Chapter Text
in the words we speak, babe
somehow I get lost in between
when to suffer in silence
or to break it all with each breath that we breathe
red earth & pouring rain - bear's den
It is just past two a.m. and they were twenty miles north of the sleepy Maine town of Florent, speeding through winding roads, sometimes the paint has worn so thin you could barely see the meridian between the two lanes of traffic. Mulder is fairly certain they were the only vehicle he’d seen on this road for the past hour and a half. There is a non-stop of barrage of all-time greatest 80’s hits on the car radio. Scully is snoozing peacefully in the passenger seat, blazer askance in her lap and scattered atop the open files of one Alder Hawthorne, deceased as of yesterday. The glossy photos, which he’d poured over near as much as Scully had, depicted a man in his mid-30’s, normal height, normal build, with a profusion of forget-me-nots sprouting from his open mouth, splattered in blood. By his head is a pool of these same flowers, and a great deal of dried black blood. It seemed almost like some hot-shot avant-garde photo shoot to Mulder and he imagines walking into an art studio and being told, by some skinny guy with a pencil mustache and cigarette, that it’s emblematic of the struggle of man.
They had worked this town before, before Scully had entered the basement of the J Edgar Hoover Building back when Diana was his partner, and when the sheriff saw this grisly murder, he called Mulder directly, all “shucks” and “if ya don’t mind,” and “make it quick, yknow?” The sheriff’s office faxed over the files presently and Mulder poured over them while he made a particularly unpleasant call to his partner. It was a Friday morning and Scully had requested a rare day off - it was her parents’ wedding anniversary and neither Scully nor her brother, Charlie, wanted to leave her alone for it and had planned to keep her so busy she wouldn’t have any time to be sad. Mulder had resisted calling her in, but after a heated conversation with Skinner that involved a nasty looking book on federal procedure being thrown at his head, he felt he was left with little choice.
So Mulder made the call. He summoned up his courage as the dial-tone rang out. He’d been less afraid of a gun to his head than this.
“It’s Scully.”
“Scully, hey!” Mulder nervously pushed the eraser of his wooden pencil into his mouth, gnawing on it with his canine. He knew he sounded uncharacteristically cheerful but pushes ahead. “How’s your weekend going?”
“No. Uh uh. Not a chance. Not this time.” Scully snarled. “You can’t do this to me, not this weekend.”
“Listen, I didn’t want to do this, but Skinner left me no choice. He said either you go with me or it’s not happening at all. A thirty-something man was found in Florent, Maine, with forget-me-nots shoved down his throat. It fits the profile for either a ritualistic killing or worse, a serial killer.”
“Huh? Um, yeah, Mom, just a min… Yeah, it’s Mulder… Um, I’m not… Just give me a second… … I really, really don’t want to do this, Mulder.” Her voice is low, serious, and pleading.
“I suppose I’ll just have to find a federal agent that takes their job seriously,” he snapped, sick to death of constantly walking on eggshells around her.
“Oh, well then, ”Her voice went hard and there was venom in every syllable. “Sure. Fine. Whatever. Where’s it at?”
“Florent, Maine, about six hundred miles north of DC.”
She swore. “That’s a ten hour drive! Mother…” she let out a groan of pure frustration. He heard the distinct sound of flesh slapping a hard surface. “I’m Chesapeakeake Beach right now.”
“That’s fine, I’ll come and get you. You got an overnight bag packed?”
“Yeah, but it’s not… it’s not the most professional.”
“Ah, Scully, it’s Maine, who cares-?”
“I care, Mulder.” He grits his teeth at the harshness of her words. “But obviously speed is of the essence, so fine. The address is…” She rattled it off so fast he had to scrabble to write it down on a notepad.
“I’m sorry, it was-?” She had hung up on him. He growled and slammed down the phone. “Classic Scully,” he mutters under his breath, throwing on his overcoat and snatching up files. “Fucking classic.”
That conversation set the tone for the rest of the trip. She was testy when he retrieved her from her beachside cabin, all slamming doors and flyaway hairs. He was prepared to make a truce of it, even apologize for insinuating she wasn’t anything but the competent agent she was, but she gave him a scorching look and snapped, “Lets just get this over with, shall we?”
They had stopped only for gas and a mealy drive-thru meal from America’s infamous golden arches. He knew Scully was pissed because she didn’t even object to the fast food, accepting her greasy French fries, chicken nuggets, and diet coke with no comment. Unperturbed, he let her stew, humming along to every song he liked on the radio and even tolerating some talk-show radio program for a few hours. Scully variated from sleeping, writing in her yellow legal pad, reading a thick scarlet-backed book, or staring outside sullenly. When she gave him directions from their worn map, she said the minimal words necessary to get him from point A to point B.
They pass a glimmering “Welcome to Florent, Maine!” sign and Mulder estimates it won’t be long till they’re at the Florent Sheriff’s Station. He’s had god knows how many black coffees from gas stations and feels a little wired. Scully is sleeping soundly, face smooshed against the window, red hair askance. If he turned the radio down, he could her the faintest snore coming from her button nose.
“Scully,” he calls gently, shaking her knee. She jolts awake, papers flying from her lap to the floor.
“What?” She mumbles sleepily, yawning and stretching.
“We’re almost to the sheriff’s station, little lady.”
“I thought we were gonna sleep first,” she’s awake now, running her fingers through her hair and taking a sip of her water.
“Sheriff Yarrow wanted us to look at the body first. The police are operating under the assumption that this is a serial killer, and as such, time—“
“— is of the essence, yeah, I know, Mulder.” She yanks the window cover down to examine herself in the dim light, fussing over
“Well, you don’t have to sound so excited about it,” he mutters. He’d hadn’t slept since seven a.m. this morning, while she’d be dozing all evening.
“One weekend, Mulder. One weekend to be there for my mother. Was that so much to ask?”
He raises his hand, wanting to slam it into the steering wheel, but brings it down with measured speed. “I’ve said it once, probably more than once, but I’ll say it again - it wasn’t my choice to bring you. Skinner literally threw a federal procedural book at my head over this.”
She mutters something unintelligible under her breath and he knows better than to ask for clarification, although his rebellious streaks begs him to do it. She clears her throat then asks, “What about the autopsy? Do we have that yet?”
Mulder takes a deep breath. Scully laughs wildly. “Let me guess - you told the sheriff you wanted me, only me, to the the autopsy?”
“Actually, their town’s only pathologist is on vacation,” he says darkly.
“So some pathologist in a podunk town can go on vacation but I-? Nevermind. I’m…” she exhales sharply. “It’s fine. Lets just… get this over with, shall we?”
“Yes,” he mutters. “Lets.” He takes the turn into the sheriff’s station with a sharp turn, jerking Scully forward then back against her seat. He’s headless of her scoffing as he rips the key from the ignition and slams the rental car door on his way out. He doesn’t wait for her.
The sheriff’s station is the standard affair of tacky, 70’s style wood panelling and the scent of stale, burnt coffee in the air. Sheriff Yarrow and a bedraggled looking deputy unlock the front door to let them in. They’re as eager as Scully to get her into the morgue, visibly shaken by the prospect. Murders were rare in this town, and the idea of a serial killer was terrifying, hence their speed in contacting the FBI. If it wasn’t for the fact Mulder had met Sheriff Yarrow, back when he was just a deputy in '90, they could have waited weeks, even months to have been picked up by the VCU.
Scully is brutally efficient, throwing open her nylon black bag of deathly wonders to extract a clean set of scrubs, hair cover, and face mask and slipping into the attached bathroom to change. She’s a different woman when she returns, an avatar of death, preparing lights, vials, and surgical instruments with long-practiced familiarity. She looks over to Mulder and the sheriff with an eyebrow cocked.
“Well, uh… get out of your hair,” Sheriff Yarrow mumbles politely, obviously discomfited by the pale corpse in the center of the room Scully had wheeled into the center of the room. He and his deputy shuffle out, closing the morgue doors securely behind them. Mulder noisily scoots a stool over with his cup of coffee. Scully eyes him warily, then clicks her cassette recorder and speaks.
“Victim is Alder Hawthorne, adult male, caucasian, thirty-four years of age. The body weighs… one hundred and seventy pounds and measures sixty-nine inches in length. Victim is…” she scans the length of the body. “Of normal build,” she concludes. She clicks off the recorder, picks up a magnifying glass, and begins examining every square inch of pale, clammy skin, prodding and pushing desiccating flesh with latex gloved fingers to better access the man’s nooks and crannies. After looking over the man’s front, she calls Mulder to assist her in pushing the man over, and, with some effort, they move the dead flesh onto it’s stomach.
“He looks fine,” Mulder mutters. “I don’t see a damn thing on him. Little blue, maybe.”
“Yeah, it’s… strange, especially if he were murdered,” she frowns. “There would be at least some ligature marks or contusions…” She clicks on her tape again. “The skin is free of abrasions, contusions, lacerations, scars, and burns, however, the skin appears a blueish tint. There are broken blood vessels around the victim’s eyes. Tattoos are not present.” She makes a few more verbal notes regarding the victim’s appearance in her dry voice, then prepares the necessary tools to pry open the dead man. “I’m beginning with the Y-incision,” she says clearly, then shuts off the cassette and takes her scalpel in hand.
“I’ll uh… get some coffee. Want any?” Mulder asks.
“No thank you,” Scully mutters, sickly slow blood oozing around her fingers as she begins slicing open the victim. Mulder feels the familiar woozy feeling that always accompanies watching Scully perform an autopsy, and slips out of the morgue.
He drinks a styrofoam cup of black, burnt coffee, refills it, and lack-a-daisically asks the sheriff about any other details that may have been omitted from the police report. The most he learns is that there were more blood-splattered forget-me-nots in the sink and toilet of the man’s apartment where he was found dead. No disagreements. No disputes. Little debt. Steady job. The epitome of America’s working class citizen. Had a wife that passed away two years back.
With more questions than answers, Mulder excuses himself to return to his partner, holding two cups of fresh coffee in his hands. He pushes open the door of the morgue with his foot.
The room is flooded with the sickly sweet scent of blood as Scully uses two pries to wrench open the man’s chest cavity. Mulder looks pointedly away, but it doesn’t stop the wet fleshy sounds of flesh being rend by a five foot three woman running on nothing but Chicken Nuggets and Diet Coke. With a final spasm, Scully successfully has wrenched open the man’s chest cavity.
“Mulder…” she gasps.
He swallows his apprehension and turns to look.
Peaking through the man’s bloody ribcage are the same forget-me-nots, blossoming in profusion amidst their decaying planter. They poke through the ribcage, winding their way through the man’s ribs and sternum, fluttering around his still heart. Through the gore and tissue, Mulder can see spidery roots weaving their way through and into the lung sacks.
“Holy shit,” Mulder swears, then scrambles for the camera in his bag. He’s busy fitting the flash and lens on as Scully continues.
Click. “The victim’s chest cavity contains foreign matter that appear to be flora. Said matter seems to be sourced from…” The click of a metal instrument, flesh being moved. “… the victim’s lungs,” her voice falters. She clicks the tape off again, then picks up a set of particularly nasty looking shears and begins slicing open the ribcage. Mulder has the camera operating, and, careful to avoid Scully’s face, begins taking photos of the carnage.
“Mulder, it looks like these flowers came from the man,” Scully says through gritted teeth, hacking away at the man’s ribcage. “That… that something… flowered in his lungs, and… he must have asphyxiated on them.” With a final heave, she’s cracked through the ribcage and sets her tool down. “Oh, my nose itches something awful,” she mutters. Mulder lifts up her visor, tugs down her face mask, and itches her petite nose for her. “Thanks,” she smiles as he corrects her visor and mask.
“Gives a whole new meaning to green thumb,” Mulder wisecracks. “Looks like we found our murderer. Suspect is six inches in height, green, with blue petals.”
“Yes,” Scully muses. “Death by flowers. He must have inhaled some seeds and due to the ideal conditions, moisture and heat, died by asphyxiation. There are recorded cases of plant matter growing in humans, usually the lungs, but this is… The worst that I’ve seen. You could open… a very gross flower shop.”
“So he coughed up all those flowers.”
“It appears so.”
“I wonder… why didn’t he tell anyone? Go to a doctor? ‘Doctor, I’m coughin’ up a bouquet here!’”
Scully shrugs, beginning to go about the messy business of extricating organs for weighing and analyzing. “They could have grown fairly quickly. Maybe he didn’t have health insurance. Didn’t think anyone would believe him. Thought it would go away. There’s any number of reasons. Men can be pretty stubborn about their health.” She glances askance at him.
“I’ll ignore that obvious jab,” Mulder smirks. “I’ll let the sheriff who our would-be serial killer is - he goes by Seymour.”
“So you agree with me?” Scully is incredulous. She looks at him directly, holding her blood-covered hands out in front of her. “He inhaled flower seeds, they sprouted, grew, and he asphyxiated on them?”
“I see no reason not to.” Mulder shrugs. “This death seems entirely provable with science, despite its unique circumstances. There aren’t any creatures I’ve heard of that kill by… growing plants from the inside. The flowers don’t appear to be anything unique. At the very least I would like to do some more research on it, just to rule out any extraneous variables, but besides being morbidly beautiful… there’s nothing ‘X-Files’ worthy here.”
“I’ll write this in my diary tonight,” Scully chuckles. “Dear Diary, today Agent Mulder agreed with my theory.”
“That remains to be proven,” but he’s smiling anyway. “I’d like to get some sleep at the hotel, since we paid for it anyway, then start driving back as soon as possible. If Sheriff Yarrow hears of anything unusual, we can revisit this. But I see no reason it can’t wait until Monday or even Tuesday."
“Sounds good,” Scully’s demeanor has noticeably relaxed. “I’ll finish my autopsy and let you know if I find anything else pertinent.” She heaves out the heart, entwined with blue flowers and leaves and drops it into the scale with a wet smoosh.
“‘Atta girl,” he grins rakishly at her, then makes his way upstairs. Sheriff Yarrow, upon hearing the news, lets out a huge guffaw.
“Alder died from… flowers? In his lungs? That’s insane! Is that even possible?”
“I saw something on the news last week that they found a four-inch tall pine tree growing in a man’s lung,” Mulder said. “It’s very probable. At the very least, if I were you, I’d finish up your investigation to verify there’s no foul play and call it a day. Agent Scully and I will conduct some research, just to rule out any other suspicions but we’ll be heading back to DC as soon as she’s finished up. Sheriff, do you have a telephone I could use?”
“What’s mine is yours.” He gestures the telephone and desk he’s sitting behind and stands up.
Scully is in the morgue for another hour, weighing fleshy organs and narrating into her recorder in a sleep-deprived voice. Eager to be back in his partner’s good graces, Mulder leaves a voicemail on Skinner’s answering machine explaining the situation and letting them know they’d be driving back as soon as they’d had some sleep, and not to expect Agent Scully in until Tuesday to recoup her missed Friday. He’d file the leave request in himself. He calls the Cypress Motel and lets them know of their unique situation, that they plan to sleep between six a.m. and be out of their hair by two p.m., and the rather stoned sounding receptionist offers no complaints. After, he interrogates Sheriff Yarrow for the best diner in the area that’d be open around five a.m. in the morning.
“You’d be stupid to go anywhere else but the BlueBell Diner,” Yarrow grins. “My wife runs the place. Tell her I sent you. On the house.”
“Sheriff, that’s too kind of you. The government’s paying for our meal-ticket, so don’t trouble yourself.”
“It’s my pleasure. I can tell that young lady would rather be anywhere but here and I don’t blame her. Consider it my thanks for a job well done.”
Mulder thanks him heartily and returns to the morgue. The goriest of the work has been done; Scully is scrubbing various instruments with scalding hot water and soap, blood splattered across her shield screen. The man’s corpse is out of sight, presumably in one of the many body-sized cubby-holes in the wall. The only evidence of the carnage is the array of cruel instruments to Scully’s right.
Mulder takes a seat on the squeaky stool to the left of her. “Called Skinman, told him we’d be driving back after some sleep and to not expect you in Monday, as you’ll need to be recouped for your missed leave day. Checked with the hotel, and the sheriff was so kind as to pay for our meal at the auspicious BlueBell Diner.” He waggles his eyebrows.
She looks at him from beneath her face mask and he can tell her crystal blue eyes are smiling. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to get back into my good graces.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know about that.” He smiles lazily at her.
“I’m almost done here, just have to finish cleaning up. I’ll meet you in the car?”
“Yes ma’am.” He collects his bags and files and makes his way back to the rental. Mulder watches the early morning sun creep over the horizon from their rental car, feet kicked up on the dash and a newspaper he nicked from the lobby open in his lap. Scully opens the back passenger door and tosses her medical bag in. She’s changed into a loose fitting t-shirt and denim jeans. She looks like she could be heading out for a vacation on the Maine coast and his heart tugs unexpectedly at the idea. She settles into her usual seat and gives him a rare smile. He grins, starts the car with a roar and winds back onto the main road and into town. They find the diner with no issue and the hefty, charming waitress escorts them into a booth. The diner is largely empty with the exception of a handful of surly older men, fisherman’s jackets on their breasts and heaping plates of grits and scrambled eggs.
Mulder orders a Grand Slam with all the works and Scully treats herself to blueberry pancakes, syrup on the side, please ma’am. She’s in a good mood and he’s basking in the glow of it. Happy woman, happy life, and all that jazz. Nowadays her good humor was few and far between, like sunlight in darkest winter. Whether it’s sleep deprivation or the satisfaction of a job well done, he doesn’t know and doesn’t care.
“The most surprising thing about this case,” Scully muses, cutting her pancakes into even bites with the same precision he watched her slice open a corpse, not an hour ago, “is that you aren’t insisting it’s aliens, or a ghost, or some ancient superstition no one’s heard of in a hundred years.”
“You know, there was a bloodcurse recorded by the Puritans during the witch trials that was noted by flowers growing in one’s lungs…” Mulder drawls. Scully’s eyes widen in alarm. He holds his hands in front of himself. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding!”
“You damn well better be, or I’ll drive home without you.” She mutters sourly.
“Ooh! Can your feet even reach the pedals?”
She swats him with her napkin, chuckling. “I’ll get a phone book.”
He changes the subject. “What do you have planned with your mom and Charlie?”
“Oh, we’re going to take a small yacht out into the bay, do some whale watching, then we’re going to eat at the Crab Pot.”
“Where they dump a whole pot of seafood on your table?”
“Mmhmm, with little mallets and bibs and everything.”
“I love that stuff.”
“Me too, I haven’t had one since before my father passed away.” She dabs at her mouth delicately. There’s a smear of blueberry sauce on her cheek, and Mulder, on instinct, reaches over and swipes it away, then licks it off his finger.
“Mmm. Love blueberries.”
“One of these days your habit of licking everything in sight is going to get you in trouble.” She’s noticeably discomfited, looking up at him shyly. It’s unbearably cute. She’s all red hair and freckles, not a trace of makeup to hide the shadows under her eyes. He’s not the type of man to mind either way whether a woman wears makeup, but he loves the open honesty in Scully’s face when she doesn’t. It feels more innocent, sweeter, very girl-next-door. It tugs unexpectedly at his heartstrings.
“There’s a great seafood place a block from my apartment. Cajun. We should go sometime,” he says lightly.
“Mm.” She hums through a mouthful of syrupy pancakes. “Never had cajun before.”
“Never had cajun? Scully! It’s the soul food of America.”
She shrugs. “I’ll have to try it, then.”
Mulder takes a sip of his coffee; black and hot as hell, just the way he likes it, then sets it down and clears his throat a little. Scully looks up.
“I… wanted to apologize for my comment, earlier,” he says quietly. “I know this weekend was really important to you and Charlie. I didn’t mean to infer you were any less of an agent for not wanting to leave your mother.”
Scully shakes her head. “No, it’s fine. You were right, on that accord at least. This is my duty, whether I like it or not. I… I haven’t had a vacation with Charlie and Mom in years, and with Melissa, my father, and my cancer…” he thinks he can hear a crack in her voice, faint and fragile. “… it’s been hard on her, to see her family suffer. I don’t want to cause her anymore.”
“I understand, at least a little.” Her hand is in the middle of the table, a small white hand of surrender waiting to be captured. They’ve held hands before; their hands often found one another’s during Scully’s battle with cancer or at the tail-end of a particularly stressful case. It wasn’t exactly commonplace, but it wasn’t an extinct species, either. He reaches out and casually takes it, covering her small hand with his own. Their eyes lock, iced blue and forest floor viridian.
She slides her hand back into her own lap discreetly.
The rejection stings more than he warranted. Strangely, it stings more than other missteps with women in the past; when you misstep with a new romantic interest, it’s almost expected to overstep or make a mistake along the way, a bumbling, teeth-clicking kiss or an arm around the shoulder when it’s not asked for. He’s made his fair share of misguided leaps of faith, always apologizing and doing everything he can to ease her back into her comfort zone. But this was Scully. His partner, his best friend, the first thing on his mind every morning, the last thing he thought of before he went to sleep. She had become central in his life in a way he was barely beginning to grasp, and he had assumed, perhaps naively, that the feeling was mutual. Foolishly making assumptions he barely understood; how very Mulder of him. Somewhere a man with a cigarette was laughing in a darkened room.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, voice full of regret. Suddenly he feels very out of breath; he tucks his mouth into the crook of his elbow to cough.
“It’s okay,” Scully says quietly. “I’m just…” she falls silent. “Well, you know how it is,” she finishes meekly.
No, I don’t, he wants to say. Please tell me. Please explain to me the scientific nature of the “you know how it is”. Explain in detail and cite your sources, please. But instead he only says “Yeah.” and stands, leaving a crumpled twenty dollar bill on the linoleum table between the war zone of their meal and leaves for the rental car.
The Blushing Rose Hotel is cozy enough, more bed and breakfast than Days Inn. Every time he and Scully check into a hotel, he has the outlandish fantasy that the pleasant receptionist will say “All we have left is one queen bed, will that be okay? Oh, we’re the only hotel for twenty square miles. There’s a blah blah blah convention in town, didn’t you know?” And through the convenience only found in the driest romantic comedies, they will be forced to share a queen bed. They’ll move through all the domestic movements together, showering and brushing their teeth and debating whose side is which (his is right and Scully’s is left, always) and they’ll go to sleep. Sometimes the heat is out and they can practically see their breath in the air; sometimes she’s wounded from (insert your favorite tragedy here) and just wants a little cuddle; often times they wake tangled in each other’s arms, and oh well, we’re already here, might as well finish what we started, huh?
There is more than enough selection of rooms and Mulder’s grateful this time. She’s got him so on edge he’d hate having to share a bed with her tonight and he has a feeling she feels much the same. When they come to their rooms, side by side like always, Mulder says, “Just give me five hours then we’ll be back on the road again, alright?” His throat itches and he coughs into his crooked arm again.
Scully nods, key in the lock of her door. “Good night, Mulder.” And she slips within her room before he can reciprocate.
“Classic,” he mutters recklessly under his breath as he shoves the door open with unwarranted force.
One of Mulder’s hobbies is that he’s an insomniac; he’s been afflicted with it since his college days and it’s an old friend to him by this point. It’s convenient sometimes, and others debilitating. It’s the latter for him today; even with the curtains all the way closed and a pillow over his head, his mind is racing and sleep is hard coming. To add an icing on the cake of self-pity, he can’t seem to stop coughing. Sheriff Yarrow must have gotten him sick, or all this traveling weakened his immune system. It’s the deep coughing that premeditates a particularly surly chest cold, and he makes a note to get some hot tea in his system before he leaves. He can spend tomorrow recuperating. Mulder hasn’t taken an honest to god sick day in several years, despite what he’s told the Bureau. He saves those sick days on excursions out of town or off the books alien investigations with the Lone Gunmen, or when he wants to avoid some training exercise. He refused to waste it on some actual illness.
He wakes around eleven a.m. to a particularly violent coughing fit. No phlegm; just his lungs heaving with effort. Sleepily, he gropes for the phone on the nightstand and dials Scully’s room number. He can hear it ring through the thin floral wallpapered wall.
“Mulder?” Scully’s voice is clear and soft.
“Hey,” he mumbles. “You awake?”
“Yeah, have been for a while,” Scully says. Why is it always easier to talk to her through the comfort of a telephone? Not constantly dissecting her body language or preparing himself for her to reject him, he can hang up the phone all he wants. He tries not to think too deeply on what that says about their relationship and pushes forward.
“I can be ready to go in about thirty minutes.”
“Okay. Are you feeling okay? You were coughing the whole time.”
“Yeah, I think Sheriff Yarrow gave me a bug or something,” Mulder says. He can feel her Doctor Scully vision through the wall. There’s something claustrophobic and prickly about it. Like she can’t trust him to take care of himself, not even for a second. Sometimes he finds it indulgent and basks under her care like a snake with a glowing red heat lamp, but her prickliness this entire adventure has worn him down to an irritable sliver of himself.
“Let me look you over before—?”
“For god’s sakes Scully, it’s a chest cold,” he snaps irritably. “Despite popular opinion, you don’t need to mother me at every turn.” He presses the phone receiver into the bedspread to hack roughly into his elbow again. When he presses the speaker back to his ear, it’s dead.
He slams the phone back into its cradle.
She’s ready and waiting for him in the hotel lobby. She’s wearing a soft pink blouse and cream-colored cardigan, uncharacteristic of Scully, that shows her chest to good advantage and exposing the secret smattering of freckles that lay within, secretive and tempting. She has white slacks on tight to the thigh and tan boating shoes. She looks like she should be hanging off the arm of a young millionaire on his yacht. She looks lovely and pleasant and she doesn’t deign to look up at him from the medical journal in her lap.
His lungs tighten and he’s forced to cough grievously into his arm again. He can feel Scully’s eyes on him again, but when he looks up, she’s ignoring him with great concentration.
“Ready?” He says, voice hoarse from his illness.
“Mmhmm.” She stands, taking her backpack, and after they drop off their keys, follows him into the rental car.
Scully’s prickliness is replaced by complete disinterest in anything he did or said. He even purposefully slams on the breaks at a stop sign just to see if she reacts. She wrenches against the bondage of the seatbelt, gritting her teeth, but makes no response. He can only imagine what she’s thinking to herself; oh, I’m mothering him, am I? Fine, I’ll ignore him, see how “Spooky” fucking Mulder likes that shit!
After their first fill-up, the halfway point of the journey, Scully pointedly offers to take over and he allows her, crawling into the backseat of the car to lay down, his jacket over his head. For all of Scully’s faults, she was an excellent driver, and he slept better there than he had in the hotel. His mother told him, when he was a little boy and prone to colic, that she’d drive him around the block over and over until he finally fell asleep. He wakes briefly only to cough and toss into a more comfortable position.
He wakes with a start when he hears the trunk creak open; it’s pitch black outside and he doesn’t know where he is. He jerks up, Quantico-sharp instincts kicking in, flooding his body with adrenaline and cortisol. Scully looks up at him as she slams down the trunk, pupils constricted to pinpoints in the light of the car. She has her bags in her hands and heads towards the sleepy cabin he’d picked her up at yesterday afternoon. He opens the car door and crawls out. He sees Scully greet her mother and Charlie., who are waiting patiently on the quaint wooden porch for her. He wants to wave even raises his arm to do so, but they ignore him and turn back into the warm cabin, slamming the door soundly behind their small family.
He barely registers the last leg of the journey, rolling the windows down despite the freezing early spring air and blaring the nightly hair metal program. He stops at a diner close to his apartment he knows stays open late and picks up a to-go order of a greasy burger and fries, along with a six-pack of a local beer. He stumbles into his apartment, throws down his supplies, and puts on the first program that looks suitably violent and interesting and chows down on his food. His coughs have mostly subsided, but he washes down the last of his cold French fries with a mug of steaming hot mint tea that Scully had left over here the last time she’d stayed over.
He’s wide awake from his nap in the car and so tries to make his time productive and devoid of any annoyed redheads. He tries to sit down with a Tom Clancy he’s trying to finish and abandons it, instead moving to his haphazard library of books on the occult and unexplained, searching for any mentions of flowers growing inside of people. A couple of hours pass like this and he finds nothing, so he drops that and digs into the storage room that once was his bedroom to drag out a dusty box of ancient X-Files that had too little evidence to properly consider, but he refused to dispose of.
Deep into the fifth beer out of six, he finds a file that catches his eye. Dahlia Heathers, age sixteen from Acacia Falls, New Mexico. The files are dusty and stained with a foreign substance. There are no photos, no autopsy reports. The file had been discarded by whoever had been in charge of the X-Files back in the 50’s without a second thought. In scrawling handwriting, he puts together that Dahlia was found dead in her high school bathroom with yellow tulips sprouting out of her open mouth and nostrils. Upon further investigation, the flowers were found to be sourced… from her lungs.
“Holy shit,” Mulder turns over the file over and over for any more information There’s only the one page. “Shit. Fuck. I have to call Scully—!”
He drops the file in surprise as the coughing fit overwhelms him. It’s more powerful than the rest have been; he doubles over, positive he’s going to vomit, and desperately covers his mouth with two cupped hands to catch whatever bile he’s about to retch up, his chest heaving and lungs working in overdrive.
Something ticklish flutters from his esophagus and onto his tongue and the coughing subsides.
Terrified and trembling, Mulder opens his mouth and reaches for it.
Pinched between forefinger and thumb is a single scarlet petal.