more than a silent vowel. His chair pulled close, his knees squashed against her hospital bed, pins and needles in his ankles. The day is overcast and the earth is painted in greys and shadows. Good, thinks Mulder.
“Shut up,” she scowls, “listen-” she covers her mouth and coughs, wet and harsh sounding, her boney shoulders shaking. When she drops her hand and wipes her palm off with a tissue, they both pretend not to see red.
Mulder grinds his teeth and nods once, the muscle in his jaw twitching.
“This was my decision, it would still be my decision, even if I knew-”
“Scully,” he chokes.
“Don’t take that away from me, you’re so much - so much better than them, Mulder-”
“Scully,” he begs. She curls forward and he leans up, with a palm on the back of her neck he brings her head onto his shoulder. His other hand winds around her back, her pointy spine digs into his forearm. Traffic passes by her room’s ajar door, but for a moment they are quiet. He tries not to cry, he spends a lot of time trying not to cry these days.
“Has Jr said anything to you?” Scully murmurs, drawing back to rest against the pillows and trapping his hand, he feels her spine and the lines of her ribs uncurl beneath his palm. “Because if he hasn’t yet, he probably will,” she sighs, eyes on her fingers which fiddle with creases in the sheets.
“Why?”
“Because he thinks he has the right,” there’s an old, bitter edge to her words, a time dulled knife edge meant for a man Mulder’s only had a single, unpleasant conversation with. He wonders if all the Scullys are so bad at saying I love you . He remembers her mother’s brief anger, her younger brother’s absence.
“We had a brief conversation,” Mulder admits softly.
“What did he say?” Scully’s response is quick and harsh and so very like her his useless heart stutters. You have to put it on me, she’d said and offered to protect him with her last breath. He is cripled and rebuilt, flawed and terrified by her. She treasures him, Fox Mulder. For all his faith, belief in that truth seems inconceivable.
“He had some opinions,” he says diplomatically.
“It’s bullshit Mulder, all of it, he drops in every few years with the same spiel and I let him because he’s my brother and he cares, but he has no right to say anything to you, especially behind my back-”
“Scully,” he says, he will keep saying her name for the rest of his life, Scully Scully Scully
“I’m okay,” he says because he’s not, neither of them are, they might never be again. She reaches out, because she knows, and he tucks his cheek into her cold palm. The sun peaks into her window then. Go away, Mulder thinks.
“Your fingers are freezing,” he says, his lips against her pale wrist, the vibrant run of veins tucked beneath paper thin skin. She smells of copper and lemon hospital soap.
“Sorry,” she says and tries to take her hand away but he catches it in his own, rubs circles on the back of her hand with his thumb. Without her, he is a dead sea, listless and stagnant without the moon and its gravity.
“Don’t be,” he whispers, so quiet it’s just his lips moving. She squeezes his fingers and offers to him a smile.