Telecommunicating
by Mischa
mischablue@crosswinds.net

Spoilers: general S8 up to 'DeadAlive'
Timeline: Set in the 'DeadAlive' three month interval
between Mulder's burial and exhumation.
Keywords: Doggett, Scully, and Mulder makes a cameo
appearance.
Category: S, DSF/UST, a touch of odd H
Summary: A simple bug hits Scully harder than it normally
would, but Doggett is there to catch her when she falls.
Another small but significant step in a strengthening
partnership takes place, thanks to a fever dream.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to Chris Carter, 1013,
FOX, and of course to RP, GA and DD. Although apparently
when it comes down to it, they're actually the property of
Rupert Murdoch. And on the note of weird legalities, I mean
no infringement and am making no money so don't bother
suing.
Archive: SHODDSters, yes; Ephemeral, yes; Gossamer, yes;
XFMU, yes; all others just drop me a line.
Author's Note: My contribution to the Chicken Soup for the
SHODDS Soul series, in honour of our illustrious captain DB.
Dedication: For DB, of course! <salutes>

* * * *

The migraine and the ache in her throat are bad enough, but
it's the tinnitus that is driving her to distraction.
Scully's used to ignoring the painful ringing sound, but at
work and in close proximity to computers, telephones and the
whirring of fluorescent lights it's harder to dismiss. The
background noise is particularly grating today on her
eardrums.

The same medical reasons for why her ears are ringing are
also causing her thoughts to drift. She wonders if it's
being caused by subversive government signals being
transmitted into her mind through radio waves. Or maybe the
computers are sentient, sending subliminal messages to her
through its soft hums.

Scully decides at that very moment that whatever it is, it's
driving her mad. An madness that the Lone Gunmen would be
proud of, but insanity nonetheless.

She can't deny, however, that it's not a signal being sent
to her alone. Doggett appears even more carefully attuned to
her today than usual; keeping a close eye on her as they
worked, getting her cups of water before she even lifted her
head to ask. His constant concerned surveillance has been
more of a comfort than Scully is willing to admit. Somehow,
knowing it would take only a reflex action for him to catch
her if she fell makes her less anxious about falling.

Trying to work out whether or not Doggett is surreptitiously
observing her is not an easy task, but she watches him back
anyway. It's his hands that have her attention this time,
placing his completed paperwork into a folder. It wouldn't
take too much, she thinks for a wild reckless second, to
just ask him to give her a massage. Slow, deep, calming
circles at her temples, through her hair, soothing away the
tenseness building in her skull...

Rationality takes over, as always. There are boundaries in
this partnership, as in all, and she doesn't want to cross
them. And so her idle thought passes by unacknowledged. She
makes a steadied effort not to look at his hands when he
places them on her desk.

"Six o'clock's come and gone, Agent Scully. Wanna get
something to eat?"

"We've been here that long?" she asks, and immediately
chastises herself for the slip. All she wanted, she had said
to herself all day, was that she wanted more time, and now
the working hours were long again and she hadn't finished
everything she'd wanted to get done.

"Agent Scully?" In the few weeks since Mulder's burial
Doggett has seen the occasional distracted gaze break
through her resolved professional mask, and learned
quickly when to call her on it and when to leave it alone.
All the same, Scully has made a careful effort not to rely
on her partner too much in that time, fearing she may sap
his staid support, his strength. An irrational fear,
unfounded, she knows, but enough of a reason for her to hold
back.

She makes an effort to smile, but he still watches her. "I'm
fine, Agent Doggett."

He doesn't look convinced. Scully looks back down at her
neat pile of unfinished paperwork forms, avoiding his
piercing, searching gaze. The ringing in her head sounds
like a field teeming with cicadas. Maybe a call centre
bullpen at peak hour. Probably both.

She looks up, wishing she could look at her partner in
silence, and thinks that it is definitely both.

* * * *

The next morning she doesn't bother slapping at the alarm,
much less getting up. The noise doesn't bother her. It's
merely a background track to the noise in her head.

Scully focuses aching eyes to the blank ceiling, half
regretting not taking up Doggett's offer of dinner. Only
half, because although the baby had apparently conspired
with her stomach in a kick-box of a protest, she knows she
wouldn't be able to hold down anything anyway.

It's that particular thought that eventually drags her out
of bed.

When she looks in the mirror, Scully rolls her eyes at her
reflection and heads to the kitchen, trying to find
agreeable food to work with the medication she throws in her
mouth as she moves. She grabs the phone along the way and
calls in sick to Skinner's secretary, who immediately
patches the call in to the Assistant Director. It's brief
and to the point.

"Scully?"

"I'll be all right, sir."

"If you need anything --"

"Of course."

She doesn't need to ask him to drown out the sound of a
phone ringing in the background, because they hang up
shortly after that.

She thinks about calling Doggett as she walks into her
kitchen, knowing he would be worried. Illness has never hit
her this hard in a long time, but she knows it's a compound
effort -- the weakness of winter, on top of her insistence
on going back to work, and Mulder... For all the strength
and will of the mind, at some point the body will revolt,
and she's reached that point. Exhaustion, grief, and stress
has not caused her sickness, but neither had they helped.

She suspects that Doggett understands that, more than he
ever lets on.

Scully glares at the carton of innocently formed eggs
sitting in her fridge as she prepares her meal. Food
prepared, Scully muses over the ease with which this illness
managed to overtake her as she picks up the phone to call
her partner. She finds herself staring blankly at a worn
spot on the benchtop, the meal forgotten, when the knocking
begins.

*    *    *    *

The temptation to lean against the door when she opens it is
too great, but she is standing straight and tall as she can
possibly be when she sees who is on the other side.

"Agent Scully?"

"Agent Doggett."

The anxiousness etched on his face doesn't clear when he
gets a long hard look at her. "Figured you wouldn't be in
after yesterday. A.D. Skinner just called now to confirm
it. How're you doin'?"

He was worried. Of course he would be worried. She'd never
made that second call, she had been distant the day before,
and the baby was beginning to show now, a gentle swell
rising through her clothes.

"I'm sorry. I meant to call --"

"It's okay," he says immediately, watching her. "But you're
not, Agent Scully. Come on." Gently Doggett takes her by the
arm and closes the door behind them, leading her to the
living room and her couch.

He's been to her apartment several times now, calling in to
check on her after Mulder's funeral and one time when her
car broke down and she had a doctor's appointment. Somewhere
along the way -- she hasn't really taken the time to notice
the exact moment -- his presence in her life has increased
substantially, and she couldn't be more thankful for it.

Their partnership, their friendship, has taken leaps and
bounds with every small gesture. After the inadvertent
revelation of her pregnancy and his quiet, enduring support
by her side before and after the funeral, a new well of
mutual respect has grown and strengthened between them. They
do their best to be honest. And because she understands
this, understands him, she assures him with what she
believes to be the truth.

"I'm okay. Really, Agent Doggett." And with that, she stands
up.

The only thing keeping her from falling back down again is
him.

*    *    *    *

"They say that doctors make the worst patients, you know,"
she says ruefully as he helps her onto the bed.

"I know."

Scully knew Doggett wouldn't play along with her and deny
the phrase, but she shoots him a mock glare anyway. He
looks gently amused before the smile slides off his face.

"You're running a fever, Agent Scully. A high one. You
shouldn't be up at all."

"I made breakfast," she protests, hating the sound of her
slurred voice.

"And did you eat it?"

Scully can't honestly remember, but Doggett knows she
didn't, and with the look he sends her she knows he knows
that she's remembering she didn't.

"Agent Doggett," she begins, trying to sound less confused
and more professional. She wonders what she could possibly
say to him that could maintain her distance. "I hope you're
not thinking of feeding me."

Okay, so maybe professionalism is out of the cards at this
present half-delirious time. She's silently chastising
herself as Doggett throws her a lopsided, utterly rakish
 grin. "Always one step ahead of me, Agent Scully."

The mental image amuses them both. Narrowing her eyes,
Scully half-seriously contemplates asking him anyway just so
she could bite him for that comment. "I already took my
medication," she admits, and Doggett's smile fades, his
forehead creasing further.

"I'll go get your food," he says, and slips out of the room.

Doggett comes back with her plate of untouched food and
gently nudges her to eat, and it strikes her as odd at how
comfortable he seems playing the role of personal doctor.
He's done this before, Scully thinks as she tries to taste
her bacon, he's held vigil over waking patients, fed them,
watched over them, nursed them back to health. When? A wife?
A child? In her foggy mind the image of his comfortable yet
empty house rises. She can't help but wonder, and makes a
mental note to ask. Someday when she's a little more lucid
than this.

She's shivering by the time she feels she's eaten enough.
Doggett balances the plate on his knees and looks at her
with concern.

"I'm cold," she says, trying not to let her eyes droop. "But
that's --"

"I know," he says, reaching over and placing the cool cloth
on her head. "It's the temperature. Come on, time for you to
rest."

She shoots him as arch a look as she can possibly achieve
with the heaviness sinking in her skull, more confused by
her surprise at his intuition than she is by his intuition
alone.

"Doggett?" she asks sleepily as she lies back and stares at
the ceiling.

"Yeah?" His hand feels cold when it's in contact with her
skin, and she feels as though her centre of gravity is
moving toward that touch. Scully keeps her eyes tightly
closed, fighting the waves of dizziness, watching coloured
spots of crimson and purple dance behind her eyelids.

Curiosity rolls idly in her veins. Her voice is slurred and
small. The question that comes out of her mouth not the one
she intended to ask.

"Can you stay?"

She doesn't hear his answer because the red and violet
flashes in the darkness are replaced by a rolling, soothing
wave of black, and she falls headlong into sleep.

*    *    *    *

After an interminable period of dreamless darkness, it
begins.

It's the same kind of dream she always has when she's on the
brink of breaking through a fever, only she rarely remembers
it when she's conscious. She's running. Sweating it out. On
the verge of losing it completely.

The scene swells and recedes. Slow, hypnotising frequency.
Mountains of random description; moving giant hills that
seem to crawl and roll of their own volition. They oscillate
in size between being small enough to fit in the palm of her
hand or high enough to block the sunlight, and Scully gets
the feeling she's running on one of them, as well, by the
way the earth is shifting under her feet. She doesn't
usually get motion sickness -- a life of travelling long
weaned her off any potential susceptibility -- but her
stomach always counts these fever dreams as a strong
exception to the rule.

Her watch is ticking in her hand. When she looks down she
observes the second-hand make its slow counter-clockwise
circuit and doesn't once think that it's odd. Faint music
plays lightly on the air, and as she keeps running she can
hear snatches of nursery rhyme, childlike voices carrying
the song on the wind.

After a while she stops running... or the moving mountains
slow down, she really doesn't know. All the same, an old
friend is waiting for her at the end, mouth tinted in a wry
smile.

"Hey."

"Hi."

She's had her dreams and nightmares about never saying a
proper goodbye to this man, but tears don't seem to have a
place in the strange world of the fever dream. There are
never tears, only words. She glances down at her hands,
struggling to find the right ones, but her silence says it
all. They share a painful smile and after a moment she
extends her hand out to him, passing along the
counter-clockwise watch.

He takes the offered watch from her, watching the hands'
reverse movement with a rueful grin. "Who knew that Batman
and Superman were one and the same?"

"What?"

He holds up a familiar scrap of newspaper, lowering his
tone to dramatic voiceover. "Faster than a speeding
bullet... can leap tall buildings in a single bound... Is it
a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a crazed human bat that likes
to regurgitate human fingers?"

She smiles. She can't help it.

He stares at her solemnly and changes the subject. "Is he
catching you, Scully? When you fall?"

If I let myself fall, her silence says. But when she can't
help it, she knows Doggett's support will hold her. The man
standing by her acknowledges the fact with a nod.

"Will you catch him too?" he asks quietly. Lead weights of
importance hang off his question.

She doesn't need to think. "Of course."

Somewhere in the distance a phone rings. Something cool,
moist and soothing passes across her face.

When she opens her eyes again, Mulder is gone.

*    *    *    *

She's still dreaming yet partly awake now, somehow aware
that somewhere beyond the clutches of her subconsciousness a
fever is being sponged away. In her dream Scully is standing
beside Doggett, and they are staring into the black hole of
a filing cabinet, files spinning in the darkness, answers
threatening to remain just out of reach.

He's holding a watch, and she looks down and realises with a
start that the second hand is moving forward. "Concern's for
your well-being, Agent Scully. That's all it's ever for."

"I know," Scully says. A hand reaches out to him and he
places the watch gently onto her palm. The smooth clear
face shimmers as she stares at it, and the second hand moves
clockwise to the irregular frequency of her thready pulse.
She steps forward, and before she can change her mind,
slides her arms around her partner, knowing he'll anchor her
if she threatens to drift away.

Scully wonders why the issue of trust has never come up
between them, why it never needed to be explicitly said. She
has never needed to ask this man -- his actions tell the
story alone. And although she already knows the answer to
the question she's about to ask, she feels a sudden urge to
ask it anyway.

"Doggett, do you trust me?"

She looks up, eyes questioning, but Doggett is gone, and
Skinner is standing in his place. She blinks, more startled
by his sudden presence than the fact that she can see
through him. "Where's --"

"He's on the other end of the line, Agent Scully," Skinner
answers. She can see the faint form of starlight through his
outline. "I suggest you back him up immediately."

"Sir?" she asks, confused. She steps away from her superior
and turns her head towards the telephone. There is a faint
ringing. The increasingly lucid part of her mind recognises
this part of the dream -- soon it will be over, and
forgotten.

"Hey, pick up the phone, Agent Scully." she can hear a voice
plead in the distance. She steps closer to the phone and
hesitates.

"Agent Doggett?"

"I can't get through to you if you don't pick up the phone,"
the distant voice says. The phone keeps ringing, echoing in
a skull that feels curiously empty. Scully reaches for it,
wanting to stop the sounds from slamming against her
eardrums. She curls her fingers around another person's hand
and opens her eyes.

* * * *

She immediately regrets it when the light floods into her
brain and explodes like a supernova, electrical impulses
going haywire as Scully struggles to adjust to the
brightness. Her stomach protests against the visual assault,
and for a wild dizzy moment it feels as though her digestive
system is turning inside out, or that her gut is trying to
crawl up her oesophagus, or something strange and
equally mind-altering.

And then there is calm, a hand on her forehead, soothing
words that she can't quite make out over the confusion in
her head. Calmness really is the colour of blue, a light,
multifaceted cerulean tinged with greyish teal. Centering
her focus onto that colour, the fever dream soon fades into
the ocean of her mind. She gazes into blueness and swims
back to the surface.

"Agent Scully?" A voice somewhere out of the blurred scope
of her vision asks. "Agent Scully, it's me." She stares at
him with so much puzzlement in her eyes that he looks as
though he is compelled to add, "John Doggett."

"I -- I know, I didn't forget you." How could she, when it
was those eyes that pulled her to the shore? She is still
gripping his hand and pulls away slowly, shaking her head to
clear the cobwebs. "For a moment there I thought --"

Her first instinct is to say that she thought he was a
telephone receiver, but of course she isn't going to say
that aloud.

Something flickers in his eyes. They both know what he
thinks she meant. "S'all right," he says. "How're you
feelin'?" He places the washcloth on the bedside table. She
pulls herself up with a tentative slowness and he reaches
for her, supporting the weight she can't quite catch with
her fatigued muscles. Scully smiles weakly in thanks,
noting the tidy way Doggett folded the handtowel and
positioned it in a neat row with her medication, her
thermometer, and a glass of water.

"Fever's broken," she states. Her gaze falls to his large
gentle hands as they move away, and she focuses her
attention to the weave of fabric stretched over his shoulder
as he moves back and sits beside her. Just barely keeping
his distance.

"Yeah. You want anything?"

"No, I'm okay," she says, surveying the bedside table. "You
thought of everything, for now," she adds, reaching for the
water and taking a tentative sip. He watches her closely.
The water manages to stay down.

"Some dream you were having just now," he comments, picking
up the washcloth again. Scully begins to protest, but he
quells her with a firm look. He runs the towel gently over
her face again, wiping away every last trace of the fever.
She feels pampered, foolish, utterly and totally cared
for. Studying him, she realises that his movements are
practised and fluid, and she is oddly surprised.

Lightly she grips his wrist as he moves back, plucking the
towel away with her free hand and curling her fingers around
his palm. It's the illness, she justifies to herself,
lowering her defences and thus her inhibitions. It's the
only way she can explain away the fact that she's quite
literally holding his hand. "You've done this before," she
says to him. Almost accusing.

Doggett throws her a perplexed half smile, his eyes still
shadowed with concern. "I've taken care of people before."

"I don't doubt that." Questions linger on her tongue, but
he's too close, and she's still holding onto him. She
observes the careful way his hand is surrounding hers, and
decides that one day she *would* like those gentle
fingertips to rotate at her temples, soothing away the
residual ache. Maybe one day soon, she could bring herself
to ask.

Need for honesty makes her look up to meet his calm blue
gaze -- she needs to tell him that it wasn't grief that made
her ill, but even if it certainly didn't help. "Agent
Doggett," she begins, "I'm -- I'm not ill because I haven't
been taking care of myself."

"I know. I understand." Of course he does: he's been
observing her so carefully that he would leap in himself if
he thought she wasn't.

She still tries to explain it anyway. "I don't want you to
think --"

"Agent Scully, it's all right." Doggett's gaze is serious
and direct, and she knows that he isn't hiding any doubts
from her. Scully suspects he understands more than she's
given him credit for so far.

"Okay," she answers, and they stare for a moment, silently
contemplating each other. Scully wonders if, now that she's
awake and relatively aware, he will take that as a cue that
he isn't needed anymore. She hopes not.

"Don't want to leave you 'til I'm sure you're okay," he
finally says, and she sees an odd sort of longing in his
eyes, as though he is not sure he wants to leave her at all.

Her small sigh of relief is completely involuntary. She
squeezes his hand gently. "Agent Doggett?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I'm okay to get up now," she says slowly. "But
could you stay a little while longer? I mean, here?"

Faint surprise flickers across Doggett's face. You just
picked up the phone, Scully's subconscious mind tells her.
It's an absurd thought, one she doesn't remember the source
of, and it contributes largely to the gentle smile that
creeps onto her face.

He smiles back, and she hears him this time around. "All
right," he says. "I'll stay."

*   *    *    *

The long, soothing shower washes away all the last lingering
traces of her fever, and her clothes feel absurdly fresh and
clean when the smooth fabric touches her skin. Her mind is
calm and blue, no ringing at all. Scully wanders out to find
Doggett sitting on her couch, focus etched into his face,
and she realises that the buzzing of cars on the television
screen is just loud enough to drown out the sounds of water
running.

"Who's winning?"

"It's a replay."

"Oh. Who won?"

She sits next to him on the couch. It doesn't feel as
awkward as her mind tells her it should. Scully looks at her
partner and sees him for who he is, not for who she once
thought he would try to replace.

A few companionable moments later Scully insists on taking
her own temperature, she all she does is look at him in the
silence that comes of an mercury bulb stuck firmly under her
tongue. Doggett catches her eye and looks vaguely amused,
slightly nostalgic for something she can't define, before
turning his gaze to the screen as a car tumbles and spins
into the air. They wince in unison and breathe a sigh of
relief when the driver walks out unscathed.

"I knew that would happen," Doggett defends himself slightly
when Scully shoots him an arch look. "It's a *re*play."

She rolls her eyes and pulls the thermometer out from her
mouth. There's a faint tinny sound in her ears. "A hundred,"
she finally says, holding the slim glass rod up to the light
and tracing the path of silver with her gaze.

He leans over to get a closer look. "That's okay. For now."

"I just have to sleep the rest off."

Accepting her diagnosis, he nods and switches off the
television. The faint ringing that had started to rebuild
fades. "Do you feel like eating?"

"Not yet," she admits, looking at her watch. "Maybe in about
an hour." Her stomach feels calmer now, and she could
probably succeed in eating a horse if she felt like it. Only
thing is, she doesn't.

"All right. Get some rest. I'll see about gettin' you
something to eat," he adds, standing up.

"*Not* pizza." Her sense of balance churns at the thought.

"I can cook. I'll fix something for you. Chicken soup,
even."

She tips her head, curious but unsurprised. Scully has seen
Doggett sleeping in the shell of an idyllic domesticity. She
doesn't doubt for a second that he could probably
outcook her if she challenged him.

"Thank you," she says, and she means it for today, for
the last few weeks, few months, everything.

They look at each other for a long moment. He doesn't seem
to want to walk away, not yet. "Agent Scully?" he asks
quietly.

"Yes, Agent Doggett?"

"I do, you know that."

She has no idea what he's talking about, but he says it with
such conviction and sincerity that she believes him. "I
know," she says simply. Her eyelids slip shut against his
solemn nod and she drifts on dream again, knowing she won't
float far with his presence to keep her grounded.

A few moments pass before she hears his footsteps moving
away, heading towards her kitchen. The world seems so much
calmer to her, now that the brunt of the fever has passed
and the pain in her head has lessened. She leans her head
back into the couch and lets the soft sounds of Doggett
moving around in her kitchen fade into the cool blueness in
her mind.

Somewhere in her head, the phones have all stopped ringing.

~ END ~