Work Text:
He gets the call at 3:24 in the morning, a blocked number that he would ignore if it were daylight hours, but despite being out of the FBI for over a decade, it’s still ingrained within him to pick up the phone on the second ring. He’d not really been sleeping anyway, merely dozing with the TV on in the background. As soon as he hears her name and the hospital she’s been taken to, he’s out the door, feet stuffed into the sneakers that have worn bare.
She’s sleeping when he arrives, and besides the bandage on her forehead she looks fine, but the sight of her in a hospital bed will always hit him like a blow to the chest. Her doctor gives him a sceptical glance out the corner of his eye as he lists her injuries, the fractured tibia and the cracked rib, and he can’t help but wonder how pathetic he must seem; unkempt hair and two months of beard growth, the ratty sweats he’d been wearing for three days.
The seat by her bed is uncomfortable, tacky vinyl that creaks when he slumps down into it, and he settles in for a vigil that’s become so routine to him over the decades. Her hair’s longer than when she left, and her cheeks look slightly hollower, but overall she looks healthy; a far cry from many of the times he’s sat by her bedside.
It’s an hour before she stirs, and at her first groan, he’s up and scanning her face for the first flicker of recognition, the smile that always brightens her eyes when she wakes to him by her side. She grunts, her eyes peeling open, and as soon as they catch on him she huffs a sigh and shakes her head, slipping her eyes shut again. ‘Scully?’
‘You look like shit, Mulder,’ she mutters, her voice gravelly and raw. It’s not what he’d expected, and he realises he’d hoped she’d take one look at him and declare just how much she’s missed him, just how much she regrets leaving. ‘What’re you doing here?’
‘The hospital called. You hit a patch of ice; totalled your car. Apparently, you were very lucky - it could have been much worse. I’m still down as your emergency contact.’ His energy has been sapped suddenly, the disgruntled look she’s giving him weighing heavy on his chest.
‘I haven’t gotten around to changing it yet. I was gonna put Mom down, but she was moving and I wanted to wait until she had her new address, and then I must have forgotten.’ He gives a curt nod, drops back down into his chair. ‘You don’t have to stay. I’m fine.’
‘In all the years you’ve known me, when have I ever left your side?’
She gives a half-hearted scoff, cracks an eyelid, ‘you mean, aside from all the times you ditched me to jump on trains or investigate your own personal theories?’
‘Yeah, aside from all those times.’
Her eyes close again, and she twists her head to face away from him. ‘Last year. You left me last year.’
‘What? Scully, you left me. You ran away, you gave up. I never went anywhere.’
‘Not physically,’ she sighs, ‘but you left first. I was drowning, and you didn’t even notice. Something you never learned, Mulder, was that sometimes the only person you can save is yourself.’
‘I didn’t… you didn’t say anything.’
She clears her throat, trying to keep the tremor from her voice, ‘I shouldn’t have had to.’
They lapse into silence, the ambient beeps of the hospital filling the space between them, and he thinks perhaps that she’s fallen back to sleep, readying himself to settle in for the night, when she turns back to look at him, ‘you really do look terrible. When was the last time you slept properly?’
He could tell the truth, tell her he hasn’t slept properly since before she left, but he can hear the guilt in her voice, and as much as he thinks she possibly deserves it, he loves her too much to not absolve her of it, ‘couple of days. S’okay, really. I’m used to it.’
‘I thought it got better for a time.’
‘It did, for a time,’ when she was by his side, at least. But he couldn’t put that on her, couldn’t make her regret saving herself.
He’d once said they had communication, unspoken, and maybe that had lapsed, maybe they had never been all that good at it in the first place, but she seemed to hear him now. ‘You know, there’s room up here for two, if you’re careful.’
‘Scu-’
‘One-time offer, and it’s only on the table for the next thirty seconds,’ she grunts as she shuffles to give him room, quirking an eyebrow when he hesitates with one shoe off. He climbs up next to her, settling himself next to her, not quite touching, until she sighs into him, resting her head on his shoulder.
‘I am trying to get better,’ he whispers, his voice choked with emotion, ‘I just don’t know how.’
‘I know. And I’ll always be proud of whatever progress you make.’
‘I may have been a shitty husband, but I never stopped loving you.’
‘I know,’ she murmurs into the darkness, ‘I never stopped loving you either. But we’re not good for each other.’ He wants to argue, wants to fight her tooth and nail on that point, but her head is getting heavier on his shoulder, her breathing getting deeper, and he doesn’t want to upset her. ‘Mulder?’
‘Hmm?’
‘You’re not the only one who sleeps better with company.’