Yeah, I don't know. This is basically just a rewrite of season 8 post-DeadAlive that I've had on my laptop for a while. Doesn't seem to be going anywhere so I thought I might as well put this out there for people to read. Because... why not? :P

Title is from an e. e. cummings poem Dive For Dreams :]

The first thing Mulder had noticed – well, after her eyes, and the fact that she was crying, so shit perhaps it was a big deal this time around – was that she was pregnant. Really pregnant; the kind you couldn't get away with hiding. The kind that, in a month or so, would equals a baby. Shit Mulder, this is a pretty big deal.

He made a bravura joke and she crumpled over him, which Mulder guessed meant he'd been in some serious trouble back there.

Days later, she'd taken him home. They'd attempted a conversation but his brain was all the wrong sorts of occupied, so she'd curled in the bed alone and the sofa had seemed like his only ally. When he woke up, she awaited him like a battalion.

"When I was fighting my cancer," she said numbly, "you cared for me." They were emotionless words, and she mutely crossed to the kitchen and filled a glass of water, which she sipped then held out for him.

He took it. "I did," he was unsure of where she was headed.

"You brought me ice cream in the hospital, even though my doctors said 'no sugary foods' and 'no out-of-hours visitors." Mulder smiled a little at that – it was one of the few memories from that time that he'd filed away under 'happy'; the two of them lounging on the hospital bed, the hospital silent in the middle of the night, TV in the corner showing Back to the Future, ice cream carton between them, one spoon, and in the middle of it all Scully had laughed – cancer and chemo and alien implants, and she had laughed.

"I did." He wondered when they might possibly touch upon the topic of the fetus residing in the space between them; burning questions aside, it wasn't the way he remembered Scully.

"Well," she cast a useless glance towards his freezer, "I ate all your ice cream."

Oh. Oh. This was it. "Well. I'm sure you and –" he waved enigmatically to her stomach, "had more use for it than I will."

Unexpectedly, she began to cry. She padded barefoot over to the sofa and sank down beside him. He watched her tears for a while, hand gravitating to the small of her back on instinct, until she peered sideways to meet his eyes. And there it was, that look in the back of her eyes that she reserved for telling families that they'd found their missing children, for bandaging his war wounds in the middle of the night, for telling Skinner time and time again that yes, it had been their fault that the FBI had to pay the fee on yet another wrecked rental car. It was that look, delivered hard and cold, that sank to the pit of his stomach. Oh.

He wasn't quite sure what his next move should be after that. Who's the father seemed redundant, considering that look. Not to mention insulting. Well done seemed odd and lacking. seemed too needy and, frankly, he'd spent the past three months in a coffin, he wasn't entirely sure his brain was geared up for this kind of conversation. Better to do without words.

He smiled, carefully. Fox Mulder, his inner voice nagged – the one that spoke in his mother's voice, this is the most important smile of your life, do not screw it up. He watched her eyes for a moment, waiting for the signal, that signal she'd given him the first time he'd kissed her, and pressed a light hand on the rise of her belly. It was motionless, and he was a little disappointed, but hell it was seven am, maybe the kid just had a rational sleeping schedule. Scully seemed to follow his train of thought, and laughed suddenly.

"It usually sleeps after I've eaten," she explained gently. It? Mulder couldn't help but question with his eyes. She shivered, "I wanted to wait. Until, you know…" And there it was again, that look, only this time it was partially pleading, and he nodded solicitously.

Suddenly, and he really wasn't sure where it came from because it hadn't been part of the plan in the slightest, but he leaned forward slowly and kissed her. He was instantly rewarded by a smile against his lips, which was a welcome turn of events. "There you are," she whispered, and gripped his hand.

"Can we go to your place?" Because it smells like you, like home, and it's warm and calm and quiet, and because I want to see the nursery, and your bed, and it's wrong here, all wrong and foreign. Instead, he dimly managed, "You probably have ice cream there."

She nodded, and he stuffed a change of clothes into the nearest backpack, and drove.

He gravitated easily towards her sofa, while she bustled about in the kitchen and returned with a tub of ice cream and, he didn't miss her smile, one spoon.

"Scully," he said, impressed, "this is the good stuff."

"Our fetus seems to think so, too."

Wow. There it was; she'd said it. 'Our fetus', 'our baby', 'this tiny being that we made'. "I hope he has your eyes," he said, out of nowhere.

"They want to hurt him." He was initially pleased that they were sticking with the 'him' pronoun, but then the weight of her words registered. She'd said it vaguely, blankly, not as if to tell him in detail but to warn him in general. Oh god, his world was falling through, this is it, she's giving me a way out. He could see the little neurons in her brain working through her clear eyes, telling him simply: if you don't want this, Mulder, I understand.

He was floored. Granted, it wasn't something he had expected, but to be told that this baby was half of him, and – bonus – half of the person he loved best… he couldn't formulate it. Her eyes were wide, desperate, in that crazy hormonal way that pregnancy brought about. She looked, for all her bravado, like a lost lamb in a field of wolves.

"They won't," he said sternly, and teased a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. Now for the difficult part. "I don't know… how to be… I mean – I don't know… what you need. I don't know what to do. But… I won't let them hurt him."

For all his stumbling efforts, he got another smile, one of relief. He wondered if she'd have been able to backtrack to the 'just friends' stage. With a smirk, he wondered if they'd ever occupied that stage; the centre of existence that Scully referred to as 'us' had been, for as long as Mulder could remember, a constant proof of trust and respect, of standing side-by-side in the face of danger. They'd never been 'just friends'; there'd never been a baseball game or a lunch in the park that didn't consist of nervous shared glances, and his hand protectively on her back, and her knowing eyes that cooled his constant paranoia.

He had never gone this long without employing that charming boyish humor that she was so fond of, and he felt uneasy. "What does Skinner think?"

She laughed, barely. "I don't know. I think he's just glad I've stopped crying on his front porch."

Mulder gave a half-amused chuckle, wondering whether it was okay to laugh at that, or whether he ought to get down on his knees and beg for forgiveness. Cancer Man had always said he'd be penitent by the end of this hell, but Mulder have never imagined that it would be with Scully, the distance between them made of more than customary awkwardness and shared looks; instead it was now made by ice cream and a baby, their baby.

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xx