(no subject)
Can I stay here for a while? She wonders aloud as she blinks around the room, a membrane of tears on the cusp of her eyelids. Scully stands when she recognizes a chair adjacent to Mulder's bed. Odd, how she hadn't noticed it before, hadn't yet found herself submerged into the foamy pads, counting minutes to his recovery in her customary way. It looks plush-less and worn from too many bedside vigils, but purposeful nonetheless.
The starfish of Mulder's reassuring hand on her shoulder slips reluctantly down her arm, the pads of his fingers like little suckers as he tugs, gently, at the cuff of her jacket before she moves out of reach. He props himself up a bit, arranging tubes and necklines modestly before indicating to her to sit, his jolting movements belying his comfort with this random act of intimacy. He feels suddenly agitated by Scully's sadness-- and his ability to ease her willful disquietude.
The gaping chasm of her father's death throws back a veil, he realizes, and science's rigid doors have closed her up once more; he can still feel her bones on in his fingerpads.
Through a self-deprecating chuckle: Sure, uh, I was just about to turn on a movie. Casablanca is on channel 34.
Scully is already anchored into the cross hatched polyester of her chair, eyes dry again, the shoulder pads of her jacket fluffed up around her ears like two little airline pillows. Her hands are folded across her lap and he notices that she is toeing her way out of her pumps, a wary reprieve.
I figured you would be eager to get home after this whole mess. He fumbles with the remote control to the TV as he gestures with it: this whole, emotional, confusing, mess of mind-game playing murderers, he truly means, and he eventually coaxes the machine to life with a snap of electricity.
She regards him aslant for a moment before letting her head fall limply to face him.
Without prelude she tells him: I saw my father sitting in my living room about a minute before my mother called to say he had passed. I thought he had somehow let himself in. I even talked to him. But when I looked back, he was gone.
She doesn't say this sheepishly. Instead, she waits, lightly amused, for his reaction to the little test of her ever evolving character. He fills the silence for several beats with the technicolor bursts of channels changing before regarding her.
Well, uh, he picks his words carefully, clearing his throat for full attention - hers or his, he isn't quite sure. Maybe you are ready to open yourself up to extreme possibilities. He says the last words, extreme possibilities, in a faux-ghostly diminuendo to match her own flip tone and she rewards him with a companionable smile before turning her attention back to TV, now settled on the quotidian gray and black of the classics. She is appreciative of his friendly deflection. It feels like an apology.
Or maybe I was just dreaming, she teases with a drawl, although she is not quite sure which she really believes herself.
He chuckles through a maybe, flashing a bit of teeth in her directions, but she feigns absorption in the program. Yet here you are-- he doesn't say-- instead of at the execution, because it feels like an ugly a word to fit between them right now, too much a reminder of the tragedy and near-misses that surround them. She nods slowly in agreement, but declines to counter.
He watches her face privately change from amused to thoughtful and then settle on something nearest to ambivalent as she rolls out phantom kinks in her necks. Admist the cloud of hallowed memories, death sentences, and the scrutinizing bleeps of hospital equipment she remains ever a stoic.
So I'm not eager to go back home yet, is her honest admission, to which he thoughtfully nods his way back to the television. And this is my favorite, she quickly adds, making a motion to the TV, but he allows himself the indulgence to misunderstand her and believe that she means sitting here in the hospital with him.
The movie has just started and they fall into a comfortable silence. He waits for commercials to steal glances hoping to rouse a conversation, but she manages to seem preoccupied and sometimes sleepy, so he holds his tongue. Somewhere around "La Marseillaise", she props her stockinged feet up on his bed in a manner so casual he reaches for them before checking himself.
First, he runs his index finger over the seam of her nylons, running the ridge of her toes before gently plucking the material away, watching the topography of her foot transform into a nude lithograph before being sucked back to its contours. Turning to look, he finds her completely absorbed in his ministrations, a dry smile clinging to the outermost reaches of her lips. He counts them with an attention that assumes he was expecting to find less. Instead of meeting his eyes, she wiggles her toes in response and he clamps his hand around its circumference, no wider than his wrist.
Their eyes snap together briefly, mutual relief flowing through their latest connection. A circuit closed; apology accepted.
It is the first time he has ever touched her feet.
As he holds her like this, until Bogart and Bergman make their final stand, he has niggling sense that if he let her go she might float away; a helium balloon catching an updraft out of the hospital and off to caper with faceless men who are not him. Like it would be her getting on that plane instead of Ingrid and she might fly away from him. He realizes, his grip unconsciously tightening, that he couldn't bear for that to happen; he wouldn't let go. He suddenly and plainly sees her as a metaphor for forever. He wants to figure out what's behind her scientific defenses and let her genius mingle with his. He feels good when he looks at her.
Stirring him from his silent benedictions as if to render them embarrasingly biased, she slips her foot from his hand. Footsteps in the hall are encroaching, the rushed clip of a nurse shatters his illusion of Scully as something he must hold onto and he feels the message in his grip lost in the tide of space washed between them. She is already back in her pumps and standing with intent to leave, ignoring the pitiful plea he writes on his face, imploring her to stay. But the moment is already gone.
This report isn't going to write itself, she says wryly, eying him laying supine and straightening her suit jacket as she ambles to the edge of his bed. The nurse has immersed herself in Mulder's business, checking IV lines, hookups, and other vital signs they both know Scully is capable of monitoring.
She invokes her farewell by surreptitiously squeezing the mound of his foot beneath the blankets, just briefly, before she exits stage left. Their silent call and response. And she doesn't even stay for the last lines of the movie, so Mulder says them for her as she leaves.
"Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow. But soon, and for the rest of your life."
The starfish of Mulder's reassuring hand on her shoulder slips reluctantly down her arm, the pads of his fingers like little suckers as he tugs, gently, at the cuff of her jacket before she moves out of reach. He props himself up a bit, arranging tubes and necklines modestly before indicating to her to sit, his jolting movements belying his comfort with this random act of intimacy. He feels suddenly agitated by Scully's sadness-- and his ability to ease her willful disquietude.
The gaping chasm of her father's death throws back a veil, he realizes, and science's rigid doors have closed her up once more; he can still feel her bones on in his fingerpads.
Through a self-deprecating chuckle: Sure, uh, I was just about to turn on a movie. Casablanca is on channel 34.
Scully is already anchored into the cross hatched polyester of her chair, eyes dry again, the shoulder pads of her jacket fluffed up around her ears like two little airline pillows. Her hands are folded across her lap and he notices that she is toeing her way out of her pumps, a wary reprieve.
I figured you would be eager to get home after this whole mess. He fumbles with the remote control to the TV as he gestures with it: this whole, emotional, confusing, mess of mind-game playing murderers, he truly means, and he eventually coaxes the machine to life with a snap of electricity.
She regards him aslant for a moment before letting her head fall limply to face him.
Without prelude she tells him: I saw my father sitting in my living room about a minute before my mother called to say he had passed. I thought he had somehow let himself in. I even talked to him. But when I looked back, he was gone.
She doesn't say this sheepishly. Instead, she waits, lightly amused, for his reaction to the little test of her ever evolving character. He fills the silence for several beats with the technicolor bursts of channels changing before regarding her.
Well, uh, he picks his words carefully, clearing his throat for full attention - hers or his, he isn't quite sure. Maybe you are ready to open yourself up to extreme possibilities. He says the last words, extreme possibilities, in a faux-ghostly diminuendo to match her own flip tone and she rewards him with a companionable smile before turning her attention back to TV, now settled on the quotidian gray and black of the classics. She is appreciative of his friendly deflection. It feels like an apology.
Or maybe I was just dreaming, she teases with a drawl, although she is not quite sure which she really believes herself.
He chuckles through a maybe, flashing a bit of teeth in her directions, but she feigns absorption in the program. Yet here you are-- he doesn't say-- instead of at the execution, because it feels like an ugly a word to fit between them right now, too much a reminder of the tragedy and near-misses that surround them. She nods slowly in agreement, but declines to counter.
He watches her face privately change from amused to thoughtful and then settle on something nearest to ambivalent as she rolls out phantom kinks in her necks. Admist the cloud of hallowed memories, death sentences, and the scrutinizing bleeps of hospital equipment she remains ever a stoic.
So I'm not eager to go back home yet, is her honest admission, to which he thoughtfully nods his way back to the television. And this is my favorite, she quickly adds, making a motion to the TV, but he allows himself the indulgence to misunderstand her and believe that she means sitting here in the hospital with him.
The movie has just started and they fall into a comfortable silence. He waits for commercials to steal glances hoping to rouse a conversation, but she manages to seem preoccupied and sometimes sleepy, so he holds his tongue. Somewhere around "La Marseillaise", she props her stockinged feet up on his bed in a manner so casual he reaches for them before checking himself.
First, he runs his index finger over the seam of her nylons, running the ridge of her toes before gently plucking the material away, watching the topography of her foot transform into a nude lithograph before being sucked back to its contours. Turning to look, he finds her completely absorbed in his ministrations, a dry smile clinging to the outermost reaches of her lips. He counts them with an attention that assumes he was expecting to find less. Instead of meeting his eyes, she wiggles her toes in response and he clamps his hand around its circumference, no wider than his wrist.
Their eyes snap together briefly, mutual relief flowing through their latest connection. A circuit closed; apology accepted.
It is the first time he has ever touched her feet.
As he holds her like this, until Bogart and Bergman make their final stand, he has niggling sense that if he let her go she might float away; a helium balloon catching an updraft out of the hospital and off to caper with faceless men who are not him. Like it would be her getting on that plane instead of Ingrid and she might fly away from him. He realizes, his grip unconsciously tightening, that he couldn't bear for that to happen; he wouldn't let go. He suddenly and plainly sees her as a metaphor for forever. He wants to figure out what's behind her scientific defenses and let her genius mingle with his. He feels good when he looks at her.
Stirring him from his silent benedictions as if to render them embarrasingly biased, she slips her foot from his hand. Footsteps in the hall are encroaching, the rushed clip of a nurse shatters his illusion of Scully as something he must hold onto and he feels the message in his grip lost in the tide of space washed between them. She is already back in her pumps and standing with intent to leave, ignoring the pitiful plea he writes on his face, imploring her to stay. But the moment is already gone.
This report isn't going to write itself, she says wryly, eying him laying supine and straightening her suit jacket as she ambles to the edge of his bed. The nurse has immersed herself in Mulder's business, checking IV lines, hookups, and other vital signs they both know Scully is capable of monitoring.
She invokes her farewell by surreptitiously squeezing the mound of his foot beneath the blankets, just briefly, before she exits stage left. Their silent call and response. And she doesn't even stay for the last lines of the movie, so Mulder says them for her as she leaves.
"Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow. But soon, and for the rest of your life."