Under Construction
by Amanda Wilde (MaybeAmanda)
maybe_a@rocketmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/maybe_aa/
Rating: S for Squeaky. With swearing. Okay, PG-13. 
Category: MSR, AU, A, S
Timeframe: Alternate post season 8. 
Spoilers: All of it. 
Disclaimer: Chris Carter owns M&S; Fox owns The XFiles; I own 
this story. No infringement intended.
Archive: Sure!
Notes: at the end. 

~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~

We drove most of the way back in silence. When the passing 
scenery turned into passing landmarks, I finally shifted to look 
at her. "I'm sorry," I told her, and I was.

"It's okay," she said, without missing a beat. "I'm glad you 
called." We rolled past the playground on the corner, the best- 
in-district red brick grade school next to the ball field, and 
splashed our way through the pothole on Drury Lane that the town 
was supposed to have fixed by now. A jet of only slightly filthy 
water shot up and spread-eagled itself against the window beside 
me and I didn't flinch. Go me.

I looked down at my hands. The knuckles on my right hand were raw 
and bloody. I hadn't hit anyone, but Scully and I had been 
discussing renovations before I went out for my run, so in my own 
misguided way I might have tried to take out a wall. "I took my 
meds." My voice was small and scared and at that moment, suited 
me perfectly. I hated it.

"I know you did." She turned left onto Castle Court, her hands 
steady on the wheel, eyes steady on the road. "Joanna said you'd 
have to give it a good six weeks."

It had, in fact, given it a bad seven and a half weeks - a very 
bad seven and a half weeks. Most of the time everything was fine, 
if not great. But a couple of blackouts, some horrific nightmares 
and  a series of scatter-shot anxiety attacks had stretched me as 
tight and thin as a drumhead. Worst were the infrequent but 
entertaining seizures-with-bonus-hallucinations, like the one I'd 
just had. "I have."

"I know you have. I just think maybe we need something else." She 
switched lanes with the same ease she had switched pronouns and 
turned onto Drawbridge Drive. I had to wonder who in the hell 
named these streets. Were they actually shooting for nauseatingly 
cutesy, or had that been an unhappy accident? "What happened, 
Mulder?"

I didn't want to talk about it. "Same thing," I mumbled and hoped 
she'd drop it.

"The military stockade same thing?"

I still didn't want to talk about it, but somehow, I was. I 
nodded. "Only I was mostly naked this time."

"Mostly naked?"

Half shrug. "Naked."

Her brows rose. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

She pulled into the driveway. "Your kinks just get kinkier, 
Mulder."

I made a noise like it might have been funny. It might have been, 
too, under other circumstances.

Mrs. Scully came out onto the porch, William in her arms, and my 
breath caught in my chest.

William. Half an hour in the fucking car and I didn't think to 
ask where he was. To even wonder where he was.

Shit shit shit.

Scully killed the engine and waved at the welcoming committee, 
then turned back to me. She took my undamaged hand, gave it a 
reassuring squeeze. "It's gonna be okay, Mulder."

She was wrong, but I didn't tell her.

 ~:~:~:~:~:~:~

Rain on the roof woke me the next morning. I laid under the cool 
sheets and stared at the smooth white ceiling and tried to think 
some smooth white thoughts. Instead, I kept getting the same 
Technicolor version of 'Fox Mulder, This Isn't Quite Your Life: 
The Sequel' that I'd been running and rerunning since Scully 
found me in that hospital in Tucumcari - my mother's suicide, 
Krycek's death, Samantha-as-starlight, ridge-necked super 
soldiers, the Gunmen dead in a puddle of regurgitated iridescent 
pink goo, cultists with a disturbing interest in my son, herds of 
white buffalos, and Scully in an endless (and delightful) parade 
of really tight, really hot sweaters. Oh, and the sick fuck in 
fatigues with the lead pipe who kept reminding me I was a guilty 
man. Like I'd forgotten, or was about to forget. The Paxil was 
good, but not that good.

Scratch that. After that last evening, it had become evident that 
the Paxil was *not* good. It took away my lows, which I was more 
than prepared to live without, but it took away my highs, too, 
which, few and far between as they had always been, I kind of 
missed. My libido was also AWOL, and even Scully missed that.

At least, I think she did. Maybe I was imagining that, too. My 
imagination seemed to be the only part of me that was still 
chugging along, doing what it was supposed to do. Only I was 
ready - more than ready - for it to stop.

A squeal and some thumping and a stern "William!" dragged me back 
to the there and then. Show time, I thought, and looked around 
for my boxers. I slipped them on and wondered vaguely when and 
why I had taken them off, but 'wondering vaguely' was so much a 
part of my everyday routine that I just let it go. More thumping 
and squealing and Scully's voice, hushed but serious. "William, 
your father is sleeping! Get down here!"

"Noooooooooo!" echoed through the hall.

"William Michael Mulder! Now!"

"No way!"

That's my boy, I thought, and hey, I didn't flinch. Go me again. 
Twice constitutes a pattern, right?

William slammed his way through the door and breathlessly told me 
something really important. It either involved 'pancakes' and 
'grandma' or 'corn flakes' and 'drama,' but whichever way, the 
message was clear - I was in for dinner and a show, minus the 
dinner, very much plus the show. The mother-in-law myths aren't 
myths, even when the mother-in-law isn't technically your mother-
in-law.

Then I got the arms. The *pick-me-up* arms. The *you're-my-dad- 
and-the-toes-of-my-tiny-little-Reeboks-belong-in-your-abs-pick-
me-up* arms. I shouldn't hesitate - I shouldn't have to hesitate 
- but I always do. Anytime Scully noticed,, she tried hard to look 
like she was trying hard not to look pained, but I saw it, 
anyway. It wasn't that I didn't want to hold William - hold my 
son. It was just that, every time I reached for him, for an 
instant I was sure my arms were going to pass right through him 
and I'd find myself passed out on the cold cement floor of my 
cell again, clutching my chest and aching for all I'd lost. If 
the price I had to pay to keep this dream up and running was 
never really holding it, I was prepared to accept that.

But William wasn't. "Up!" he insisted, so I accommodated.

He was solid. Real. I'm his dad. His toes do belong in my abs.

I kissed his forehead. Why isn't everything this simple?

Scully stopped in the threshold then, looking harried and 
gorgeous. "William," she scolded, "I told you. . .oh. You're 
awake?"

"I seem to be." That was as honest as I could be about that.

"Sorry about-"

"Don't be," I said. The last thing I wanted her to be sorry about 
was William.

"He was up the stairs so fast. I swear that child is part 
mountain goat."

I ruffled his hair. "That would explain the blond thing," I said, 
but decided not to think about it too much before I had coffee 
and a handful of numb.

Scully was still standing in the doorway, arms folded, not quite 
in and not quite out, watching us. My throat tightened and I 
squeezed William once. Still solid. Good.

I strolled us over to the window. William pointed to the wet tire 
swing in the maple (which Scully wouldn't let him use, of course) 
and reminisced at length about a big bird he'd seen out there at 
one time or another. I smiled and nodded at what seemed like the 
appropriate places, then looked over my shoulder at Scully. As 
casually as I could, I asked, "You waiting for an invitation?"

She blinked at me. "Oh. No. I, um-." She made that face she makes 
when she's about to abruptly change the subject, and walked into 
the room. Perching on the edge of the unmade bed, she smoothed 
her fingers over the quilt. "How's your hand?"

There was definitely a variation on the old 'How's your head?' 
joke in there somewhere, but I couldn't see it and it probably 
wasn't suitable for the younger members of the audience, anyway. 
"S'okay." I held it out to her, gritting my teeth against the 
pain and wriggling my fingers so she could see they were all 
still working. Good doctor that she is, she took the bait.

"Doesn't look infected," she commented upon examination, but with 
the number and variety of drugs they were still pumping into me, 
I didn't see how even the toughest bacteria could have set up 
camp. She probed my knuckles gently, but I sucked in a harsh 
breath through my teeth when she straightened the fingers one by 
one. "Sore?"

"I punched a cinder-block wall, Scully. So, yeah, it's a little 
sore." I grinned, hoping to take the edge off the honesty. "But 
hey, you should see the bruise I gave that wall."

She let go of my hand and ran her fingers through her hair. It 
was long. Really long. Long enough that she could pull it back 
into a pony tail and I could have any number of really 
interesting little daydreams involving her, a cheerleader's 
uniform, a couple of really perky pompoms, and-

"Did you get some sleep?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah." I nodded. "I slept the sleep of the medicinally 
fortified," I answered, but her expression told me she didn't 
like the answer. "I had a good night," I amended. "No bad dreams. 
No dreams, period. You?"

She seemed to think about how best to answer for a moment, then 
she looked me straight in the eye. "I was lonely," she stated in 
her most matter-of-fact tone.

I brushed my damaged knuckles across her cheek. It hurt. A lot. 
"Me, too."

She sighed. "Then why are you still sleeping in the guest room?"

I reached out and pulled her into a loose hug, squeezing my eyes 
shut in apprehension as I did so. Much to my relief, she was 
solid, too. I brushed my lips across her forehead. "I don't want 
to hurt you again."

"That was an accident, Mulder."

"That was nearly a broken nose, Scully." She'd had two black eyes 
for over a week and there was probably still blood on the 
comforter. I rested my chin on top of her head and she circled my 
chest with her arms. We stood like that for a minute, the three 
of us, just being and breathing, and I liked it a lot.

"It's not right," she said in a voice so small I wondered for a 
moment if I'd imagined it. "You're home, and I still miss you."

And then I realized it didn't sound like anything RealScully 
would say. Not to me, at least. All things being equal, I 
probably had imagined it.

"This is just until I get back to normal," I assured her, but 
without any real conviction that there was a normal for me to get 
back to.

William had had enough touching family moment by then. "Bekfist."

"Mom's making apple pancakes," Scully said. She rubbed the tip of 
William's nose. "Some little boy really likes apple pancakes, 
doesn't he?"

"Me," William explained as if I was the slow kid in the class.

"Sounds yummy," I said, and actually, it did. My appetite, like 
so much else, had been off, but I felt hungry. Really hungry. 
Mrs. Scully was probably making arsenic pancakes for me, but 
maybe I'd get a bite of one of William's before I fell over.

Scully pulled away and looked me up and down, then glanced at her 
wristwatch. "Get dressed, Mulder." She reached out and took 
William. "Mark'll be here in an hour. He called and said he's got 
the new blue prints."

Oh joy, I thought, my mouth suddenly dry. Mark. Yippee. I'd faced 
down mutants, monsters, madmen, and Skinner shortly after he'd 
been found in bed with a dead hooker; why the idea of home 
renovations made me cold-sweat I could not fathom. Did not want 
to fathom.

"Right," I said and rummaged through the pile of clothes I'd 
dropped on the arm chair. Somewhere there was a second sock. 
"Blueprints."

Scully gave me a questioning glance, then apparently thought 
better of whatever she was going to say. "See you downstairs?"

I just nodded and, with clammy hands, pulled on my jeans.

~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~


Along with a Volvo wagon,  half an acre of prime-ish Virginia 
real estate, something small and fluffy that yapped a lot and 
almost passed for a dog, and a new haircut, Scully had, in my 
absence, acquired the sudden conviction that breakfast was the 
most important meal of the day.

I'd been back for nine weeks, up and actually moving around for 
about five of those, and our early morning routine had been more 
or less the same: I made coffee, poured the OJ, put some milk in 
a sippy cup, and alternately stared at and picked at a bowl full 
of some cereal that tasted like I'd have been better off chewing 
on the box; Scully had one slice of the thinnest whole wheat 
toast I'd ever seen, smeared with something approximating - but 
definitely not - butter, and a handful of vitamins; and William 
made odd noises and steadfastly refused to eat anything put in 
front of him. It wasn't perfect, but it worked for us, more or 
less.

But as I made my way down the stairs, trying to avoid both boy 
and dog toys, I could tell that morning was going to be 
different: that morning, I could smell bacon.

Mrs. Scully was standing at the came-with-the-house green stove, 
flipping pancakes and very quietly disagreeing with Scully about 
something. Scully was scowling at her plate, and very quietly 
disagreeing with her mother.

"It won't kill him," Mrs. Scully said.

"That's not the point, Mom."

"It didn't kill you, either."

"And that's not the point. The point is he's my son and I've 
decided-"

"Morning," I said, and slid as inconspicuously as I could manage 
into the chair opposite Scully.

"Good morning, Fox." Mrs. Scully turned and smiled me a big fake 
smile. "Do *you* want bacon?"

The answer was yes, but I was pretty sure the question was 
rigged. I stole a glance at Scully, hoping she'd slip me the 
answer scrawled on the back of her hall-pass, but William was 
keeping her otherwise occupied.

"Maybe a little?" seemed like a reasonable compromise.

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than Mrs. Scully placed 
a plate of pancakes, eggs, and about half a pig in front of me. I 
swear I felt the earth move; it was, no doubt, every single one 
of my dad's ancestors spinning in their graves.

"Thank you, Mrs. Scully." I caught Scully's eye this time. One 
side of her mouth twitched. She was not happy. "That's, um, 
that's a lot of bacon."

"Oh, don't worry, Fox, it's not even real bacon. It's turkey 
bacon." She flipped another pancake. "And it doesn't look like 
anyone else is going to be eating any, anyway, so someone might 
as well keep it from going to waste."

"Oh." Hoisting a strip, I dangled it at arm's length. In my best 
conspiratorial tone, I whispered, "Which part of the turkey does 
the bacon come from, Scully?"

"Have some?" William asked holding out his hand.

"No, sweetie." Scully turned her attention back to the highchair 
and cut William's food into even smaller pieces with the side of 
her fork. "Eat your pancakes."

"Please I have some?"

"You know, he had turkey at Thanksgiving," Mrs. Scully said. "He 
survived."

"Mom. . ." Scully rolled her eyes. "William, open your mouth."

William, soul of co-operation that he always is, obliged in his 
own fashion. "BLAH!"

I snorted.

"BLAH BLAH BLAH!" William replied, tongue hanging out, left hand 
in the puddle of syrup on his plate.

Scully shot me the don't-encourage-him look that she'd been 
perfecting through practice lately. "That's very silly, William," 
she said in the same pin-prick tone she used for deflating all my 
really cool theories. "Now put your tongue back inside your mouth 
where it belongs, please."

I went back to pouring syrup on my pancakes, but had to wonder; 
if I didn't 'encourage' William, who was going to? Even my dad - 
who had either been genuinely evil or woefully misguided - knew 
the prepubescent importance of a well-timed fart joke. A guy 
didn't learn these things on his own, and we were getting a late 
start.  

I wasn't sure Scully understood that. Any of it. Something else 
to add to the long, long list of things we had to talk about, but 
weren't.

"Eat nicely, William," Mrs. Scully said from her place at the 
stove, "or Grandma won't be able to take you to the zoo."

Scully scowled. She disapproved of 'coercing' William, and 
spouted the exact same drivel about 'choices' and 'logical 
consequences' I'd had spouted at me back in DevPsych201, lo, 
those many years ago. Be that as is may, every two-bit 
psychologist, marine drill sergeant, interrogator, kindergarten 
teacher - and apparently, grandmother - knew that sometimes, 
coercion was your best approach: William immediately opened his 
mouth.

"Good boy," Mrs. Scully said, without turning. How long did you 
have to be a mother before the eyes in the back of your head 
became fully functional, I wondered. I sent myself a mental memo 
to call Doggett and get him and Reyes on that one, ASAP: clearly, 
it was an X-File.

The X-Files.

I chewed and swallowed and watched Scully attempt to get a 
another forkful of food into William, watched him evade her 
efforts and toss a chunk of mushy pancake to the almost-dog, 
watched the almost-dog attack the sticky lump of goo with feral 
glee, and I tried not to think about not thinking about the X-
Files. They'd been my life for so long. Or, more to the point, 
I'd thought of them as a life for so long. A house, a family, 
fake bacon, wet Saturdays in the sub-sub-suburbs - turns out this 
is what I'd worked all those years for. What I'd fought for. Died 
fo-

Something in my chest tightened. I sucked in a breath. Then 
anoth-

The antiseptic smell of a hospital bed. A snarl of wires and 
tubes tethering me to the wall of monitors buzzing and bleeping 
around me. Scully over me, her eyes red and her stomach 
distended, holding my hand and gently, carefully, telling me-

-dead.

I'd been dead.

I was-

"Coffee, Fox?" Mrs. Scully asked, abruptly yanking me back from 
the edge of my own private rabbit hole.

"Um," I replied brilliantly. I picked up my empty mug. It was 
smooth and solid and cool to the touch, decorated with ugly grey 
flowers.

I exhaled, relieved. I had to be alive, awake; I'd never 
deliberately imagine myself living in a house with such a girly 
coffee cup.

"Mulder?" Scully's voice was soft with concern. "You okay?"

"Yes. Coffee, please." I nodded. "Sorry, I was just daydreaming."

Scully didn't believe me, but she didn't call me on it either, 
and I was grateful. The last thing I wanted to get into in front 
of Mrs. Scully was my mental health, or profound lack thereof.

"Is that mug okay, Fox?" Mrs. Scully asked. "Is it cracked or 
something?"

"Mug's fine." I put it down, flicked the rim with my nail. "Just 
fine."

~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~

"I was surprised."

I'd been working my way through the pile of food on my plate and 
trying to decide what kind of dishes we'd have if it were up to 
me. I'd settled on something with a tasteful Yankees logo certain 
in the knowledge that that was never going to happen. I dropped a 
strip of not-bacon on the floor for the not-dog, who looked 
grateful. Yay, me.

I'd had a Yankees mug, before. There was a tiny chip on the rim 
that I caught my lip on almost every time I used it. I had meant 
to throw it out, but some bout of sentimentality I couldn't even 
explain to myself kept me from ever going through with it. I 
wondered briefly what had happened to it, what had happened to 
all the crap I'd hastily dumped in boxes before I left. I hadn't 
asked; Scully hadn't volunteered.

I looked up.

Mrs. Scully stood at the sink washing dishes. The house had been 
built in the 20's and hadn't been updated since avocado green 
appliances seemed like a cool idea and dishwashers hadn't been 
standard. From what I could gather, 'dishwasher' was number one 
on Scully's list of renovation priorities, even above 'taps that 
don't drip' and 'windows that both open and close'.

"Excuse me?"

"I said I was surprised when Dana told me she was buying this 
house." She turned, her hands still in the sink, and gave a half-
shrug. "Well, when she told me she'd already bought this house."

I blinked a couple of times and scratched my cheek, stalling. 
Truth was, I'd been surprised, myself. Before I left, I'd 
liquidated all my assets - my parents' possessions, stocks, 
bonds, some real estate that had been in the family for years and 
that, as the last Mulder standing, I'd been able to dump - and 
handed it all over to Scully. I'd told her to do something with 
it, something for herself and for William, something to ensure 
their future. In my wildest dreams, I'd never expected 
'something' to be this.

"Oh," I said, shooting for neutral.

"Dana's always been such a city kid," she went on.

"I can see that." I took another sip of coffee, emptied the cup, 
wondered where this conversation was going and how I could 
gracefully get out of it.

She stood on tiptoe, peered out the window, frowned. "This isn't 
exactly the city, Fox."

I couldn't argue with that. If *city* had an opposite, Stanton 
was it. Although technically the same distance from Quantico as 
Scully's Georgetown apartment had been, it could just as easily 
have been on the other side of the world. Until recently, most of 
the area around here had been farmland. Yuppie sprawl - big 
houses on broad streets with bad names - was changing that in a 
hurry, though. This place was still a little off the beaten path, 
but I didn't think it would be long before developers had their 
way with it, too.

"No," I said. "No, it's not."

"My parents had a place in the country when they retired," she 
said after a moment. "Not a farm or anything, just a couple of 
acres with a pond, some ducks and chickens, fruit trees, that 
kind of thing. The kids spent a lot of summers there. Melissa and 
the boys loved it, but not Dana. She endured it, but she couldn't 
wait to get home." She rinsed and set another dish in the drain 
board and suddenly I realized I was just sitting there. My mother 
would have been appalled.

I stood, pushing my half-finished food away. Any appetite I'd had 
was gone, anyway. "Mrs. Scully, let me help y-"

She waved me off, so I sat back down. Shit.

"Dana always enjoyed having everything close by - shopping, 
museums, nice restaurants -"

"There's a McDonalds in Greyson," I supplied. "And there's got be 
a Denny's around here someplace. I think there's a federal law."

She chuckled and rinsed the last of the dishes. "Things are 
different once you have children, though." She took a towel from 
the drawer and began drying and stacking the plates and bowls in 
neat piles on the counter. "Your priorities change. They have 
to."

Never let it be said that the obvious doesn't elude me at every 
turn. I finally got a clue. We weren't talking about shopping or 
fine dining or Scully, for that matter; we were talking about me.

I set down my fork. "Yes, they do," I agreed after a moment, 
wishing I sounded as convinced about that fact as I felt. It was 
a difficult to manage with stomach full of vomiting butterflies, 
though. "They - they have changed."

She turned and pinned me with an all-too familiar stare. "I'm 
sure they have, Fox," she said in a way that made it clear there 
was nothing she had ever been less sure of.

I cleared my throat. "Mrs. Scully, I-"

"You're finished," she said and nodded toward my plate, but I 
knew she wasn't talking about my breakfast.

"I-," I began, but her expression told me there was no point. I 
wasn't sure what the crime was, but I'd been charged, tried, 
convicted and hanged.

I was a guilty man.

I rose as she swept my dishes away.

"Yeah, I'm finished."

~:~:~:~:~:~:~

I found Scully in William's room practicing her WWE moves. 
William wore an undershirt, a diaper, one sock and a scowl, and 
was doing his best to escape Scully's imaginative variation on 
the Walls of Jericho hold.

"William, please hold still."

"Nooooooo!"

"William, you have to put this sock on."

"I don't like socks!"

"You have to wear them," she answered. "If you don't, your feet 
will smell bad."

"Noooooooo!"

I leaned against the doorjamb. I was never sure if or when I was 
supposed to add my cent-and-a-half to these little differences of 
opinion, but, as someone who'd been wearing socks most of his 
life, this seemed like a matter I could safely weigh in on. "Put 
on your sock, William."

He stopped squirming and looked up, surprised. "Why?" he 
demanded.

"Because grandma can't take you to the zoo if you don't have 
socks. You have to have socks for the zoo. That's the rule."

William frowned. "Lions don't got socks."

"Um, well. . ." He had me there. "Over to you, Scully."

"Geez, thanks," she replied with a strained smile. If looks could 
kill, I'd be dead again. "You, young man, are not a lion. You're 
a William."

"I am a lion, mommy," he insisted. "Rrrrrrrwr!"

"Fine," she agreed over the roaring. She finally got the second 
sock on him and reached for the overalls that had fallen from the 
bed to the floor. "You're a lion. A lion in socks. Now how about 
we try for a lion in pants?"

"Noooooo!"

Scully rolled her eyes, but only made it about half way around 
the well-worn track when she stopped and looked at me.

"Everything okay, Mulder?"

I shrugged.

"Your hand bothering you?"

I shook my head, glanced at all the chips and gouges in the 
doorframe that were only half-hidden by layer after layer of 
paint. "Hand's fine."

"O-kay," she said without conviction, and went back to her 
wrestling.

I stood there for a moment, silent, searching for words. Finally 
I spoke. "Scully, what did you tell your mom?"

"About?"

"When I left. What did you tell her?"

"Oh." She hesitated a moment and licked her lips. "I, ah, I told 
her what I told everyone else."

I don't know why that surprised, or hurt, me. We'd regularly said 
harsher things to one another on an almost daily basis at one 
time. The news landed like a .45 to the gut, anyway. "You what?"

She smoothed the Velcro straps on Will's shoe into place and cast 
me a quick glance. "Do we have to do this right this moment?"

"I, I - yes," I insisted. "Yes, we do."

"Fine." She frowned. "Yes, I told her the same thing I told 
everyone else. That you left me. Isn't that what we agreed to?" 
she asked, trying to get Will's left shoe on. "What you insisted 
on, in fact?"

I felt my blood pressure rise and drew two shallow breaths trying 
to tamp in back down. I was not going to lose my temper. I was 
not going to be-

"That story," I said in careful, even tones, "was intended for 
the general public, Scully."

"My mother isn't part of the general public?"

"You know what I mean."

"No, I don't. That story, as I recall, was intended to protect 
the general public," she answered. "I wasn't going to endanger 
her - or you - by not having my story straight."

"Shi-," I muttered, and got the death-glare before I could 
finish.

"There, you're all dressed," she told William brightly and set 
him on the floor. "Why don't you go play with your zoo animals in 
the study for a bit, okay?"

William trotted to the room next to his, a spare bedroom Scully 
had set up as a combination office/playroom and then inexplicably 
dubbed *The Study.* She watched him leave, then looked back up at 
me. Her smile faded. "What was I supposed to tell her? That we 
had a line on stopping alien colonization and you had to take off 
for a while?"

"Why not?" I demanded. "It's the truth."

Scully sighed. "Not everyone appreciates the truth quite the way 
you do, Mulder."

I could feel my pulse throbbing in my injured hand. "What's that 
supposed to mean?"

"Mulder, I had a six day old son-"

"We had a six day old son," I corrected through gritted teeth.

"No. *I* had a six day old son, Mulder. You'd been gone for 
almost six months before his birth, and when you showed back up, 
you weren't exactly handing out cigars. And trust me, I had a 
very hard time selling my mother that *he wasn't dead, he was 
really undercover and we had to fake his death* story when you 
did reappear. To say she was suspicious would be putting it very 
mildly. In her mind, your being dead was excusable; being away 
for any other reason wasn't."

I inhaled slowly and swallowed down the bile making its way into 
my throat. Dead. I'd been dead. I was-

"That. Wasn't. My. Fault." I ground out.

She seemed to deflate. "No, it wasn't. And I'm not blaming you. I 
know you had no control over what happened to you in Bellefleur, 
Mulder. I know that wasn't a choice you made. But I couldn't very 
well tell her I'd accidentally buried you, either. You were gone, 
and I was pregnant, and I was putting a brave face on it, trying 
to make a show of getting on with my life. And then, suddenly, 
you were back, and just as suddenly, it seemed, you were gone 
again. I'd just had a baby - your baby - and you took off. At 
that point, Mom wasn't going to believe anything but what she 
wanted to, least of all that you were off saving the world, so I 
just let her think what she wanted to think, and what she wanted 
to think was the worst."

I thought it through. It made sense. An ugly, twisted kind of 
sense, the way ugly, twisted things so often did. But -

No.

"You knew I was coming back, Scully."

"No," she said very quietly. She shook her head and her eyes went 
to the window across the room. "I hoped you were coming back. I 
wanted you to come back." She paused and pushed a rogue strand of 
hair back into place, her hand trembling as she did so. "I 
believed you'd do everything you could to get back. But God, 
Mulder, even we could only beat the odds so many times."

I didn't know what to say. "Oh."

"I just didn't want to get my hopes up." She held her top lip 
between her teeth a moment, then rubbed the tip of her nose. "You 
- you know how that is."

Yes, I knew. I knew all too well. It was the feeling I got every 
time I looked at her, or reached for William, or closed my eyes, 
afraid to open them again for fear it would all be gone. And 
she'd been doing it all this time without benefit of drugs. What 
a gal.

"Yeah." I nodded. "Yeah, I do know. So what, uh, what did you 
tell her this time? When you came out to get me?"

Scully smoothed her hands down her denim-covered thighs and up 
again. "I told her you were in New Mexico, that you'd been 
injured in an explosion, that you'd been in a coma for a number 
of weeks, that you'd suffered some amnesia. I told her there was 
no one else to look after you, no one else to care for you, and 
that I was bringing you back here to recuperate."

"All true," I said, and tried to smile. Scully tried to smile 
back. "What did she say to that?"

She sighed again. "She told me I was a fool."

No surprise there, either. Mrs. Scully had barely tolerated me at 
the best of times. But it only compounded the frustration and 
guilt I already felt. "I'm sorry, Scul-"

She shook her head. "No. We've both been sorry enough for awhile, 
all right? Just, just enough, okay?"

I nodded. Nothing was resolved, but this was as close to a real 
conversation as we'd come in a long time. I thought maybe we were 
finally making some progress, toward what I wasn't sure.  "Okay."

William picked that moment to charge back in, roaring his lion- 
wearing-socks-and-pants roar.

I scooped him up. "No lions in the house!" I told him, and 
started tickling his tummy.

"Hey, put me down!" he shrieked between giggles.

"Never!"

"Dana," Mrs. Scully called up from the first floor, "Mark's here. 
Is William ready?"

"Yeah, Mom, just a second."

Scully joined us in the doorway and I wondered, suddenly, why I 
hadn't gone to her, why I hadn't sat down next to her on the bed, 
held her hand, kissed her. Why I had to be such a coward over the 
simplest things.

"Come on, William, let's go," she said, taking him from my arms 
and swinging him onto her left hip. "Grandma's ready to take you 
to the zoo."

"Scully, wait." I caught her by the arm. "You - you're not a 
fool."

She nodded, but she didn't look at me. "I know that, Mulder."

I tilted her chin up so her eyes met mine. "I mean it."

She nodded again.

"When are you going to tell her the truth, Scully? About us, 
about the future?"

"I guess-" she dropped her gaze, "-I guess I'll tell her when I 
figure it out for myself."

Before I could respond, she was gone.

So much for progress.

~:~:~:~:~:~:~

I followed Scully and William down the stairs, carefully tucking 
all my internal organs back in where they belonged. Scully had 
done this to me before - said one thing, done another, thought a 
third, written a report up on the fourth, eviscerated a fifth - 
me being the fifth.

I was used to it, of course; Scully had been pulling me to her 
with one hand while simultaneously pushing me away with the other 
since about ten minutes after we first met. For a while, I 
thought she was just a tease, which would have fit nicely with 
the whole honey-trap/mole scenario I presume Blevins and his 
handlers had had in mind. After a while, I wondered if maybe she 
wasn't just a teeny bit psychotic. It took me forever to finally 
clue in, and by the time I figured out that The Push-me/Pull-you 
Tango was actually some weird-ass Catholic-girl mating dance, it 
was almost too late.

Just the same, I thought as I narrowly avoided stepping on 
something wheeled and plastic that really did not belong on the 
stairs, if she intended to keep gutting me, maybe I should have 
an abdominal zipper installed. It would save us both time and 
trouble.

I guess the real question, though, was did she intend to keep 
doing this to me? Or, now that I was on my feet, was she planning 
to shove my ass out the door again?

Wow. Bitter and indifferent, all at once. Maybe that Paxil *was* 
good for something.

William peered at me over Scully's shoulder. "You comin' to the 
zoo, daddy?"

The zoo. I hadn't been to a zoo since - wow. A long time. And 
even then it had been work-related. But what hadn't?

That thought brought me up short. Really, which part of the 
previous decade hadn't been, in some way, a direct result of my 
time with the FBI? If I hadn't pledged my all for fidelity, 
bravery, and integrity, I might have missed out on that all-
expenses-paid trip to Reticula Prime, or wherever the hell they 
took me. I'd certainly never have met Scully. There'd be no Will.

I stepped around a pile of picture books on the landing and 
wondered how much different my life would be at that very moment 
if I'd never been dead.

I wasn't sure how to feel about that, how to feel about any of 
it. I took a deep breath and decided not to feel anything.

"Daddy," William roused me as Scully wrestled him into this 
jacket. "Are. You. Coming. Tothezoo!?"

"Nope. Not today, Will."

He frowned. "Why?"

Why? "Um, I wasn't invited."

Scully turned her face so Will wouldn't see and shot me a *try 
again, asshole* scowl.

"I mean, this is a special treat for you and your grandma. Your, 
um, special day."

The scowl dissolved into a *much better* quirk of the lips. If 
she patted me on the head and scratched behind my ears, I was 
home-free.

The rain had stopped at some point and, beyond the front window, 
the sky was clearing. The news had promised sunshine, which 
looked to be on its way, and for half a second or so I wondered 
if Scully had packed sunscreen. Of course she had, I told myself; 
she knew what she was doing, and more to the point, she was good 
at this. I, on the other hand, was standing there with my hands 
in my pockets, feeling sorry for myself and practicing being 
useless. I was getting too good at both.

"Can I do anything?" I asked.

"Can you grab his stuff?" she suggested as she popped Will's 
Yankees' cap on his head. "I left it in the study, I think, by 
the bookshelf."

This much I could manage. "Sure."

The Bob the Builder backpack was right where she thought it would 
be. I did a quick inventory - extra t-shirt, sweat shirt, rolled-
up pair of track pants, Shrek pajamas, animal crackers - organic 
whole wheat animal crackers, of course - Pull-ups, wet wipes, 
coloring book, crayons, approximately 45 toy cars, and...no 
sunscreen. I flipped open all the flaps and pockets.

Nope. No sunscreen.

Will had Scully's fair skin and eyes the same pale blue shade 
that my mother's had been - a poster child, in other words, for 
the melanin-deprived. Spring had very recently sprung, but as I'd 
discovered on my late afternoon runs, the sun could be intense. 
Will needed more protection than a baseball cap could offer.

My brilliant deductive skills led me to Will's room, where, after 
some searching, I found a tube of fluorescent green gunk on his 
dresser. It had been tossed up against a framed copy of the only 
extant picture of the three of us, taken when William was all of 
four days old. I'd carried that photo's clone with me night and 
day for two years, but I'd lost it in the explosion.

If, in fact, there had been an explosion. The jury was still kind 
of out on that one.

I sighed and sat on William's bed, the *big boy bed* with the 
Buzz Lightyear comforter he'd proudly shown me as soon as I was 
up and walking, and stared at the photo, not really seeing it.  

We'd decided to save the world, whether the world wanted saving 
or not. As little as either of us liked the fact, we knew we 
could cover more ground and cover it more quickly if we split up. 
The supposed death threats against me would just lend credibility 
to my disappearance, or so we hoped.  So I'd left when Will was 
six days old, spent two years undercover with Gibson and the 
others working on a way to take down the Supersoldiers once and 
for all. Scully'd stayed in DC with Will, working at Quantico as 
an instructor/pathologist/some-time field agent, covertly 
spending the bulk of her time with the CDC team developing the 
vaccine. Thanks to hard work, determination, and some profoundly 
dumb luck, we'd both succeeded.

In her version of the story, during my last mission, which 
involved taking out the last of the Supes by way of brute force 
and magnetite, I'd gotten myself blown sky high and landed on my 
head, resulting in a coma. My version of events followed hers, up 
to a point, but had a few decidedly more Brothers Grimm twists. 
For 'successes,' read 'failure, doubt, frustration, bad food, 
boredom, no cable, aching loneliness, capture by the military, a 
mock trial, life on the run, the Gunmen dead, and Scully giving 
William up for adoption.' 

As you can probably imagine, I liked Scully's story a whole lot 
better. I just wasn't always sure it was accurate.

Hers was the only story that made sense, of course - we had 
defeated the Supes; she had found the vaccine; I was holding a 
Bob the Builder backpack, so William clearly hadn't gone 
anywhere. Frohike had only lifted an eyebrow and told me to quit 
weirding him out the day he showed up at the front door and I 
poked him in the shoulder four or five times trying to determine 
whether or not he was a ghost. And as far as I could ascertain 
from speaking to Gibson, to Skinner, to Doggett and Reyes, the 
threat of alien colonization - from without and within - had 
really and truly been laid to rest.

We'd saved the world. And the FBI was still paying my salary.

Fox Mulder, this is your happy ending.

Try telling my brain that, though. It stubbornly refused to 
listen.

I knew what my problem was, or a big part of it, anyway - thirty 
years of being too busy, too blind, and too chickenshit to 
actually deal with any of the deeply bad crap that had been 
thrown my way. The day they took Samantha I'd started running, 
and I'd set a pretty solid pace ever since. Now I'd come to an 
unexpected halt, and - surprise! - everything that had been 
chasing me was finally catching up. It was textbook, really.

Forty-two years old and I was finally doing something by the 
book. Scully would be so proud. The Scully I remembered, anyway. 
This Scully, I wasn't so -

Fuck.

I knew I had to stop doing that. If I was going to have even the 
slimmest chance of pulling my life together, I had to.

"Mulder?" Scully's concerned voice wound its way up the stairs.

Fuck fuck fuck.

"You okay up there, Mulder?"

Yeah, Scully, I thought, I'm fine. Fucking fabulous.

"Yep." I stood. "Be right there."

~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~

"Mulder," Scully said as I turned over the backpack, "'this' is 
Mark Alden."

The fabled Mark, as it turned out, was taller than me, younger, 
blonder, arguably better looking. His easy smile revealed more 
teeth than any one human being not named *Osmond* could possibly 
have use for. I could tell just by looking at him that he'd never 
given any thought to losing his hair or his flat stomach or his 
sanity. He stood in the driveway, holding my delighted son a 
little too comfortably in one arm and a really expensive Tonka 
truck in the other, looking at me like I was something that had 
been scraped off the bottom of his left shoe.

Naturally, I hated him on sight.

"Alden?" I said, extending my hand in an effort to play nice. 
"Any relation to Ellen?" I'd met Scully's friend Ellen a couple 
of times. She hadn't liked me. The feeling had been entirely 
mutual.

"Brother-in-law," Mark replied. Profiler that I am, I checked 
Alden over quickly, looking for a wedding band or some other 
obvious sign of domestication. He didn't appear to have any, 
which didn't make me like him any better.

He was paying most of his attention to William, but he shot Mrs. 
Scully a look that I couldn't readily interpret. She, suddenly, 
found the patch of weedy grass at her feet absolutely 
enthralling. You'd have missed Mark's frown if you hadn't been 
paying close attention, but, with my Spidey-sense on red-alert, I 
saw it. Then he turned his gaze on an otherwise oblivious Scully, 
and -

- and -

Ah, hell.

I'd seen the look on Mark's face before - seen it on Pendrell's 
face and Frohike's and Skinner's and, on any of her 'short 
skirt/low neckline' days, on the faces of half the law 
enforcement officers in the continental US. I'd seen it in the 
mirror once or twice or a million times, too.

I know I have a reputation for paranoia, and it might not be 
entirely undeserved, but trust me - drugged or undrugged, PTSD'd 
or not - there's a difference between thinking everyone wants 
what's yours, and damned well knowing it. Apparently, I wasn't 
the only one standing in that muddy front yard with a crush on 
the delightful Doctor Scully.

Well, tough, I thought, experiencing the first moment of perfect 
clarity I'd had in as long as I could remember. I may have been 
confused about any number of things - the meaning of life, my 
place in the universe, why my team could never win while I was in 
my right mind - but this wasn't one of them. As far as I was 
concerned, I'd seen her first, and until Scully herself told me 
otherwise, I had first dibs. I was living in her house, after 
all, eating her food, using up all her hot water, forgetting to 
wipe down her tub. And we shared a son, a fact that was never, 
ever going to change. Anyone who didn't like it could kiss my ass 
or sue it; whatever worked.

Scully would not take kindly to me killing Mark, I reasoned while 
making an effort not to grind my molars. Not in front of William, 
any way. Wounding him was probably out of the question, too.

So I did the next best thing; I took two steps closer to her and 
held out my arms to William. Wonderful, brilliant, gifted child - 
who is now definitely going to get a very sweet car for his 16th 
birthday - that he is, he leaned toward me, effectively falling 
out of Mark's arms and falling into mine.

I hoisted him, plastic yellow bribe and all, onto my hip. "Nice 
to meet you," I said to Mark. "Nice truck," I said to Will. "And, 
wow, it's not even your birthday or anything."

"Nice to meet you, too," Mark answered. He shoved his suddenly 
un-full hands in his pockets. "So you're 'the' Fox Mulder?"

"Yes," I said evenly, holding his gaze, "I am."

"Look, Grandma," William said. "Mark gived me a cool truck," 

"Gave," Scully corrected. "And yes, that's a very cool truck. 
What do you say to Mark, Will?"

William turned. "This is a very cool truck, Mark," he said 
seriously.

Mark chuckled a little uneasily.

"What else do you say, Will?" I piped in.

"Thank you, Mark. This is a cool truck."

There was a brief but unsurprisingly awkward pause in the 
conversation while we decided who got to take the next shot. 

"I didn't know you and Dana were still working together," Mark 
said at last.

"We're not," I answered.

Mark blinked. "Oh?"

"Working together, that is." I turned to Scully, and looped my 
free arm around her shoulders, startling her. "Are we, Dana?"

You had to know Scully, really know her, to understand the look 
she gave me. Someone else wouldn't have caught the meaning behind 
the slow blink, the tiny twitch of the lips, the drop of the 
chin, the three millimeter elevation of the left brow. But, even 
if I knew nothing else, I knew her, and I knew if looks could 
kill, they'd have been planning yet another funeral for me.

"No," she said, then turned back to him, not-quite smile in 
place. "No Mark, at the moment, I don't believe we are."

~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~

Three hours and half a dozen cups of coffee later, we were back 
in the driveway waving Mark goodbye; I was, perhaps, waving a 
little more enthusiastically than Scully. They hadn't been the 
worst three hours of my life - there were plenty of better-
qualified contenders for that coveted title - but they were 
certainly among the least comfortable. And I'm including the 
three months in a box and the three months that came before the 
box in the count.

Scully had made it clear for weeks that she expected me to be 
there when The Marvelous Mark made his next appearance, but she 
hadn't bothered to tell me what I was expected to do during his 
performance. Was I supposed to sit quietly? Nod knowingly? 
Juggle? I know as much about renovating a house as Scully does 
about being tall or ugly or stupid. More to the point, I was 
living there, but it wasn't my house in any conventional sense. 
And as much as I wanted - needed - to believe I was and would 
always be welcome, nothing official had been said, by either one 
of us, one way or the other. Asking was out of the question, of 
course. So I confined myself to not interrupting, not glaring at 
Mark, and not thinking up new and interesting ways to dispose of 
a corpse.

Those last two proved trickiest. Hence, the enthusiastic waving.

"That wasn't so bad," Scully declared as Mark's truck 
disappeared.

"No," I agreed without actually agreeing. 'Bad' didn't even start 
to cover it.

One thing had become evident in short order, though - Scully may 
not have had a Clue One about being tall, but she knew plenty 
about gable ends and reinforced foundations and sequential hold-
backs. I could read a building schematic, pretty much, but my 
interest always extended to likely access points for a sharp 
shooter and where you might want to put a bomb to get the most 
bang for your C4 buck. Scully, on the other hand, sounded like an 
old pro as she and Mark effortlessly discussed revisions and 
revisions of revisions and which revisions needed revising now. 
It was like being trapped at a foreign film festive without 
dubbing. Or subtitles. Or even a decent box of popcorn. The 
longer this 'consultation' went on, the more I wondered if all 
the copies of JAMA and The Lancet I had seen her devouring over 
the years had really been concealing back issues of Architectural 
Digest and This Old House Magazine. Jokes about power tools 
aside, it was entirely possible Scully had a *thing* for Bob Vila 
I did not want to know about.

"You were pretty quiet," she said after a moment.

I smiled as best I could. "Nice change, huh?"

She tilted her head to one side and cocked a brow at me. "A 
change, definitely," she said with a grin of her own. Then she 
seemed to sober. "I just thought - I thought you'd have more to 
say."

Now she bothered to tell me. "Oh."

"It's a lot of mon-" she began, then stopped. She frowned. "No 
questions at all, Mulder?"

I shrugged. "Home renovation is not exactly my area of 
expertise."

"No. No, I guess it isn't." She looked like she was going to say 
something else, but thought better of it and glanced away.

I don't know what it was exactly - something atmospheric or 
cosmological or maybe just something that had been coming on for 
a long long time, but I felt my mind unexpectedly slip gears, 
severing the connection between my brain and my tongue. "Besides, 
Mark seems to have taken care of everything," I said, with just 
enough edge to sound like an ass.

She tipped her head to the side again.

"You ask all the questions and, what do you know? He's got all 
the answers."

She frowned, puzzled. "All the- ? Oh. No," she said, and shook 
her head. "No."

"No, what?"

"I - he - there's - " she started and stopped. Finally she said, 
"You have nothing to worry about with Mark, Mulder."

I hadn't expected that - that she'd come right out and admit to 
it, even by denying it.

"What? Me, worry?" I only half-joked. "What could I possibly have 
to worry about?"

She licked her lips. "William just - he just really likes Mark's 
truck," she explained. "Mark's taken us out for a ride in it a 
few times. He told William he'd bring him a truck of his own next 
visit. That's all."

'That's all,' I thought. The little light-bulb above my head 
finally flickered all the way on and cast its harsh light on one 
ugly fucking picture.

I took a breath and willed myself calm, the way I do before 
interviewing a witness or interrogating a suspect. "Will's pretty 
comfortable with him."

"I suppose so." Scully nodded, but looked as if she had no idea 
where I was going. Which was the point, really.

"Surprisingly comfortable, actually. All the books say he's at 
that age where he should be worried about unfamiliar people, 
where he should be 'making strange,' but he's got no problems 
with Mark," I continued.

"I suppose."

"So I guess it must have been more than a few times."

She shrugged. "Mark's been here five or, no, I guess six times, 
consulting on the renovations, measuring, that sort of thing. And 
we've seen him at Ellen's a couple of times," she said. "So, yes, 
I guess William doesn't think of him as a stranger any more."

"At Ellen's? Really?"

"Yes, really. She *is* his sister-in-law," she reminded me.

"I'm aware of that," I answered. "So what? She's invited you and 
Will over for a couple of play-dates and Mark just happened to be 
there?"

Scully frowned, "Well, no, but -"

"He's single, right?" I continued, laying out the facts. "Has his 
own business, not especially ugly, doesn't smell. Really nice 
truck, too - just ask William. Appears to like kids."

The frown morphed into a hard glare and an elevated brow. After a 
moment, she asked, "What's your point, Mulder?"

"I guess Mark's exactly the kind of guy a real friend would set 
you up with."

"Set me up? What the hell-"

"Your mother must be delirious."

She took a step toward me. "Stop it, Mul-."

"Bet Bill likes him, too," I added, dodging her.

"I said stop." She reached out to me, but I stepped back and 
shrugged her off.

"When's your mom bringing William back?"

She stopped in her tracks, clearly thrown off course by my sudden 
change of direction. "What?"

"William. Our son."

"Mulder, don't do -"

"I'm not 'doing' anything. When is she bringing him back?"

She folded her arms across her chest and drew her lips into a 
thin line. "She's not."

There were probably worse ways she could have answered me, but I 
couldn't think of any. I went from bluster to terror in the space 
of one heartbeat. "What?"

She took another step toward me. "She's keeping him at her place 
tonight. He's sleeping over. I thought we -"

I stepped back again, wanting to put more distance between us. 
"And you didn't think to mention this to me?"

She blinked at me. "Oh Mulder," she sighed at last. "I did 
mention it. Yesterday. Remember?"

No. No, I didn't remember, at all. When had we discussed this? 
Had I actually agreed? Or just been told?

My chest was tight and getting tighter. I had to get out of 
there, remove myself from the situation, or I was going to end up 
curled in a ball, howling like a baby, or trying to take out 
another wall without benefit of power tools.

"I'm going for a run," I said, turning for the house.

"Muld -" She caught my arm.

I spun on her, glared down. "What do you want?"

She took a step back, but squared her shoulders, and took a deep 
breath. "No, Mulder," she said softly, "the question now, 
clearly, is what do *you* want?"

"Want?"

She nodded once.

That was easy, I thought. I wanted a decent night's sleep and my 
old life back and for Samantha to have never died and for me to 
have never been born and for Scully to have never walked into my 
office and for Will to grow up happy and loved and for the aliens 
to have by-passed Earth and gone on to bother some other blue-
green world and for whoever it was that kept tugging at the rug 
beneath my feet to yank it the fuck out from under me already and 
get it over with.

"What do I want?" I repeated.

Her gaze didn't waver. "Yeah."

I looked away, scanning the sky, the trees lining the street, the 
small useless bits of stone covering the driveway. Anywhere but 
her eyes.

"Not -" I began, turning away from her. "Not this."

"Wh -?" she started, but I didn't let her finish.

"Let go, Scully," I said with as much steely conviction as I 
could muster.

"Muld -"

I jerked my arm free. "I said, let go."

I did not look back as I bolted for the house.

~:~:~:~:~:~

One of two things was going to happen: either Scully was going to 
follow me into the house and demand that I stop behaving like a 
complete asshole, or she wasn't. I couldn't decide which prospect 
was worse, so I made quick work of sliding out of my jeans and 
into my running gear. Scully regularly referred to my shoes as 
*canoes,* so William had developed a habit of filling them with 
plastic farm animals and sailing them under the bed, behind the 
bookcase, and once, into a half-filled tub (Yes Virginia, Nikes 
*do* float). Wherever they were docked that day, they weren't 
with my neatly folded and freshly laundered shorts and t-shirt, 
so I decided to forego proper footwear in hopes making a quick, 
clean getaway. Which is why, half an hour later, I was stuck 
outside another 7-11 in deepest suburbia with a broken shoelace.

Shit.

Crouching, I tugged the lace out, hoping to salvage enough of it 
to finish the run back. The beauty of running - of any strenuous 
athletic pursuit, for that matter - is that it generates enough 
endorphins to narrow your focus down to one pure, perfect thought 
- generally something about how good it's  going to feel when you 
stop. Never feels quite as good as you think it will, though. 
Good, yeah, just not as good as -

Shit.

The lace snapped again. So much for that plan. I threw it to the 
ground in disgust, adding 'littering, with malice aforethought' 
to my list of crimes.

Shit shit shit. Shit.

I plopped myself down on the sun-warmed curb, popped off my shoe, 
swore again for good measure, and considered my options.

Options...options...options...

I had to have some, right?

Okay, so, the 7-11 probably sold something I could fake it with. 
They might even sell laces of some sort, though they'd probably 
be pink and curly and have My Little Ponies galloping all over 
them. Unfortunately, my wallet was sitting on the dresser in 
Scully's guestroom, and since I was still technically a Fed, 
shoplifting was probably not a great career move.

I could hitchhike. That's generally a good way to make friends 
and meet sociopaths, and one is frequently the other for me. But, 
all appearances aside, death-by-deviant wasn't on my to-do list 
that day, and the odds of someone picking me up around here? Ha. 
They just don't do that in the 'burbs.

I could call a cab, pay when he dropped me off. That would 
probably require some explanation, though, and I wasn't in the 
mood to explain anything to anyone. And what the hell was 
Scully's address, anyway?

I suppose I could call Scully and ask her to come get me, upping 
my pathetic loser quotient by several million. Several million 
million.

Or, come to think of it, I could just sit on the curb with one 
shoe and wallow in my misery.

Stick with what you know, I guess.

The few clouds that had been hanging around rolled away, leaving 
my exposed forearms to sizzle about the same way the fake bacon 
at breakfast had, reminding me that I had not only gone out 
without sunscreen, but was turning into one of those *do-as-I-
say-not-as-I-do* parents I'd always assured myself I was never 
going to be. The top of my head was burning too, a little more in 
some spots than others. The reason for that was probably better 
left un-thought about.

Christ. I knew guys who had kids graduating from college this 
year. Given the range of geniuses I'd gone to high school with, 
some of the guys in my graduating class were probably now 
grandparents. And I had thinning hair and an almost two year old 
and -

And -

Shit.

Lord, I thought, my stomach sinking like a stone, I was going to 
have to go back there. After the stupid things I'd said and the 
stupid way I'd behaved, I was going to have to go back there and 
face her and apologize - again - and tell her - again - that I 
wasn't exactly myself at the moment.

An enormous SUV crammed full of kids rolled by, narrowly missing 
the puddle next to me. It was true, I guess. But if I wasn't 
exactly myself at the moment, as far as I could tell, I wasn't 
exactly anyone else, either. Fox Mulder - truth-seeker, alien-
hunter, brooder, rebel, loner, and guy with a decent jump shot - 
had left the building, leaving behind nothing more than - well, 
nothing more than me.

Scully hadn't shown the slightest interest in Mark. She'd been 
civil, friendly, attentive - all the things you probably should 
be when you're getting ready to hand 50-odd thousand dollars over 
to someone. Objectively, though, I could say without a trace of a 
doubt that the only thing she had any interest in him laying was 
maybe some new flooring. But the one abiding truism of our 
relationship was that I'd always found it easier to hurt her than 
disappoint her.

God, I'd had plans. Not elaborate, and not particularly well-
thought out plans, but plans, just the same. There were a lot of 
little details that had to be worked out. Hell, there were a lot 
of big details that had to be worked out, but in general, they'd 
involved me returning victorious, sweeping her off her feet, and 
the three of us building a brand new life.

But - surprise - Scully didn't need a brand new life. She already 
had one under construction.

So where, besides stranded at the local 7-11, did that leave me?

I had no idea.

I brooded a while longer, hoping some answers might come to me. 
The only thing that came to me, though, was pimply 17 year old in 
an ugly polyester smock.

"Mister," he said, keeping his distance, "my manager, um, he sent 
me out here to see if you need some help or something. You've 
been sittin' here over an hour, now. Do you, like, need me to 
call the cops or an ambulance or something?"

"What? No." I held up my shoe. "I just broke a lace."

"Oh," he replied sounding relieved. "Well, my manager said you're 
impeding the steady flow of traffic."

"I am, am I?" I looked around. There wasn't a lot of traffic, 
steady or otherwise, for me to impede, but looks could be 
deceiving.

"Yeah," he answered. "Yeah. You are. You can't just sit there, 
mister."

I blinked up at him stupidly. He had a slight local drawl, but 
that wasn't the issue. It was like he was speaking some foreign 
language. "What?" I asked.

"I said you can't sit here. You have to move along."

I blinked again.

Well, duh, I thought. It was so obvious even a zitty Slurpee 
jockey could see it.

Of course I couldn't just sit there. Of course I had to move on.

I stood, swiped the accumulated curb crap off the back of my 
shorts, slipped my shoe back on. It was just a broken shoelace; 
I'd lived through worse.  

"You're right. Thanks." 

"Um, anytime," he answered, but I was already half a block away.

~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~

The walk back was long and hot, but it gave me the time I needed 
to think. So maybe things weren't going to work out exactly as 
I'd pictured. Truth was, while the middle of said picture had 
always been perfectly clear - Scully, William, me - the edges had 
been a little blurry. Okay, a lot blurry. I'd just disregarded 
the fuzzy bits, assuming that they'd somehow come into focus all 
by themselves. Well, as Mr. Polyester Pants had pointed out, they 
weren't. Benign neglect wasn't going to cut it anymore. So, by 
the time I reached the school six blocks from the house, I had my 
de-blurring plan all worked out; by the time I hit the front 
door, I also had a contingency plan and two fall-backs. I had, I 
was certain, anticipated every twist the conversation might take, 
negotiated every possible blind alley and hairpin turn. We were 
going to talk. And if she wouldn't go for that, I was going to 
talk, dammit, and she was going to listen.

I was ready for anything.

Anything, as it turned out, but finding Scully curled up asleep 
on my bed. Which, coincidently, was what I found.

I stood in the doorway and tried to guess what Scully's impromptu 
visit meant. It wasn't unprecedented, exactly. There had been 
plenty of times when I'd been out there in the desert with Gibson 
and the guys and I'd crawl back to my 8 by 8 room, aching and 
lonely, and find Scully in my bed.

Of course, that Scully had always had the good sense to show up 
naked. And then to disappear when I blinked.

So I blinked.

Still dressed. Still there.

Shit.

I sighed and leaned against the door jamb, my resolve crumbling. 
Oh right, Mulder, I thought. You're going to go in there, shake 
her awake, and demand that she make your life make sense. Sure 
you are.

Hell, I couldn't even figure out how to ask her for breakfast 
cereal that didn't taste like hay.

And, dammit, leave it to Scully to fall asleep when I really 
needed her awake.

Scully had done this to me for years. We'd be on a stakeout, and 
I'd just be ready to lay the meaning of life, the universe, and 
all things Mulder on her, only to look over and find her out 
cold. Same thing the night we made Will: I was just about to 
profess my undying love and boom! she was snoring.

Okay, so maybe I hadn't been about to profess my undying love. 
Maybe I was just going to offer her more tea. Or maybe I was just 
going to say something that sounded deep and meant a whole hell 
of a lot of nothing, which was more my style. I'd convinced 
myself over the years that I didn't need to profess anything, 
that what we felt - what I felt, at least - went beyond words. 
But maybe the truth was that I knew deep down that some things 
were better left unsaid.

Then again, maybe I was just chickenshit. The fact that I stood 
frozen in the doorway, staring, suggested that might be my actual 
problem.

I sighed. Sometimes I wish I'd met Scully in a more normal way - 
in the cold food line at the Hoover cafeteria, say, or maybe over 
the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet at some deadly dull out-of- 
town conference. I could have turned on the charm, dazzled her 
with all my expensive orthodontia, worked in a couple of hot 
dates and some wild sex *before* she figured out I was mad, bad, 
and extremely dangerous to know. Carnal itches sufficiently 
scratched, we could have gone our separate ways and gotten on 
with our respective normal lives. Well, she could have gotten on 
with hers, at least, and I'd have had one uncomplicated lay in 
the last decade, which in and of itself would have been an 
accomplishment.

Only, objectively, I knew that never would have happened. We 
might have said our *excuse me*s and *oh, sorry*s as one of 
us reached past the other for the Thousand Island dressing or the 
no-fat cream cheese, but beyond that, we probably wouldn't have 
looked at each other twice. Whatever you might call this thing 
between us, whatever it actually was, it was the product of 
proximity and inertia and need. There was nothing vaguely 
storybook about it.

Didn't mean I wouldn't go to the ends of the earth for her again, 
though, or give her every cent I had, or jerk off into a Dixie 
cup for her a million more times if that was what was she wanted. 
That made it real. Real enough for me, anyway.

Scully shifted in her sleep and for about half a second I 
considered just climbing into bed, wrapping my arms around her, 
and whispering, "Honey, I'm home," into her hair. She might let 
me, too. On the other hand, Scully wasn't generally crazy about 
surprises, and knowing her, she had her gun tucked under the 
pillow. If she was going to shoot me again, I wanted her to have 
a nice, clean shot.

Instead, I sat as gently as I could on the edge of the bed and 
shook her by the shoulder. "Yo, Goldilocks. Wrong bed."

Scully stretched, full-bodied, like a waking kitten. She blinked 
up at me, then did something I never would have expected: She 
smiled. Not a polite little smile, either, but one of her head- 
to-toes, even-my-hair-is-happy-to-see-you smiles.

My surprise must have shown, because as quickly as the smile 
appeared, it disappeared. "I'm - I'm sorry," she began. "For a 
minute I thought -" She stopped, frowning slightly.

"You thought what?"

"Nothing." Shaking her head as if trying to dislodge a stray 
notion that had somehow gotten itself stuck there, she sat up, 
tugging the sheet with her.

"Nothing?"

"I - I just thought it was you."

"Um, I think it *is* me," I said, wondering what she'd meant. 
"Wanna check for distinguishing marks?"

That was supposed to earn me a frown, maybe a scowl. But, in 
keeping with her new *do-something-Mulder-would-never-expect* 
policy, she reached out and took my hand. "No," she said. "I 
don't need to see your scars to know they're there, Mulder." She 
gave my hand a squeeze. "You okay now?"

There was no good answer for that. "Been worse."

More gently than I deserved, she asked, "Anything you want to 
talk about?"

That there was a good answer for. No. No, in spite of my earlier 
bravado, I didn't want to talk. No, I didn't want to share my 
feelings. No I didn't want to hear it was going to be okay, 
everything would work out, it would all be fine fine fine. As far 
as I was concerned, fine was barely a distant speck on the 
horizon.

"Um, yeah," I began, looking down at the sheets instead of into 
her eyes. "I want to apolog -"

"No." Scully said, tugging on my hand. She tugged again, waiting 
until I looked at her. "We declared a moratorium on apologies 
this morning, remember?"

"I know but -"

"But nothing," she said. "You never have to apologize for telling 
me the truth." She shrugged. "Besides, it's not like I didn't 
know, like I couldn't tell."

"Tell what?"

She took a deep breath, let it go slowly. "That this" - she made 
a vague all-encompassing gesture with her free hand - "this isn't 
what you want."

Oh. Oh God. Shit. "No. No, Scully, I didn't mean -"

"Yes, you did. And it's all right, Mulder. I get it, I really 
do."

"No, Scully," I countered, panic rising in me like floodwater, 
threatening to drown me. "You don't-"

"I do," she plowed on. "And if anyone should apologize, it's me. 
I dragged you back here, forced you to-"

The wave of panic kept rolling in, the urge to curl up on myself 
like a pill bug trailing in its wake. "Forced me? Forced me to 
what?"

Scully sighed and twisted the sheet in her free hand. "You cringe 
every time William calls you daddy. You - you flinch every time I 
enter the room. And the first thing you did when you were strong 
enough to move was crawl out of my bed." She squeezed my hand, 
smiled that sad half-smile I hate. "I'm not dumb, Mulder."

"No, of course you aren't, but-"

"I know that sometimes things get said in the heat of the moment, 
things people don't mean," she continued, sounding oh-so-rational 
and oh-so-reasonable. "You're a good man, Mulder, and I know we 
weren't together before this, not really, and this was never part 
of our deal-"

"Deal?" I sputtered. "Scully this isn't- "

But she was on a tear. "You were gone two years, and I know 
people change, feelings change, and-"

I had to stop her. I had to say something or she was going to 
rational and reasonable me right out the damned door. "Scully, 
stop it."

"Mulder-"

"I love you," I said, surprising myself.

But not, apparently, surprising her. "I know that," she answered 
as if I'd just mentioned that the sky was blue or that I could 
sometimes be a little dense. The corners of her mouth twitched. 
"I just said I wasn't dumb, didn't I?"

I just looked at her, nodded. On the one hand, it was oddly 
reassuring that she hadn't thrown herself at me and cried *Oh 
Mulder darling, I love you too!* That would have been clear and 
irrefutably proof that I'd finally lost what was left of my mind. 
But on the other hand. . .

Hell, there was no other hand.

She cleared her throat. "That doesn't mean you want this life. I 
know that, too."

"No, it doesn't," I started, but I had to stop when my voice 
wedged sideways in my throat. "But it doesn't mean I don't want 
it, either. I do."

Scully nodded silently. She was giving me that look that told me 
she couldn't decide whether I was worth expending any more energy 
on or not. "Well, Mulder," she said at long last, "if that's the 
case, you've got a funny way of showing it."

She was probably right about that. I'd messed up more than my 
share of relationships with my own special set of mixed signals, 
and none of them had mattered to me half as much as this one. 
"No, Scully. I mean it. I love you and I love Will. And this may 
not have been our original deal, but this *is* what I want."

"So what's the issue here, Mulder?"

"It's just - all my best dreams start this way Scully. You, me, 
great kid, nice house, rotten plumbing, mother-in-law who hates 
me-"

"She doesn't hate you."

"Close enough." I shrugged.

"But?"

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. 
"But all my worst nightmares start this way, too."

She was silent a long time. Too silent, for too long. When I got 
brave enough to open my eyes, she was looking at me as if I'd 
just slapped her, hard, and repeatedly. "Oh," she whispered. "And 
you aren't sure which this is? Is that it?"

"The nightmares always end the same, Scully. Sooner or later, you 
lose everything."

"*I* lose?"

I nodded.

"Everything?"

"Everything."

She cleared her throat softly. "Even you?"

"No, you've still got me, but I'm your year's supply of Rice-a- 
Roni," I said. "Your Samsonite luggage."

She blinked at me. "You mean, what? That you're my consolation 
prize?"

"I think the p.c. term is 'lovely parting gift,' but yeah."

Scully blinked again, and let go of my hand. This is it, I 
thought. This is where your sorry ass gets escorted to the door.

Instead, Scully lifted her hand to my cheek and leaned in close. 
"Mulder," she whispered, "are you nuts?"

"Well, the jury's still out on tha-," I began, but she pressed 
the pad of her thumb to my lips, silencing me.

"No," she said. "No. The jury's back. You are nuts."

"Scully-" I tried, but she ran her thumb lightly back and forth 
across my lips, barely grazing them with each pass. It was tender 
and gentle and turning me on in ways that were entirely 
inappropriate under the circumstances.

"I know New Mexico is not as far as Antarctica, Mulder, but I'd 
have come that far for you. I'd have come a lot farther if I had 
to."

I nodded, trying to process what she was saying, wondering if I 
could believe it. I really wished she'd stop with the thumb 
thing, as I was still in my running shorts and those suckers 
didn't hide a thing.

Scully sighed. "Mulder, you are not the Rice-a-Roni. You are the 
all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii. You are the washer-dryer combo. 
You, Fox Mulder" - she poked the center of my chest with her 
index finger - "you are the Amana Radar Range."

That was news to me. "You think?"

"I know," she said, her voice so clear and certain that I almost 
believed her. "But I don't want you to stay if you don't want to. 
I honestly don't want anything from you that you don't want to 
give me, and believe me Mulder, I am well aware of how much 
you've given me already. If this life isn't the one you want, 
then it's not the life I want for you, either." She ducked her 
head, pulled her hand away. "I love you too much for that."

"You do?"

I must have sounded extra pathetic, because the next thing I 
knew, Scully's arms were around my neck and the rest of her was 
pretty much in my lap. "You know I do," she said, her voice low 
and fierce, her breath warm on my ear. "You're not dumb, either."

I pulled her closer. God, she felt good. Really good. So good I 
probably should have pinched myself a couple of times, but I was 
too busy holding her. I realized then that I'd missed her so much 
for so long that it had simply become habit, and I had wasted  
time missing her even when we were in the same room. Stupid. So 
fucking stupid.

Scully sniffed, then sniffed again.

"Scully, are you crying?" I released her, pulled back so I could 
look. I lifted her chin. "You are crying. Don't cry."

She sniffed again and gave a dismissive wave. "Don't worry. It's 
the new me," she said. "I cry at card tricks."

"Okay." I wrapped her in my arms again. "Rule number one: no more 
card tricks."

She laughed, and just like that, the bubble of fear and doubt I'd 
been stuck in all those weeks popped, setting me free.

"God, Scully," I said. "I'm just - god, I'm so fucked up at the 
moment."

"And that makes you different from the rest of us how?" she 
asked, a gentle tease in her voice. "You're working on it, 
Mulder. You're doing what you have to do to get better. No one 
can expect anything more from you than that. Not even you."

"I just - I want more for us. More for you. I want the happy 
ending."

She sat back then, shook her head. "I don't. Not now. Not yet. "

"You don't?"

"Our story isn't over, Mulder. We've barely started this 
chapter." She shrugged. "We're a work in progress."

"So what?" I asked. "Our fairy tale's still under construction?"

"Exactly."

And then, for the very first time in well over two years, Dana 
Scully kissed me.

And I kissed her right back.

We spent the rest of the weekend doing what grown-ups who love 
each other do - moving my stuff back into the master bedroom, 
arguing about the new bathroom tiles, and reminding ourselves in 
explicit detail how and why we'd fallen for one another in the 
first place. It may not have been the ideal romantic combination, 
but in that respect, it suited us perfectly.

Eventually, we got around to negotiating the big stuff - how to 
squeeze the toothpaste, where to put my old couch, what to do 
with the rest of our lives. It took time and patience, but we'd 
regularly faced zombies, wolfmen, and the OPR, so Little League 
parents, pre-school carpools, and the occasional Wrath of Maggie 
seemed like a trip to DisneyWorld. It wasn't easy, but we had 
faith in each another, hope for the future, and plenty of love. 
It was all that we needed, and a lot more than, at one time, I'd 
have ever dreamed of.

And, as required, in the end, we all lived happily ever after.


The End


~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~

Notes: Thanks to Amy, Weyo, Syn, and Euphrosyne, for fab beta, 
handholding, encouragement, endless whiny IM sessions, patience, 
inspiration, etc etc etc. Without you guys, sheesh. I can't thank 
you enough, so have fresh MulderClones instead.  Thanks also to 
XOK list mom Lisby for issuing the challenge (so it took me 20 
months - what IS your point??) and to the many many many readers 
who have taken the time to poke, prod, and petition for more. I 
appreciate your interest and enthusiasm more than you can 
imagine.

No, really.

maybe_a@rocketmail.com