DozeCode

Kneeling in the far alcove of his office, Mulder yanks open the bottom drawer of an old filing cabinet and exhales, long and slow. It’s the last drawer he’s searched, of course it is, which means the case file he’s been looking for all morning has to be here. Numbers, dates, and names all flick past in a blur as he thumbs through folder after folder after folder. He’s so focused on the search he’s lost track of time entirely, and everything else seems to fall away.

Even so, he’s distinctly aware of the sound of Scully’s heels in the corridor as she approaches the basement office. The slow, protesting creak of the door as she pushes it open, the dull thunk as she sets her briefcase down on his desk, and the familiar clink of ceramic as she sets down her coffee mug in its usual spot. He’s too focused on the search to even call out a greeting, but he’ll get around to it – just as soon as he finds the damn folder.

He can’t see her from his current vantage point, but from across the room he registers an unexpected sound – a sharp, sudden intake of breath, a few short gasps, and— 

“Huhh–! Hh-hiih…! hhh–? …Huhh’TSSCHiiuew!”

Mulder freezes, fingers poised on the edge of a folder, eyebrows climbing in surprise and curiosity. 

It’s not as if he hasn’t heard Scully sneeze before, of course he has, but those ones have been different – tiny, pinched things that disappear between her fingers, behind the shield of her hand, against the back of her wrist, or buried in the crook of her arm. It’s as if she’s always been determined to make them as small as possible.

This— 

“Hh–! Huhhpt’SCHiuuew!”

—or rather, these, might just be the first, honest-to-god sneezes he’s ever heard come out of her. He had realized early on she’d been suppressing them, but he hadn’t realized just how much she’s been suppressing them.

There’s a pause, a small sniffle, another helpless little gasp, followed by a third:

“Hih…! Hhh…hhhp’TSSCHieuuhh!”

With a private little smile forming on his lips, Mulder resumes flipping through the folders. He has the brief, almost absurd, and impossibly fond thought that if such a thing could even be said about a sneeze, these ones suit her. Decisive. Matter-of-fact. Sincere, even. And judging by the little sigh of relief she lets out at the tail end of the third, they must feel a hell of a lot better than holding them back.

His fingers land on the tab of the folder he’s been searching for at the same time he hears the loud, unapologetic sound of Scully blowing her nose. Mulder’s smile widens with the realization that this whole unguarded little performance can only mean one thing: she must think she’s alone in here.

The entire sequence, if he’s been entirely honest with himself, is more than a little endearing, and unexpectedly revealing. The profiler in him can’t help but start connecting the dots.

Mulder closes his hand around the folder, pushes the drawer shut with his knee, and pops up from behind the filing cabinet like a lanky, well-dressed jack-in-the-box.

“Gesundheit,” he announces warmly, if not a touch louder than strictly necessary.

Scully startles as though he’s just discharged his firearm right then and there, and Mulder arches an amused eyebrow as she clutches one hand to her chest in surprise and spins around to face him. “In triplicate,” he adds, unable to help himself.

She’s standing on the other side of his desk, wool coat still buttoned, black leather gloves still on, a dark scarf wrapped snugly around her neck. Her cheeks are flushed from the cold and she has a small white handkerchief folded and pressed against her nose. Her eyes, bright and blue, are wider than he ever can recall seeing them.

“Jesus, Mulder,” she exclaims, whisking the handkerchief out of sight with remarkable speed. “I…I didn’t realize you were already here.”

 Mulder crosses the room in a few short strides and drops into his chair.

“Clearly,” he smirks, his gaze drifting to the rosy blush now blooming across the bridge of her nose. “Allergic to Mondays, are we, Scully?”

Expertly pretending not to have heard him, Scully slips off her gloves and gestures to the far corner of the office.

“Mulder, what on earth were you doing back there?”

“Acquiring supplementary materials," he answers brightly, tossing the file onto the desk between them with flourish. “Take a seat, Scully. We’re going to go through it page by page, but first, I’ve got a slideshow queued up that’ll knock your socks off.”

Scully looks wholly unimpressed as she slowly sinks into her usual seat across the desk from him.

“I’d really prefer to keep my socks on, Mulder,” she sighs. “In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s barely twenty degrees outside today.” She clears her throat, reaches for her coffee, and takes a slow, indulgent sip.

He had noticed. He’s also noticed the husky edge to her voice, and that when she swallows, it’s with an almost imperceptible wince. Up close, he notices her eyes look a little glassy, and more tired than usual. He’s also noticed she has yet to remove her coat or her scarf, evidently bypassing the coat rack altogether today.

As far as he knows, he hasn’t seen Scully sick before. Not properly. He’s seen her exhausted, stressed, injured, and in various states of consciousness – but never sick-sick. Today she seems more under the weather than simply inconvenienced by it. Still, she’s made no indication that anything is amiss. Mulder wonders how long they’ll dance around the obvious.

He drags the slide projector to the edge of his desk and carefully watches her out of the corner of his eye as she sets her coffee back down on his desk and folds her arms across her chest, clearing her throat again. 

“Not planning on staying for long?” he asks, gesturing vaguely at her retained outerwear. 

“It’s freezing down here,” Scully admits, folding her arms against her chest. “I don’t understand how you can have your sleeves rolled up on a day like this.”

“Guess I’m used to it,” he shrugs. “I seem to recall warning you there was no heat down here quite early on.”

“I suppose you did,” she replies, bracing her body against a small shiver. She sniffles, her nose wrinkling slightly with the motion. “I just assumed you were exaggerating.”

“Me? Exaggerate?” Mulder smiles, feigning outrage as he makes his way around his desk to pull down the projector screen. “I never have.”

It’s fleeting, but he manages to catch the small, reluctant smile that forms on her lips before he crosses the room to switch off the lights. It’s not a laugh – those are even more rare than one of Scully’s full-on smiles – but it’s enough to feel like a reward.

Mulder’s hand brushes Scully’s jacketed arm as he passes her on the way back to his desk chair. He switches the projector on and is adjusting the angle of the projection on the screen when he hears a soft gasp, followed by a sharper, more urgent one from where she sits across the desk.

“Hhh!…hiihh–!”

He glances up to see that Scully has retrieved the folded handkerchief again, pressing it firmly against her nose as she tips forward with a pair of tightly contained sneezes.

“—NGktsh! Hhh…’NGXtt!”

“Bless you,” Mulder offers quietly.

“Th-hhh..thanks,” Scully manages to gasp, already turning a little further away from him. “Excuse me, I…I...! hh’NXKtt!”

“And again,” he adds, wincing a little on her behalf as her shoulders tighten with the effort of containing the sneeze. That cannot possibly feel good. 

The handkerchief is folded about as small as it can possibly get when Scully tucks it away again and breathes out a slow, shaky sigh.

“You okay, Scully?” Mulder asks, keeping his tone light and careful. “Sounds like you’ve got yourself a cold.” 

She gives a small, dismissive shake of her head, and expertly avoids meeting his gaze. 

“It’s just the dust in here, Mulder,” she insists, gesturing toward the projector screen with a little wave of her hand. “Every time you pull that thing down it sets me off.”

Knowing a deflection when he hears one, Mulder opens his mouth to argue, then thinks better of it. Scully is demonstrably allergic to dust – and this office is practically a shrine to it – but doesn’t buy for one second that’s what’s ‘setting her off’ today. 

His lips twitch against the urge to point out that no amount of dusty screens in the world could possibly account for the dark circles under her eyes; the feverish flush sitting high on her cheekbones; or the congested edge creeping into her increasingly raspy voice — but he says nothing about any of it. Her deflection, such as it was, had been loud and clear.

“I’ve told you before,” he says, deciding for the time being to play along, “you’re going to have to learn to co-exist with the dust bunnies down here. They have seniority, you know.” 

That earns him another tiny, fleeting smile before she turns her attention toward the screen and waits expectantly. 

“Now,” Mulder continues, clicking the first slide into view, “take a look at this, Scully”

He launches into his spiel, clicking through the slides as he sets the scene. Duluth, Minnesota. Crime scene photos. Newspaper clippings. More photos. He leans against the edge of the desk as he talks, pointing out the anomalies he’s already identified and glancing back to take in Scully’s expression as he describes each one. She listens intently, like she always does – her eyebrows lifting at all the moments he anticipated they would; asking questions he already has answers to before she finishes each sentence. She reaches for the folder and flips through the pages, following along as he speaks.

Slide by slide and inch by inch, Scully shifts her body to lean a little closer to the projector. Mulder has to bite back a smile when he realizes why — it’s the only source of heat in the whole damn basement other than her coffee. Even inside and bundled up she’s still shivering periodically. It’s a practical solution, and he can’t blame her for it one bit. If he didn’t think the whole unit would eventually burst into flames, he’d leave it running for the rest of the day in hopes it might make her a little more comfortable down here.

Mulder is wrapping up a particularly impassioned tangent about the original investigating officer when he glances over at Scully again. She’s gazing down at the open folder with an intent, slightly narrowed gaze – her brow furrowed, lips parted slightly, head tilted just-so. 

His eyes flick to the slide, then back to her. It looks, at first glance, like she’s deep in thought, perhaps a moment or two away from saying something insightful enough to either encourage his current train of thought, or derail it entirely. He leans forward, eager as always for her input. 

“Whatcha thinking, Scully?”

Instead of answering with words, Scully gives a tiny shake of her head. Her breath catches on a small gasp as she turns quickly to the side, the bridge of her nose wrinkling delicately as her head bobs forward with a pair of tightly-stifled sneezes. “h’NXKtch! Hihh—! …hh’NGKTtsch!”

There’s a surprising amount of force behind them, enough that her shoulders shudder with each restrained little burst, and Mulder can’t help but frown a little.

“...Excuse me,” Scully murmurs, directing her eyes back down to the folder and averting his gaze entirely. Her voice – or rather what’s left of it – sounds utterly scraped thin. She lowers her hand and presses it gently, almost absently to press against the base of her throat. It’s a subtle gesture, one she quickly masks by adjusting her scarf, but Mulder catches it – along with the tiny, involuntary wince she can’t quite hide – and realizes at once how sore it must be.

Still, Scully says nothing about any of it. He’s not sure how much longer he’ll be able to do the same. 

Mulder watches her thoughtfully for a beat, then points the remote at the projector and clicks off the last slide. The screen goes blank, filling the room with a soft, white glow. He figures he has another few minutes to keep the projector running before he risks it starting to smoke. 

“Not exactly the answer I was expecting,” Mulder quips, “but that about wraps up the slideshow portion of our morning. Any questions?”

Scully glances back down at the folder. Her voice, when she finally finds it again, is hoarser than it was before.

“Is this the part where you tell me we’re about to be on the next flight to Duluth?”

She sounds so weary about the prospect that Mulder almost feels guilty as he reaches into his desk drawer and slides one of two boarding passes across the desk to her. 

“Not the next flight, exactly,” he replies, offering her a crooked, faintly apologetic smile. “Our plane doesn’t leave until tonight.” 

Scully sets the folder down on the desk and picks up the boarding pass with a small nod. Mulder switches off the projector and rises from his desk, crossing the room in a few short strides to turn the overhead light back on.

“On the bright side,” he continues, “it’s currently colder in D.C. than where we’re going by a whopping five degrees.” He passes behind her chair and leans in playfully. “It’s practically the subtropics.”

“—Hahhh’kTSCHhh!”

Scully sneezes suddenly, a sharp snap forward that folds her nearly in half as both hands fly up to cover her whole face. Although it’s brutally clipped off at the end, the sound is abrupt enough to genuinely surprise him, the entire sequence taking on a slightly more desperate edge than before.

Mulder reaches out instinctively and rests a hand between Scully's shoulder blades as she remains curled over her lap, unmoving apart from the rise and fall of her congested breathing.

“Gesundheit,” he says quietly, keeping his hand in place. When she doesn’t immediately straighten, he softens his voice even further, and leans in a little more. “You okay, Scully?”

Her answer comes in the form of another shuddering sneeze – he feels the muscles in her back tense beneath his palm as she fights to restrain this one, too.

“Hhh’GXTtshh!”

She straightens quickly, and Mulder reluctantly lets his hand fall away, before taking a seat at his desk again.

“...Excuse me,” Scully manages to exhale, gathering herself with visible effort. “I’m…I’m fine.”

Mulder tilts his head, gazing at her openly. He doesn’t believe for one second that she’s “fine” – and his expression must betray his concern – because Scully, seeing the look on his face, lifts the folder a little higher and directs her gaze to its pages again. “I’m fine, Mulder,” she repeats, a little more firm this time. “Like I said, it’s just the dust.”

“Right,” he says dryly. “The dust.” If she hears the sardonic disbelief embedded in his tone, she gives no indication of it. She simply sniffles again and flips another page, still refusing to look his way. Mulder watches her for another moment and then reaches out his hand, gesturing to the folder.

“May I?” Scully looks up at him and nods, handing it over without hesitation, her free hand pressed lightly against the back of her nose as she attempts to quietly sniffle and scrunch her nose back to some semblance of composure.

Mulder flips through until he finds a paper-clipped stack of eight-by-ten photographs from the original medical examiner’s report, and spreads them across the desk between them. With his foot he reaches over and hooks the stool from the corner and drags it over beside his chair – an unspoken invitation for her to join him. Scully takes the cue and rises, rounding the desk and perching on it the stool next to him. Their elbows bump together as she reaches into her pocket and retrieves her glasses, sliding them on and leaning in thoughtfully.

“I have to say, Mulder,” she says after a moment, “these photos are certainly inconsistent with what the written report indicated...”

He nods enthusiastically.

“...But at what point, exactly, should I have expected my socks to be knocked off?”

Pleasantly taken aback by the pivot toward playful banter, Mulder smiles.

“What, my sixteen-part slideshow didn’t do that?”

Without missing a beat, Scully leans back and makes a show of pretending to glance down at her feet below the desk, a small smile playing on her lips.

“I’m afraid not, Mulder.”

“Good,” he replies. “Given how much you’re still shivering, that’s probably for the best.”

She ignores that, as expected, and returns her focus to the photos laid out in front of them.

“They’re inconsistent,” she continues, seamlessly picking up the thread of her last thought, “but I’d lean more towards poor investigative work as opposed to some…elaborate conspiracy.” She directs a pointed, skeptical look at him and adjusts her glasses with the tip of her index finger, pushing the frames further up the bridge of her nose.

Mulder holds her gaze steady in a silent, unspoken – who, me? – until Scully turns abruptly to the side with a tiny, apologetic shake of her head, her breath catching on a wet, hitching gasp.

“Hh’iih–! hh‘NGktSCHiew!”

It’s a clumsy, half-stifled little thing directed into the crook of her wrist – not fully released, but not fully contained either. Scully’s shoulders shiver and tighten with the effort of restraint at the same time that Mulder’s own shoulders fall a little, watching helplessly.

Scully twists a little further away, both hands covering her nose and mouth now, and forces down a second sneeze.

“hh’NGktsh!”

“Gesundheit,” Mulder mutters, unable to keep the wince off his face. God, it sounds like it hurts.

Scully coughs – once, small, contained – and clears her throat with a harsh scrape of a sound, and something completely, ridiculously irrational and protective rises within him: overt frustration that she is evidently so determined to be polite that she'll readily hurt herself in the process.

As if, after all the things Mulder has seen, he’s going to faint dead away over a sneeze.

“Hh…! Hh’NGXtschh!...Ex-excuse me,” Scully gasps, holding one finger up in Mulder’s direction in a silent plea. “Just one-one s-sehhh—hh’NGKXtshhiih!”

This time, she pulls her glasses off and sets them down on the desk with a careful little click before burying her face into the crook of her elbow. 

“Hhh…’mpktSSCHhh!”

Even as muffled as it is, Mulder can still hear the force behind it, crushed down to almost nothing.

Scully is fighting for control, losing furiously, and he can only watch, powerless, as she struggles through it. He’s seen her have these fits countless times before, watched with both sympathy and fond amusement as she soldiers through flurries of little sneezes with a practiced efficiency – still walking, still talking – while he chimes in with a healthy smattering of bless yous. Sometimes, for good measure, he’ll throw in a teasing: “You still with me, Scully?” and privately delight in the eye roll it earns him. If he really wants to rile her up, he’ll keep a running tally out loud, which once earned him a pinch on the arm that left an impressive bruise.

But this is something different. This isn’t dust or dander tickling at her composure, this looks genuinely uncomfortable. More than that, even, it looks like it hurts. There are tears of irritation visible in her eyes when she emerges from her sleeve and tips her head back slightly with a series of miserable, damp sniffles.

“Scully,” he says, concern and exasperation tangling together as her breath begins to hitch unevenly again, “you really shouldn’t hold a sneeze in like that.”

He tries, gently, to put his hand on her arm, to keep it lowered, but she shrugs him off and turns a little further away, both hands clamped tightly over her nose and mouth now—

“—’NGxt!…’ngkxtshh! Ahh—! kTSCHh! …mmnh…”

The sound that slips out at the end is so small and pained – something akin to a whimper – and one hand flies to her throat and stays there, the furrowed line of discomfort between her brows deepening as she gasps to catches her breath.

He can’t take it.

“Scully,” he blurts, far louder than he means to, “I—for God’s sake, just…would you stop doing that and just sneeze!?”

She straightens and turns to look at him – startled, blinking, wide-eyed, and looking so utterly caught off guard that for a moment all he can think about is how much she currently resembles a wounded baby deer, and how his tone had not landed the way he intended.

…Shit.

Scully's big, blue doe eyes flash with something he can’t quite place – Defensiveness? Anger? Mortification? Shame? All of the above? – and Mulder knows with every fiber of his being that he should shut up. 

Unfortunately, he’s never been very good at doing that. 

“I’m not going to be offended by a sneeze, of all things,” he continues. “I think it’s been pretty well proven by now that the world won’t come to an end if you do.”

He can tell, though he can’t quite place why, that she doesn’t like this topic. Her shoulders are too still, the pink flush of her cheeks has deepened. And of course, that realization only makes him push a little harder. Mulder, when in possession of a thread, will tug it until the whole sweater comes apart.

Scully’s expression has faded from startled to impassive in a matter of seconds. She looks away, looks down, looks anywhere but at him, and then visibly makes an effort to compose herself, lifts her chin and clears her throat.

“Are you…” she starts, pausing to sniffle, her nose wrinkling warningly as she does, “...quite finished?”

Mulder abandons all caution with his reply.

“Are you? Or do I have to sit here and worry that you’re going to burst an eardrum whenever you start up again?”

“I appreciate your concern for my eardrums, but they’re perfectly intact, thank you, Mulder.”

“For now,” Mulder scoffs, which earns him a proper glare as she slips her glasses back on. “You know, Scully, most people—”

“—Most people,” she cuts in, “don’t spend half their professional life wearing a surgical mask and handling delicate specimens. Perhaps if you had to regularly conduct autopsies in full PPE and work in a lab environment, you would also develop the same habit.”

Mulder purses his lips, unable to resist pushing back.

“You’re not in a lab environment now, Scully.”

Her head turns toward him, but she doesn’t meet his gaze this time. “You do it every time,” he continues, and to illustrate, pinches his own nose between his two fingers in fond imitation. “Anywhere. Anytime. Unless you think you’re alone, apparently. Which tells me a lot.”

Color blooms all the way to the tips of her ears, though whether it’s from anger or embarrassment, he can’t quite tell. Probably both.

“I don’t appreciate being profiled, Mulder,” Scully snaps.

Definitely both. She looks – and there is no other word for it – thoroughly flustered, and geniuinely annoyed

He knows he's treading on thin ice, but Mulder is fascinated. 

Scully will readily follow him into the darkness without hesitation, can face monsters and mutants and murderers but this – this – is where she draws the line at intolerable?

“I’m just saying, it can’t be comfortable.”

“I didn’t realize my comfort was under investigation.”

“Maybe it should be,” he shrugs, leaning back in his chair a little.

Scully doesn’t look at him. She just sniffles, picks up one of the photos and peers at it with exaggerated concentration. She shivers a little, adjusts her scarf a little tighter around her neck and studies the photo. She sets it down, then picks up another one – a small sniffle here, a little nose wiggle there. 

Watching Scully’s profile for a lot longer than he probably should, Mulder realizes that her nose is beginning to noticeably run, and further realizes he has no clue how to approach this without making her feel even more self conscious than she already is. Scully appears to notice around the same time he does, and brings her index finger up to rest horizontally above her top lip, pressing it firmly upwards.

Mulder looks around the room for the tissue box he’d moved off the desk earlier to make room for the projector, and locates it on a shelf behind his desk. He retrieves it, wordlessly plucks one out, and offers it to her. Scully takes it without comment, gives a nearly-imperceptible nod of thanks, and tends to matters with a few brisk dabs.

“Hey, Scully?” “Mmmbh?”

He hesitates, one finger absently tapping his desk as he considers his next words thoughtfully. There's a lot of things he wants to tell her. He wants to tell her, first of all that it's okay if she needs to blow her nose, that he won't mind that either, and that it really sounds like she needs to.

He thinks better of it.

He wants to tell her he's sorry – for crossing whatever line it is he's crossed, for making her feel more miserable than she already is, and for making her board a plane to Minnesota for a case that's liable to run them both ragged.

He can't quite bring himself to.

“Maybe you should go home for a few hours. Try to sleep this off while you still can.” 

“Sleep what off?”

Mulder rubs his jaw with one thumb, a strangled sound of exasperation catching in his throat. Answering honestly feels suspiciously like a trap. Yet, at the same time, it’s almost comical: Scully, still in her winter clothes, sniffling and sneezing and shivering her way through the morning as if absolutely nothing is strange about any of it.

“Scully, it’s pretty obvious that all of this…” he gestures vaguely towards her coat, her scarf, her flushed cheeks and obvious misery – “...isn’t just dust.”

“I’m fine, Mulder,” Scully repeats, but it sounds to him like even she believes it a little less now. She sniffles again, and gives another tiny wiggle of her nose. This time, Mulder recognizes the tell immediately. 

“I didn’t say you weren’t,” he counters, pushing the tissue box a little closer, making it readily available without being too overt about the gesture. “But you’re clearly…under the weather.”

“Mulder,” she sighs, rubbing the side of her nose with one knuckle, “It’s nothing. It’s barely a cold. I think I can handle it. And if this case is so important to you, if you’re so sure that it's an X-File, if you don’t mind, I’d like to focus on trying to understand why.” 

Mulder opens his mouth to argue, and thinks better of it. He honestly hadn’t been expecting the admission to come at all. He wants to say something, but instead he finds himself wholly distracted, watching her in profile as the next sneeze gathers in slow, helpless increments.

Scully's eyes narrow. Her chin lifts a fraction. Her lips part softly on a breath that doesn’t quite settle, and continues to rise in shuddering pulls. She raises the tissue up with both hands, hovering uncertainly near her face – and he can’t look away.

The faint pull of her brows. The quick flutter of her lashes. The slight flare of her nostrils. The delicate quiver of her lips. The hitching pulls of her breath, a raspy sound caught in the back of her throat, each little gasp sharper than the last.

Then, one suspended second – a tiny, trembling pause that draws her whole frame taut…

…and at last she tips forward into the tissue with a full-body release.

“Hhh’etSSCHhiiewwh!”

The sound of it is so open and honest after all those harsh painful little stifles, that Mulder himself actually sighs in relief.

Scully lowers the tissue and for one brief second turns to meet his gaze. Whatever it is she sees in his face – curiosity, maybe, or simply too much attention – seems to determine her next move. She rises, a little too quickly, and Mulder tilts his head slightly, studying her with quiet curiosity.

“I’m going to get a coffee,” she says, her voice stretched thin. “Excuse me.” 

Mulder says nothing. He simply watches as Scully rounds the desk and plucks another tissue from the box sitting next to her still-steaming coffee mug as she continues on her way. 

He’s still watching when she reaches the doorway, stops short with a sudden gasp, and folds forward at the waist, fully submitting to another open and utterly unguarded sneeze.

“Huhh’ihhtSCHiiuew!”

A small smirk tugs at one corner of his mouth as Mulder watches her disappear around the corner, listening to the brisk little rhythm of her heels receding down the hallway.

“...Attagirl,” he murmurs to the empty office, shaking his head fondly.

Mulder taps his finger thoughtfully on the edge of the file open in front of him, and mentally adds a whole new page of notes to the file he’s been keeping since the day Scully was first assigned to work with him.