Back & Blessed

“Bless you,” Scully replies instinctively, picking up her sentence where she left off. “I haven’t found anything of relevance in any of these files, and it’s...well, it's not getting late. It is late. I think we should pick this up again tomorrow.”

“There has to be something in here, Scully,” Mulder says, not looking up from the spread of papers and photos covering his desk. “I’m not ready to call it qu-quits just y-yehh…yehhhh—EHh’dtTCHioo! Huh—! HUHrr’rtSSCHioo!”

Scully opens one eye and squints at him, wondering at what point she should broach the topic of the obvious head cold he’s been developing throughout the course of the day, which is now, evidently, beginning to hit him like a ton of bricks. 

Mulder hasn’t said anything about it. He’s so focused on the task at hand that she’s starting to wonder if he’s even noticed that he’s been sniffling and sneezing his way through the last several hours. 

“Bless you,” Scully repeats, frowning faintly as Mulder lowers both hands from where he’s once again hastily cupped them over his nose and mouth. She wrinkles her nose disapprovingly as she watches him absently wipe them on his sweater, then tips her head further back against the couch with a weary sigh.

Closing her eyes, she listens to the familiar bubbling of Mulder’s fishtank to her right. She has no doubt he intends to pull an all-nighter in an attempt to solve this case – which they technically have no authority to be investigating – and she isn’t sure how to talk him out of it this time. It's tempting to fall asleep right here - it's certainly not the first time she's done so as of late - but she fears he'll still be hunched over his desk by sunrise if she doesn't intervene.

“Mulder,” she mumbles, stifling another yawn. “You need to get some sleep. You barely got three hours last night, if that.”

He doesn’t reply.

With great difficulty, Scully opens her eyes again and directs a stern look toward the curve of his spine, her voice taking on a warning tone this time.

“Mulder…”

“—We still have all those boxes on my kitchen table to go through, Scully,” he interjects . He sniffles, directs a harsh cough over his shoulder, then shoots her a brief, intensely pleading look before leaning back over his desk. “I’b telli’g you, it’s id here.”

Scully peers at him with one eyebrow raised. He sounds worse by the minute, and still shows no sign of slowing down. As if there’s any real mystery as to how he managed to get sick in the first place.

“If that’s the case, then it’ll still be here tomorrow, won’t it?” she shoots back. For a second, she thinks he’s going to answer with something snarky, sarcastic, and entirely unsolicited – no one masters all three at once quite like Sick Mulder – but then she sees his shoulders lift, his head tip back, and—

“HUH’TDSSHiioo!”

That does it. 

With an exasperated huff, Scully slides off the couch and gets to her feet, crossing the small room in a few steps until she’s standing over him. She crosses her arms, raising her eyebrows expectantly when he turns and looks up at her with a surprised, almost sheepish look on his face.

“...What?”

“One more sneeze,” she announces, “and you’re going to bed.”

“Scully, come on. I’m not going to bed yet.”

“Mulder, you’re exhausted and you’re clearly sick. You’re probably running a fever. You’ve turned the heat up so high in here that even I can barely stand it.”

“If it’s that much of an issue, feel free to shed some layers,” he mumbles, turning away again. She rolls her eyes, then reaches around to place the back of her hand against his forehead. He shrugs her off, trying to pull away, but her hand remains in place long enough to confirm her suspicion. It’s low-grade fever, but sure enough, it’s there. 

“You do have a fever,” she says, trying not to sound smug about it.

“It’s warb in here,” he tries, sniffling thickly.

“And you’ve been sneezing,” she counters. "Repeatedly."

“You sneezed about five hu'dred tibes in a row earlier, Scully. Mbaybe you’re the one who’s sick.”

Scully rolls her eyes at his exaggerated statistics. 

“Mulder, I sneezed a few times because you dropped a 20-year-old half-disintegrated cardboard box in front of me.”

“Then this is prob’ly just the dust," he shrugs.

“Mulder,” she says, with as much patience as she can muster, “I am allergic to dust. You are not.”

“You don't know that,” he mutters, reaching for another stack of papers with a heavy sniffle. “I bight be.”

Scully rolls her eyes, and with a firm grip on his arm, gently pulls it away from the hours of work ahead that he has already planned out for himself. 

“Mulder, if that were true, you would have died down in that office of yours a long time ago. C’mon. Get up.” 

He shakes his head briefly, then abruptly ducks into his shoulder, one hand braced against the edge of his desk.

“HUhhrRTSHHioo! Heh…eHhh'dTSCHiuhh!”

Scully slides her hand from his arm up to his shoulder, and rests it there.

“Bless you," she replies briskly. "That was your one more and then some.”

Mulder makes a congested sound of protest and emerges from his shoulder with a thick, gurgling snort.

“I’mb—i'b—”

“Mulder,” Scully says, gentler now. “Please. Just...for me?”

Maybe it’s the tone of her voice. Maybe it’s her touch on his arm. Or maybe it’s the words she’s chosen, but something seems to get through. He gives one last longing look at the papers on his desk then seems to forget whatever argument he meant to make next. He blinks once, slow and heavy, and nods.

Scully helps him up, steadying him as he gets to his feet and sways slightly. To her surprise, he curls towards her, folding himself down until his forehead comes to rest against her shoulder. It’s an awkward angle, really – this tall, feverish man trying to make himself small enough to fit into the space she occupies – but he manages anyway, and Scully braces herself against his weight and brings her hand up and around to cradle the back of his head.

“Hey,” she murmurs gently, turning her head just enough that her lips brush against his temple. “You okay?”

“Mmmb...” He sniffles against her shoulder, his voice muffled and weak. “Dizzy.”