Scully's Girl

Chapter 6

6

The agonizing lightning bolts zigzagging randomly around inside his head dragged Fox Mulder somewhat unwillingly back into consciousness.

It wasn't his couch he was lying on. It felt different. Not as soft.

He opened his eyes and rolled slowly over onto his back, raising one hand to wipe a rope of drool from the corner of his mouth.

The natural light sliced viciously into his sensitive eyes, and he groaned weakly, closing them again.

The quick glance he had gotten of his surroundings told him that he was laying on the living room couch in Scully's apartment.

He could hear someone moving around in the kitchen. Probably Vicki Gray. Scully would have gone in to the Agency.

He was slightly surprised when both Scully and Vicki emerged from the kitchen.

"Are you awake?" Scully asked him, making an obvious point of keeping her voice soft.

"I'm hung over," he mumbled.

"That's not surprising. You were really drunk last night, Mulder."

"You didn't go to work?"

"No. I thought it'd be better if I stayed here with you and Vicki. I called Skinner."

"What'd you tell him?" It felt like his tongue had been wrapped in several layers of cotton and superglued to the roof of his mouth, making it difficult to talk.

"I told him that you passed out drunk in my apartment last night, and you'd have a raging hangover when you came to, and that I thought I should stay with you until you felt better."

"You didn't." Mulder sat up too quickly and swayed back and forth, squeezing his eyes shut with a whimpery groan. He felt dizzy and nauseated, and his head hurt terribly.

"Take it easy," Scully said with concern, reaching out to pat him on the shoulder. "Do you want a cup of coffee?"

"Ugh, no thanks." Just the thought of coffee made his stomach squirm and roll queasily.

"Drink this, anyway." Scully placed a plastic bottle of water on the table beside the couch. "You're dehydrated."

"Yes, Doctor." Mulder picked up the water and took an unenthusiastic sip. There was an unpleasantly sour taste in his mouth.

After a couple more swallows of water, he burped, gagged involuntarily, and struggled to hold his gorge. He cupped his hand over his mouth, swallowing convulsively and attempting in vain to regain control over his gag reflex.

"I'll help you to the bathroom," Scully offered.

Vicki Gray stood in the living room, chewing distractedly on the thumbnail of one hand. She wondered if she was to blame, at least in part, for Fox Mulder's overindulgence of the previous night. Maybe he had been upset and confused by the fact that (in his own mind) Dana Scully had chosen Vicki herself over him, and had tried to drown these feelings in alcohol.

Vicki had no delusions about who it was that Scully had 'chosen'. The older woman was very much in love with her X-Files partner. That was obvious enough.

As Scully helped Mulder walk from the bathroom (where he had been copiously ill) back to the living room couch, she was thinking to herself that this was more of a shock than just about all the unexplained phenomena she had explored over the course of her involvement in the FBI's X-Files division. Never once had it crossed her mind that she would ever be nursing Mulder through a vicious hangover. Never once had it crossed her mind that Mulder would ever actually drink enough to give himself a vicious hangover.