Title: Ordinary (1/1)
Author: RocketMan >lebontrager@iname.com<
Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No fringe is
intended.
SPOILER : : : : : THE MOVIE : : : : : US5 (This is post "the movie" fic,
but does not directly deal with the events therein)
Summary: One agent has a sunburn, the other a hospital visit.

Dedicated to Abby, who told me she would be tickled if I wrote this. Are
you laughing yet, babe?

~~~~~
Oridnary
~~~~~

It was a strange kind of heat to be coming from her body like this.

She pressed her palm flat against her shoulder again, giving the
sunburned area a much needed relief as the cool of her hand met the fire
of her skin.

Their stakeout job in Florida was nice at first, a good break from the
X-Files, on a direct order from Skinner to take on some normal cases so
that they wouldn't attract a lot of attention in the beginning.

But lying on the beach in the sun made her sleepy, and their suspect was
a major beach bum.

He would get up at nine, wash his car, drive down to the beach, sack out
for three hours, take a long walk, then reclaim his spot and soak up
more cancer causing ultraviolet rays.

Of course, with Mulder being only antsy in the sun and his eyes watching
everything, most of all her in a swimsuit, she kind of fell alseep a
lot.

She had thought it would be great at first, give her cancer ravaged skin
a little color and allow her to get as close to a vacation as she had
been in a long time. Maine had been no vacation, and here they were,
together, on the beach, doing practically nothing.

But coming home after the week of sun left her burnt everywhere.

Her shoulders were like hot water bottles, her face scalded, her legs
too sore and pained to even touch, her back simply blistered everywhere,
and her feet, yes, feet, were sensitive and peeling.

She felt like one huge flame of fire was licking at her insides
constantly.

She wondered if Mulder was burned.

With his wonderful luck, probably not.

She shifted a bit in her bed, trying to find a spot on her sheets that
hadn't been heated to uncomfortable temperatures by her skin, and let
out a little hiss as her back met the scratchy material of her shirt.

She gingerly pulled off her shirt, lying only in underwear and her bra
part way on, the straps slipped off her shoulders and the clasp undone
in the back.

She felt so hot. So achy hot everywhere.

It was horrid. It was depressing. It was so freaking hot.

She closed her eyes, placed the back of her hand to her forehead,
sighing with the wonderful relief, knowing she could get up and run
water over a washcloth and be a lot better off, but in too much pain to
even move.

She heard a knock on her door and prayed whoever it was would go away.

Then the door opened.

Another sigh escaped her lips. It had to be Mulder.

"Scully?"

It had to be Mulder. . . had to be him of all times, to come walking in
her apartment, actually wondering about her for once.

"Scully?"

"I'm in my room, Mulder. You may not want-"

And of course, it was too late. Of course he was already standing in her
doorway, his mouth dropped to the floor, his eyes roving her almost nude
body, his hands making fists at his side.

"Ah . . ah. . .Hot, Scully?" he said, meakly trying to joke his way out
of embarassment.

She sighed and closed her eyes again. "I'm not going to get dressed,
Mulder. I am sunburned everywhere. I don't care anymore."

"It's not like I haven't seen it before." he said quickly, as if trying
to reassure her.

Her eyes shot open again.

"Oh right, Antarctica. . . I'd actually forgotten."

He kind of stood there then sighed. "Actually, this really doesn't
bother me, so I might as well sit down."

She watched him sit on the bed, spreading his arms out to support
himself and turning to look at her.

"So, hurt?" he asked.

"Like I've been boiled alive."

A wince from him made her smile a little.

"That's great, Scully. Next time we go to Florida, we're sticking to the
woods."

She sighed. "Being burned is better than you getting attacked by that .
. . whatever it was. Better than a stupid conference with a tower of
furniture."

He chuckled, placed a hand to her forehead. "Yeah, you're delirious. I
knew it."

She closed her eyes again and he attempted to pull his hand away. She
caught it instead and shook her head.

"Stay right there. Your hand is nice and cool."

He smiled but did not pull his hand away. "I'll get you a washcloth,
Scully."

She saw his eyes flicker over the rest of her bright red body.
"Actually, I'll just soak a whole towel and lay it over you."

She smiled knowingly, giving him a rare glimpse at her beautiful grin.

"I thought you said this wasn't bothering you?"

"Well, Scully, I was thinking you probably didn't want my hands all over
you, ah, cooling you off, but if you'd rather that I just-"

"I get your point. Go get the towel."

She closed her eyes again, hearing him run water and mess around in her
bathroom, pulling things off the shelves, putting them back, generally
being a nosy FBI agent.

She felt cold wetness settle over her and she opened her eyes.

"You actually did wet a towel," she laughed.

He smiled, glad to be basking in her smiles today. "I told you. A dinky
ol' washcloth isn't going to do you a bit of good right now."

She touched his hand, squeezed it a bit. "Thanks, Mulder."

He smiled back to her, noting how light her hair had gotten, how
freckled her nose and chin and cheeks were now, how much healthier her
skin looked in the places where it wasn't burnt.

He placed his lips to her knuckles and stood. "Well, I came to see if
you were all right, not sunsick or anything. I got to go figure up those
expense reports and somehow explain away the need for you to buy a
bathing suit down there. I'm not sure Skinner's going to go for that
one."

She smiled. "You just say that it was part of the costume, tell him I
had to or otherwise we might blow our cover."

He gave her a leering grin. "Or I could include a snapshot showing him
just how good you looked in that bathing suit and that would solve all
our problems."

She rolled her eyes and let go of his hand, allowing him to stand and
make it to the doorway.

She saw him twinge a bit as he stood and she glanced into his face with
concern.

"Are you okay, Mulder?"

He nodded. "Just a little burnt on my chest. Gives me a funny ache now
and then."

She let him leave, heard him walking through her apartment, picking
things up, setting them back down, then opening the door and locking it
behind him.

She felt unsettled for a few moments after he left, knowing somewhere
there was something important to what she'd seen, but not sure what it
had been.

Soon though, the cool towel beckoned her and she was lost in the relief
of sleep.
~~~~~

The call came at three a.m. and it surprised her.

Mulder had just been to see her. What was up now?

She answered the phone immediately, coming from sleep like a woman
attuned to her child's every cry.

She heard gasps for breath first.

"Mulder? Mulder, are you okay?"

"Scully . . .something wrong. . ." he managed to get out, still wheezing
like he'd been running all night for his life.

"Mulder? Mulder, I'm calling 9-1-1 for you, okay?"

"Something wrong. . ." he mumbled again.

She picked up her cell phone, too afraid to disconnect from Mulder,
afraid that hanging up would be like giving him a death sentence.
Thinking somehwere in her that she had to be talking with him,
concentrating hard enough to keep him breathing.

"Can't breathe" he gasped and the breaths that did come were short,
quick, painful sounding.

She got an operator and demanded paramedics to be sent to his apartment,
pulling her FBI status a bit to get the woman working faster.

Then she realized she'd never make it to his apartment before the
ambulance so she stayed on the line with Mulder.

"Mulder? I'm right here. I called the paramedics. They'll be there in a
few seconds. Okay? Don't answer, don't talk, just keep breathing for me.
As soon as they have you, I'm going to meet you at the hospital. They'll
take you to Memorial. You'll be all right."

She paused to catch her own breath, listening to him wheeze, wondering
if he was having an asthma attack or something.

Such a mundane, ordinary thing to do in the Spooky Fox Mulder.

How unfair.

But he was going to be fine, she forced herself to think. He'd be fine.

"I hear them, Mulder. They're right there."

She heard the phone be taken from his hands and immediately felt empty,
alone.

The line went dead and so did her thoughts.

She surged out of bed, forgetting her sunburn and the pain, and pulled
on clothes, grimacing and trying not to whimper as the rough fabric
scorched every inch of her body.

All she knew was that Mulder was in trouble.

And she had to be there for him.
~~~~~

His hospital room was quiet when she was finally allowed to see him, the
walls white and smelling of previous patients, and the bedsheets harsh
and reeking of bleach.

She sank into the seat next to him with his chart, reading over the
details with incredulity.

A severe allergic reaction to his sunburn had caused his brachial
passages to swell, closing off his airway.

Nothing more sinister than that. No conspiracy, no plot to destroy him.

Such a simple thing as basically, allergies, and Mulder was in a
hospital.

It frightened her that such ordinary things could kick his legs out from
under him, have him gasping for breath, have his life endangered like
that.

Would Mulder end up dying at the age of sixty from a heart attack? Would
he fall asleep one night in his eighties and never wake up?

Could such things happen to *him*?

Or maybe she would develop cancer again, a normal, everyday cancer that
invaded her body, took over her blood and really had no miracle cure.
Maybe she would get acute diabetes and slowly waste away, going blind,
then going to death.

Maybe she could actually die the way normal people did. A car wreck, a
bad case of some bacterial fungus, viral, mutated pnemonia that caused
her lungs to fill with fluid.

She shivered.

Maybe one day she'd called on Mulder to find him sprawled in the floor,
not dead of a self inflicted GSW to the head, but of a stroke, a heart
attack, an apoplexy.

It made her feel sick.

Not to mention that her sunburn was really burning now, itching almost,
but still crawling like ants were on her.

She twisted away from the material of her shirt and touched Mulder's
hand, looking in his so still face.

"You think staring at me will make me open my eyes?" he said quietly.

She smiled. "I had hoped so. Make you just enough uncomfortable to come
on back."

He let his lashes part and then opened his eyes. "So, what's wrong with
me?"

"Allergic reaction to the sun."

He stared at her. "Me? If anyone, I'd think you would get that, burned
as you are."

She shook her head. "The burn on your chest is second degree Mulder.
Pretty bad."

He sighed. "It feels kind of funny right now."

"They put some salve on it."

He glanced to her red cheeks. "You sneak any of it for yourself?"

She shook her head, smiling. "Nope. Wish I had."

"Still hurt, G-woman?"

"Like hell."

He patted the cool sheets next to him. "Come on up, there's enough room.
You can even take your shirt off and lean against my chest, maybe some
of that salve will rub off."

She glanced at his joking face, at the way he seemed to just know she
never would and therefore enjoyed it all the much to tease her.

She stood up and pulled off her shirt, quickly before the cotton could
think about scraping her skin.

He gaped for a moment then smiled at her. "Okay, this will teach me to
open my big mouth."

Pulling back the sheet covering his bare chest, the hospital gown not in
place due to the burn, he offered her a space.

She crawled into the bed and neslted her back against his slimy feeling
chest, letting the cool relief of medicated lotion seep into her.

"Ahh. . .. this feels so good," she sighed.

He laughed and she felt it reverberate through his body.

"I don't think I've ever heard a woman so content. And all I did was let
you lay next to me - I must be good," he joked, slipping his arm around
her stomach.

She snorted. "That's the trick, Mulder. All you have to do is burn a
woman, get burned and sick yourself to be sent to the hospital, then
have them put this stuff all over you. Believe me, the sunburned women
everywhere will be flocking."

"As long as you're flocking, then all I need is a little burned chest."

She closed her eyes.

"Or something."

After being awakened at three in the morning by his call and then
spending hours awake in the waiting room, she easily nodded off in his
arms.

Feeling exhausted himself from the previous effort to simply breathe, he
followed soon after.
~~~~~

Walter Skinner stepped into the lobby of the hospital floor his agent
was supposedly on and nodded to the flustered woman at the desk. Giving
him somewhat adequate directions to find Mulder, the woman pointed down
the hall and he got started, mentally reviewing what he'd say.

'Good job, Agent Mulder. Next time try sunscreen,' was his favorite line
so far, although he knew he couldn't and wouldn't say that.

He found the room and opened the door, noting shelves at first, as if
someone would want to set up a little homey atmosphere here.

Since the bathroom was off to the immediate left, and the wall blocked
his view, he did not see his agents until he rounded the little corner.

He stopped dead in his tracks and felt his jaw drop.

First because Mulder was positively holding onto his partner for dear
life, then second because Scully's shirt was off.

As if they'd attempted to make love, but fallen asleep before even
getting their clothes all the way off.

That thought sent him reeling and he stumbled out of the door, blinking
rapidly to keep nasty images forming in his mind.

He shut the door behind him and tried to tell himself it was all a
dream.

It was, after all, Mulder.

And Scully.

They were weird anyway.
~~~~~

She was wakened by the terrible itch forming in her shoulder, and, not
thinking, she scratched it furiosuly.

Stiffening, whimpering, drawing in a hissing breath, she felt needles of
fire slit into her skin where her burn was, slicing apart her cells.

Her noise made Mulder wake and he opened his eyes to see her pain filled
ones.

"What's wrong?"

In a very small voice she said, "I scratched my sunburn."

"What'd you go and do that for?"

She glared at him.

Making clucking noises he smoothed his fingers over her angry red
shoulder. "Where do you itch?"

"Everywhere." She sounded pitiful.

He wiggled his fingers. "Here, let me show you something that helps."

He lightly began running his fingertips along her skin, down her arm and
across her shoulders and to her back, making sure not to press down too
much or not enough.

She began to relax into him, eyes closing.

"That helping?"

"Yeah. Don't stop."

He let his fingers journey down her sides to her legs, the tops of which
were on fire with the burn, literally scorching his hand as he trailed
his touch.

She moved to settle into his hand, eyes closed, face flushed and breath
coming slow, slow.

Her eyes opened then, watching him.

"Mulder, I was afraid for you."

He stopped moving, looking down to her. Lying on her back as he laid on
his side, her hair spilling out in a fan around her head, she looked
satiated, almost as if he had given her some great pleasing.

"What do you mean?"

"I thought you might die, I really actually thought it. And it was such
a silly, stupid way to die. So . . meaningless. To have died because of
something so mundane and everyday seemed unfitting for you."

"Oh, worried I won't die a noble death, huh?"

She shook her head slightly and he touched her nose with a finger.

"No, scared that something stupid would take you away from me."

"Like me not wearing sunblock and getting sun posioned and everything
for something that wasn't even an X-File?"

She looked sheepish. "Yeah. I guess I always kind of assumed you'd be
doing this forever, never ever dying. You just are too . . . too much a
presence in my life for you to just stop."

"I'm not ever going to be ready to stop, but it will happen. Hopefully
when I'm old and widowed. Or no, better yet, old and married. I'd hate
for you to go before me."

Her eyes widened. "Me?"

He glanced nervously around the room, eyes stopping at hers again with a
kind of blush. "I . . .ah, well."

He shrugged. "Sometimes, it just feels like it . . ."

She smiled. "Don't I know it."

"I guess that doesn't bother you?"

She frowned. "Why should it? In almost every sense, we are."

"Yeah, almost. And I'm on for the rest of it at any time."

He was smiling wickedly at her again, making it hard for her to tell if
he was somehow being serious.

She decided to press it with more of his humor. "So where's my ring,
then?"

"Oh, a ring. You think I have money? You know how much I make."

"And when were you planning on proposing, Mulder?"

Another grin from her made him smile too. "I wasn't. I thought I
wouldn't ask, just tell you."

She sighed melodramatically. "Let me know when you want me, Mulder."

Her words were almost still joking, but then again, he thought maybe she
was taking this a little too far for her to not be somewhat serious.

"You were scared for me?" he said suddenly.

"Yeah."

She switched topics easily with him, as if knowing exactly what was on
his mind.

"I was scared for you in the hallway, after the bee."

It was the first time he'd said anything about it.

"I was too."

"I was going to kiss you, Scully."

She looked at him, but his eyes were staring at the ceiling.

"I know."

"I'm still scared."

She took his hand. "I am too."

He took a breath then turned to see her. Reddened face, freckled
everywhere, and light strawberry colored hair.

He leaned forward and stroked her lips with his fingers, as if maybe
preparing her for what he was about to do.

Her mouth parted and caught his fingers in a kiss.

He wasn't so afraid anymore.

Their lips finally touched.

And it wasn't at all ordinary.

She need not have feared that.
~~~~~

end
adios
RM