When she handed him the remainder of her sandwich (more than half, Mulder, if we really want to be honest about keeping an eye on her eating habits), it left a little spot of catsup on her hand, thick and dark-red against the pale; and although he knew perfectly well that it was just too-sweet processed tomato, his eyes flicked to check her face for blood. Scully caught him (still alert, that's important in the attitude of a terminal patient, wouldn't you say, Dr. Mulder?) and flashed him a questioning look.

"Sure you don't want it?"

She shook her head and turned back to her computer, pushing the glasses up on her nose.

She usually loved the takeout deli sandwiches, enough that she didn't mind eating them in the dungeon of their office. (Loss of appetite is a sign . . . ) He ate the rest of it without even noticing what it was, wondering how he could possibly still have such an appetite.

She finished off the file, hitting the save sequence with that little Scully flair of fingers. When she stood up, her hand stayed at the desk too long; for just a second the angle at her wrist went acute.

Yesterday, in a restaurant, she had leaned on the table a moment too long. And a few days before, (slumped) leaned against the wall in the lab. And in Skinner's office, before that, grabbed the edge of Skinner's big desk, held onto it. (If you feel faint, you should put your head between your knees.)

"Psycho's on tonight." He offered.

She shrugged, busily tapping her files into neat stacks. "They probably cut it."

"Not on this channel."

"You get 24 Blood and Gore?" She was messing with her scarf and purse.

He stood up, knowing he'd never be able to sit at home by himself with that angle of her wrist in his mind. She might fall. God, what if she fell? "Something Langley and Byers patched me into. I think it's from Japan -- the subtitles look like a VCR manual."

"I'd rather rent it without subtitles."

Psycho. What was he thinking? Scully and a movie about death. No. Not the brightest idea so far today, Mulder.

"We don't have to -- "

"No, no. I want to."

"I can just go watch it, if you want to go home."

"If you watch it by yourself, you'll have nightmares." she warned.

He shoved the piles on his desk aside and pulled on his coat. "I'll probably have nightmares anyway."

"At least they won't be subtitled in Japanese."

On the way out the door he stepped too close for a moment and smelled the lingering traces of her light perfume, something like fruit and flowers. She touched her head and just for a second he smelled something else under it; death, the smells of the lab that she hadn't quite washed away -- formalin, rubber, saline, dead flesh (cancer), antiseptic.

He picked up the video and met her at her apartment. He hadn't been there in weeks, and he found something subtly different about it, the air of a sickroom, the undeniable sapor in the air he knew from the houses of his grandparents, from too many houses he had visited since joining the FBI. It was clear as a sign on the door: be quiet, be calm, be gentle -- someone is dying here.

Psycho. Probably the dumbest movie choice he'd ever made. "We don't have to watch the rest of this." He tried, as the shower scene approached.

"Scared?" Scully curled her legs up on the couch and smiled at him.

He crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair. "Well, you know, Scully. I've been told that I eat like a bird." He produced a ziplock of sunflower seeds from his pocket and shook it at her.

That actually got a grin. "You know, after the Peacock family, the Bates start to look pretty normal."

"First time I saw this, I remember I wished my family was as functional as ol' Norman's."

Janet Leigh died messily, off camera. Hitchcock was a god; Mulder had seen this at least two dozen times, and he still couldn't pry his eyes off the screen until long after the fatal sequence was done. When he did look away, he noticed Scully rubbing her head. As he watched, she grimaced, her whole body wincing, and then hid it.

"Get you something, Scully?"

"Asprin?"

He was out of the chair in half a second, hugely aware of how much his body wanted to run, run it out, run it down. He pounded for the medicine cabinet, fumbled out a bottle of asprin, knocking Midol, multivitamins, a tin of Curad band-aids into the sink with a rattle. Water in the glass on the counter speckled with white dried toothpaste.

When he came rushing back, she fixed him with that often imitated, never duplicated Mulder-what-the-fuck-are-you-thinking? gaze. She didn't even have to say it. He put the asprin and the glass on the coffee table and crouched on the floor between the table and the couch.

" Scully -- " He bent his head, his throat tight.

She petted his hair dismissively with one hand as she flipped off the cap from the asprin bottle and shook three white tablets out onto the table. She picked them up one by one and chased them with gulps of water. Petting him. She probably missed goddamn Queegqeeg. (The companionship of a pet has been shown to have beneficial effects on terminal . . . )

He pushed himself back into the chair.

Scully stood up. (Her hand on the arm of the couch just a moment too long.) "I'm not an invalid yet, Mulder, alright?"

He turned his face away from her fear.

"I'm not, I'm not just going to fall apart!"

She picked up a magazine from the table, threw it. Another. Her face stayed tight, even in the frustration that had to be (killing her) driving her crazy, her motions stayed restrained.

"Jesus. Damn. Damn!" She thumped her fist against her hip and sat back on the couch, her face crumpling in on itself.

"Sorry, Scully."

She was crying. Scully hated crying.

"God, Mulder. I don't want to die." Her voice was so soft, a whisper, less than a whisper.

Its power dropped him to his knees on the floor in front of her. "I won't let you. The truth --"

"The truth is in here." She put her hands to her head. "It's the truth that's killing me."

His truth. The truth Fox Mulder had insisted on. The truth was death and he'd smelled it under Scully's perfume. He wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face in her lap. "We're going to find it. You're going to live, Scully. You'll live."

He whispered it against her belly: "Live, Scully, live. Live."

She was warm, and so close, he could smell the death under her perfume, and life, sweet life under the death. He pressed his profile into her thigh and caressed her. Against the too-thin shape of her leg, against the bony round of her knee, his big hands looked huge, malformed. He edged her green skirt up her thighs, rubbing his face miserably against the revealed nylons.

He squeezed his eyes shut against what he had no right to see and pushed her skirt all the way up, distantly aware that her hips shifted to let the skirt pass. Groaning against his tight throat, he pressed his nose into her thigh, inhaled perfume, death, life, the particular scent of skin trapped in nylon.

Without raising his head, he reached forward and gently started tugging at the nylons. Scully shifted, her buttocks in his palms, and he rolled the pantyhose away, bringing her sensible, soft cotton panties with them.

He couldn't have opened his eyes then, not to save them both. He didn't even try to raise his head, just traced up with his nose until he found coarse hair. Mulder pressed Scully's thighs apart with his hands; he was still subvocalizing, over and over, "Live. Live." And then only his lips were moving. He felt the feathery stubble on her thighs, and then, heat, heat, against his mouth.

He spread her slowly with his thumbs, tasted faint bitterness. She made a fragile sound, shifting again. His tongue swiped up to find her, tiny and delicate. He caressed her with his lips, flickered his tongue, entered her carefully with his fingers, twisting them, sliding them out.

Her hips moved and blessedly, her little hand came to rest on his head, curled into his hair. He kissed her deeply, deeply. One of the sobs he needed so much came out, another, against her, and she shuddered, her hand tightening for a moment in his hair. Then she was limp, and he dropped the weight of his head against her belly again, aware only of the smell of life he was breathing in from her, and her hand, sweetly stroking his hair.

Finally he had to pull back, stand up. He was unsteady for a moment, and then balanced. He averted his eyes as she tugged her skirt down and kicked the knot of pantyhose and panties under the coffee table.

"You're in my way, Mulder." When he dared to look at her, she was wearing her secret, her enigmatic Scully smile.

Norman Bates was staring into the camera, his mother's voice everywhere. Mulder dropped back into his chair, stunned at how much time had passed. He let her watch the credits.

"You know, Scully, all the cases we've had, never one with a homicidal momma's boy."

"I can think of a few that qualify." She started ticking off on her fingers. There were grey circles under her eyes.

"I'd better go. Frohike and Byers slipped another firewall; they want me to come take a look in the morning." True, amazingly enough.

The corner of her little mouth perked. "Playboy Enterprises Intranet?"

"Knowing the Gunmen, it'll be Hustler. They have no taste." (Still on his lips, she tasted alive.)

"Night, Mulder."

He stood up, pulled his coat off the back of the chair.

"Scully."

"You were right. The truth will save us." She stood, leaned against the arm of the couch with her wrist bending deep, barely supporting her. (But maybe only because he had left her knees weak.)

He hurried for the door. His body needed running. "Truth is versatile that way. Sleep well, Scully."