Okay but this is going to be a total nonsense! (And thank you so much to @sembell for the beta and to @becksndot5 for reading this nonsense first)

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“You smell funny,” she says, sniffing around his face interrogatively as he starts to fix the bandage around her swollen foot.

“Nice.” he deadpans with a grin on his face. “How about you stop moving, so I can do that correctly?”

He has never been good with his hands, and he isn’t fond of seeing blood, open wounds or swollen joints, but as soon as he heard her cracky voice over the phone, he couldn’t resist and bought a plane ticket for London. She could use some help with the boys and everyday tasks. And he could take care of her just like she took care of him a few years ago, when he ended up in the hospital almost blind after a basketball game.

“You sound funny too.” she says, squinting her eyes as if to have a better look at him.

When he arrived, he hadn’t expected the painkillers she had to take to make her high enough to think that he was Mulder in person, nor to call him Mulder for the entire first day.

“Okay, honey. Just lay down, and…”

“As if you were far far away but also very close.” she continues. “Why are you so far away, David?” she furrows her brows in concern and all of a sudden, tears start to fall down her cheeks, her mouth distorted with pain and sorrow.

“Hey, hey! Babe! I’m right here, okay? I’m here!” He waves at her, making her smile. “See? It’s me. I’m not far away. I’m with you. So now, lay down, and…”

“Did you cut your hair?” she interrupts him again, her sweet smile fading.

“Yes. Yes, I cut my hair. Let me guess: I look funny, right?” he chuckles, and finally manages to continue wrapping up her ankle.  

“No! I loved your hair! Why did you cut your hair?” she begins to cry again. “Can you put it back? Please, David!”

“Gillian,” he sighs. He starts to wonder if adding up a sleeping pill to her painkiller would be okay. Probably not, but he’s not getting any younger, and he feels like having a whining baby on drugs around him. It’s ten times worse than the day they took mushrooms together and she insisted to get out of his trailer and wander in the forest at night. Naked, of course. He’s certainly not going to survive fifteen days with a high and incoherent Gillian. He needs to come up with a plan. “No, Gillian, I can’t put it back. But it’ll grow again soon, don’t worry.”

“When? Tomorrow?”

“Yes. What? No! Not tomorrow!” Her mouth distorts again, and she’s about to burst into tears. “Yes! Yes! Tomorrow! My hair will be back tomorrow. In one beddy-bye.”

Did he just say “beddy-bye” to the woman he loves? he wonders. Oh god! Okay, she needs to stop talking, and he needs to finish her bandage and let her sleep. She’ll probably feel better after a beddy… after a nap.

“Here.” he says as he holds his phone to her. “West showed me this app. It’s funny, you’re gonna like it. You take a picture of me, and you can change my haircut. Do you want to try it?”

She nods with a smile and finally falls silent for a few minutes, allowing him to finish her bandage properly. All he needed was to occupy her mind with something else. Now he’s going to make dinner while she sleeps a little bit, and after a few hours, she’ll be back to her old self and they’ll enjoy a calm and snuggly evening watching a silly British TV show. He wonders if they have Dancing With the Stars here too.

“I’m finished, clumsy beauty.” he says, proudly. “Did you find me a good haircut?”

“Yes, I like you in red, but people say you look better with blond hair.”

“People? What people?”

“People on Twitter.”