Work Text:
Maggie was not pleased.
“I don’t need any help. I will be fine. I’ll scoot around on my backside and …”
Scully stopped her, “Mom, there is no Earthly or un-Earthly way you are going to be able to get up on a toilet, reach the toothpaste, eat anything other than the crackers you have on the bottom shelf of the pantry because if you try to cook, you’ll burn the house down.”
Charlie cut her off, “mom, it’s either Dana moves in or I do and do you really want your son helping you go to the bathroom. I mean, I will, no complaints but just think about it for a minute.”
“Charles …”
“Hey, even my full name isn’t going to change my mind. It’s her or me, take your pick.”
Mulder seriously loved the whole family at that moment, Scully smirking beside her hulking brother, Charlie’s arms crossed, eyebrow raised, mock challenging the woman who could take his ass down with one cobalt-blue stare. It was the face-off of the century and no one flinched, Maggie holding her own until Charlie dealt the final blow, “I’ll be cooking for you as well, don’t forget.”
She caved instantly, dropping her drug-addled body back to her pillows, “Dana.”
Charlie grinned, “sorry I had to bring out the big guns.”
Scully poked her brother with her elbow, “and you’re okay with me watching the kids at mom’s?”
“Sure. Just don’t scare the littles with too many ghost stories because I know Mulder well enough to know there’d be visuals and a slide show and they’d never sleep again.”
She poked him again simply because he existed and was younger than her, “I’d unscare them with scientific explanations.”
“And put them right to sleep. Good idea.” His grin dropped to smirk, “science nerd.”
Mulder, through all this, had been watching Maggie slowly drift out of consciousness, eyes shut, head rolling slowly to the side. Nudging the two, “come on. She’s asleep and we don’t want to wake her.”
After whispered goodbyes to unhearing ears, they took another five minutes in the hall to finalize dropoff times and other familial nonsense before Charlie headed to work and Scully pulled out her phone, realizing they should probably tell someone in the FBI why there weren’t at their desks.
&&&&&&&&&&
Mulder made it to the Hoover Building by 2pm, heading to Skinner’s office immediately, hoping to catch his boss in the forgiving mood he was when Scully had called earlier.
Skinner’s angry forehead vein rage told him otherwise, “yes?”
“Sir, I was wondering if you’d like to do a quick review of the cases before I write them up or would you like me to leave you alone for five minutes so your blood pressure doesn’t burst your eyeballs?” He really should have known not to joke at that moment, especially when he’d seen AD Kersh leave the man’s office moments earlier but he did and he paid for it by being handed four other incomplete files to deal with and a look that told him he would be doing these files without an iota of bitching.
He left unscathed.
Later that evening, armed with bags of Thai food and guacamole from O’Henry’s taco truck, he headed to her house, having read her text stating, “I need Guac and spice … help me out.”
He complied and her dinner table was soon littered with bags, boxes and single serving forks in cellophane, the feast waiting for her to come home from the hospital, which she did ten minutes after he walked into her living room. Taking one look at the spread, she gave him a smile that made his toes hot and his fingertips itch to touch her, “you are the best text answerer ever.”
Cracking his knuckles, he handed her a paper plate, “have at it.”
It didn’t take long for them to finish eating, Mulder relaying the dazzling story of his day with Skinner’s forehead vein and the now completed files, which were sitting quietly in Skinner’s inbox ready and waiting for Monday morning, “you finished files? Without me harassing you about it? Awww and I missed it.”
Watching her mocking frown face, he shoved her lightly down to the cushions of the couch, “I’d attack you for some lovin’ but I’m tired and need a place to sleep.” Settling his head on her thigh, hand wrapped around knee, “I recall something about wanting to do this but without the clothing interruption.”
“You want to sleep on my leg while naked?”
Eyes closing, comfortable in the world, he snuggled her muscle for a moment, “next time.”
Next time wound up being 4am, when Mulder got up to go to the bathroom and returned to find Scully’s pants gone, afghan covering from neck to the top of her bare legs. He smiled, dropped his suit pants and settled in, Scully commenting once in a sleepy giggle that she had a feeling she’d be getting beard burn in the oddest of places over the next 70 years.
Mulder agreed.
&&&&&&&&&&&
“Do you want to help me grocery shop? Do you want to stay here and Mom proof the house? Do you want to do both? Neither? Either?”
Mulder, having just walked in the front door to Maggie’s house, stopped dead in his tracks, “Mom proof?”
“Yeah. Move rugs out of the way, take breakables off shelves, clear paths to bathroom and kitchen, clean counters and tables and vacuum so she doesn’t feel the need to scrub the moment I turn my back.”
“Your mother sounds like she’s going to be a sneaky handful.”
Smiling at him, beckoning him further than the door jamb, “she’ll be fine but I’d like to make this as easy as possible, plus with all the kids coming, we’re going to have to change sheets and make beds and find a place for mom to sleep.” Scully ran a hand over her face, “good lord, what have we done? We’re going to be dead by Wednesday.”
Mulder laughed, “what’s all this ‘we’ talk, woman? I’m giving you 23 minutes today and then I’m gone until this house population is down below three.”
Without hesitation, “this ‘we’ talk translates to ‘you gave me a red M&M so you are stuck with me and my family for the duration of the universe’.”
He liked her an awful lot at that moment and telling her so by nudging her to the staircase and pointing a step up until she moved and could look him in the eye, he then wrapped his substantially long arms tightly around her torso, “I will shop and cook and clean and scrub and sheet and fluff and move and shift and de-rug all you want me to … just say that whole red M&M thing again.”
After a lengthy kiss, she rested her forehead against him, “I love you, too, Fox Mulder.”
“Not gonna kiss me again until I scrub a bathroom, are you?”
“Not on your handsome little life.”
“Then to answer your original question, I would like to go grocery shopping with you, then organize the shit out of this house and cook until we have enough food to feed an army at a moment’s notice.”
Before she pulled back, she reached around and squeezed his butt, eliciting an eyebrow raise and a jump from Mulder, “that’s a reminder of rewards to come.”
“You’re killing me with those hands.”
“Two points for me.”
&&&&&&&&&&&
By Saturday night, Mulder was downright exhausted. He had no idea how Scully was still standing and not complaining of crushed toes, muscles aches, headaches, cuts, scrapes and general bruising. He felt like he’d run a marathon with his eyes shut through metal piping and broken glass while she stood there in the living room, fresh and pure as a fucking spring daisy.
She gave him a look out the corner of her eye, “doing okay? Dead on your feet yet?”
“Fell apart two hours ago. I’m now just a shell running on automatic.”
Having moved clothes and other sundries there earlier in the day, she scrunched a handful of his dirty shirt in her hand, tugging him along towards upstairs, “come on. My bed awaits.”
He halted her with lead feet and eye squinting, “we’re sleeping on your old twin?”
Because she was in a weirdly tired, weirdly wired kind of mood, she winked at him, “I wasn’t thinking of doing much sleeping at first.”
Well, hell, now he was all for small mattresses and their place in his world, “are you suggesting we christen your childhood bed with raucous nakedness and bed-board bending badness?”
“Alliteration aside, Mr. Oxford, yes, I was thinking of doing some of that tonight, that is, if you’re up for it?”
Simply gesturing with a finger towards the stairs, she smiled and led the way.
Now, there wasn’t any bed board bending or breaking that they knew of but there was plenty of amusement, especially when they rolled out and onto the floor, Mulder landing heavily on top. Scully groaned as Mulder tried and failed to get off her, sheets tangled around his feet and the wood floor cold on his hot skin where the rug ended, “I swear, when we buy our own bed, it will be queen size … minimum. It will be memory foam and have a headboard that doesn’t squeak and for the love of God, it will not be anywhere near your mother’s house.”
He suddenly didn’t weight so much, Scully stopping his wiggling with her hands on his elbows, “what?”
Mulder stilled, then realized what he said, blushing slightly, eyes dropping, mouth quirking in a ‘did I say that out loud’ quarter smile, “nothing.”
Pulling herself up after he shifted for her, she settled her bare butt on the braided rug, leg over his thigh, hand on his knee, “when are we buying our bed?”
“Yeah, um, I didn’t mean to say that.”
She kissed his chin, “but you’ve been thinking about it, I assume.”
Looking at her quickly, he then ducked his head, “apparently.”
Going in for another kiss, this one more north than the last, “well, for future reference, I’ve never slept on memory foam but I’ve heard good things. Now, I need to go clean up and while doing that, I implore you not to look at the weird rug mark I now probably have indented forevermore on my right butt cheek.”
She could diffuse a situation like nobody’s business and truly grateful he didn’t ask her to marry him right then, he shut his eyes, “you have four seconds, then I’m lookin’ and I’m enjoyin’.” Scully scrambled up quickly but was still standing, facing away from him, when he opened his eyes after the allotted amount of time, “you aren’t moving very fast there, Agent Scully.”
Staying still, Mulder’s belly cinched tight as he noticed her hand by her face. Tripping once before standing, he turned her around by the shoulders, knowing what he was going to find …
And he did …
Her hand under her nose, blood seeping in tiny, life-draining drops between her clenched fingers.