Title: The Family G-Man: I Want To Believe
Authors: Neoxphile and FelineFemme
Spoilers: X-Files seasons 1-9, X-Files: I Want To Believe, "The Family G-Man," "The Family G-Man: One Fine Summer," "The Family G-Man: Confessions and Connections"
Rating: whatever the movie's was
Summary: in 2008, six years after leaving The X-Files for the hit show Jose Chung's The Truth Is Out There, Mulder is asked to help investigate the disappearance of two women, including FBI agent Monica Bannan. Scully has more pressing concerns at home, at least until Mulder's safety becomes paramount.
February 8, 2008
A dark dreary February afternoon is not the ideal time for a doctor's appointment, but that's when Scully's doctor managed to squeeze her in on one of her and Mulder's rare afternoons off from filming, so she couldn't complain too much. By the time they get home, it's snowing at a rapid clip, and the walkway is already covered in a white blanket three inches deep. "Guess we'll have to shovel," Mulder remarks as he takes the keys out of the ignition.
"Get David and Jared to help you," Scully suggests, referring to their nine-year-old twins, as she reluctantly opens the passenger side door. The car's interior is toasty warm, and she's not eager to go out into the wind. Still, she can't sit in the car all afternoon…
"You're hoping to have them burn off some energy?" Mulder asks.
"You bet," she agrees, gingerly stepping out into the driveway. "Little league's still a long way off." Of all the kids, their twin sons take after Mulder the most when it comes to their sleep patterns. If they don't do something to tire themselves out, they'll be awake by five a.m. which no one in the house appreciates because they're never quiet early risers.
It must have rained a little before it began to snow, because before she gets very far from the car her boots find an icy patch under it, and she begins to slip.
"Whoa," Mulder murmurs, grabbing her elbow before she loses her balance completely. For a moment she's reminded of another time when he literally kept her from falling and gallantly promised that he always would. That was a year before they married, and so far he's made good on the promise. But then he says "We'll salt out here too," and she's reminded of how much has changed since his act of chivalry prompted an elderly observer to tell them that they'd have beautiful children. Well, she wasn't wrong about that, Scully thinks with a small smile.
"Thanks," she tells him as they make their way towards the house. She can hear some of their kids outside already, probably playing.
"No problem."
She waits for him to say something about how her safety is especially important to him right then, but he doesn't and she's glad for it. And she's even gladder when they reach the front door and leave the cold outside.
"David! Jared!" Mulder calls, wandering deeper into the house as she takes her coat off and hangs it.
They could easily afford to hire someone to do the shoveling, but Mulder insists that they ought to do it themselves, and it's good for their sons to help him do it. For now she lets him continue to insist that, but when they get older… fortunately, he's very fit for a man in his forties still, so she suspects most of the kids will be out of the house before it's an issue. Most of them. And it's not like she has a leg to stand on lately when it comes to doing things better left to younger people, she thinks, hand snaking around behind her to rub the small of her back where it aches.
Mulder returns a couple of minutes later with the boys, and he lets them grumble for a moment before pointing at the coat closet. They figure out that complaining won't get them anywhere and greet their mother before pulling on gloves and coats.
"I want the green shovel," Jared's saying as they head out, and she thinks that she hears David object, but maybe it's Sammy. Sammy was supposed to be writing a report but when Mulder had fetched them a moment before she heard him proudly declare that not only was it done, Page had only found four typos before taking their little sisters outside to build a snowman.
Scully goes to the playroom to see who is inside still, then heads back to the foyer so she can see if she can see how Mulder and their older sons are making out. There's not that much snow, and with three helpers it shouldn't take long before they come back in. As soon as they do, it'll be time to think about getting dinner started.
Just as she reaches the window, the front door swings open, letting in her oldest and youngest children. "Hi Mom," Page greets her. "Can I make us hot chocolate?"
"If you do it right now so you're done before I need to start cooking and if you're careful with the stove."
A year or two earlier this statement would have been met with a moody reply, but Page has a better handle on the perils of adolescence now that she's thirteen. "Always."
"Nuh uh," Zoe says then. "Remember you burned the Mac and cheese last month?"
The blonde teenager sighs and gives her five-year-old sister a wounded look. "Of course I remember. You're not supposed to bring it up and make me feel bad about it, though."
"Oops."
"Miss Spencer says you should say something nice if you hurt someone's feelings on accident," Brianna tells her twin, referring to their preschool teacher. They both like Miss Spenser so much that they cried when they figured out they'll have a different teacher for kindergarten in September.
"Oh." Zoe thinks about this. "You and Sammy always got the cleanest bathroom is the house," she ventures with a forgive-me-yet? smile.
"Great," Page drawls. "That's sure to make me popular in high school. Come on, pipsqueaks."
"We're not pipsqueaks!" they predictably protest despite being so much smaller than their eldest sibling; to Sammy's considerable envy, due to a growth spurt Page is now as tall as Scully, and he's still two and a half inches behind her. The younger set of twins are both small for their age, which is one reason Scully's glad they won't be starting public school until the fall of the following year.
In the kitchen Page puts a kettle of water on the stove to heat, then asks the younger girls if they could go and find out if the other kids still in the house want hot chocolate too, adding that they don't need to go outside because she's sure everyone outside will. The brunette twins rush off eagerly, but not quite so energetically as the older set of twins would have at their age.
"So?" Scully asks, knowing that Page has sent her sisters off so they can speak in what passes for private in their house.
Page squirms a little under her gaze. "Um…I know you were worried, so I want to know if your doctor's appointment, went, uh, okay."
Scully has to clamp down on a sigh before it escapes. As hard as she's tried to keep her level of anxiety from infecting the kids too, it's clear that the older ones are perceptive enough to realize Mom's Been Really Worried lately. Smiling as best as she can she tells Page, "Dr. Hart says everything looks good."
"And he did all those tests you and Daddy told us about?" Page asks, still looking concerned.
"Yes. They all came back, and there are no abnormalities."
"Oh, wow." Now Page looks relieved, and it doesn't surprise her mother to be hugged a second later. "I'm so glad!"
"Me too," Scully admits, hugging her daughter back.
After a moment Page lets her go and takes a step back. "So, did he also tell you if it's going to be a boy or a girl?"
"He did, but your dad and I haven't discussed telling you kids yet," Scully tells her. At twenty-two weeks gestation the baby is now more than big enough that Dr. Hart was able to give them a definitive answer to the question of gender during the appointment as well as a clean bill of health.
"Aww, come on, Mom," Page wheedles. "A new baby is big enough a surprise, isn't it?"
Well, she's got me there, Scully thinks.
When Scully began to get sick a few months earlier, at first she and Mulder chalked it up to the flu. But when it went on for weeks, they both began to become very concerned. He has rarely ever spoken up about what it was like in his life before back when she got cancer instead of Krycek, but she could tell by the way he looked at her that it was something he was thinking about even if he didn't say so. And to be truthful, she thought about it too.
After three weeks passed and she still wasn't well, she went to her primary care physician fearing the worst. Dr. Jewel carefully listened to her symptoms, did an exam, and suggested a pregnancy test. Scully's response was to laugh and tell her that the idea of her being pregnant was either ridiculous or insulting because Mulder had gotten a vasectomy five years earlier, and she certainly hadn't slept with another man. Jewel asked her to humor her…and after Scully did just to shut her up, Jewel then recommended that Mulder return to his doctor himself before handing her case over to Dr. Hart.
Mulder took the news that his vasectomy failed a lot better than she did, telling her that somehow it's not too surprising that he's one of a fraction of a percent of men to have them fail, not when the odds of having two sets of identical twins in one family are also infinitesimal and that happened in their family too. Where she was worried sick, sometimes literally, about having a baby that far into her forties, he seemed to vacillate between concern for her and the baby and what seemed to her to be an absurd pride in his own virility that irritated her.
Once they realized that they were expecting again, there was no question about what to do, just how they would cope if there turned out to be anything wrong with their unanticipated baby. Mulder had surprised her by telling her that he felt the same way as he did when they were younger and taking care of the infant half-demon Louie had prompted him to tell her that they'd welcome any child of theirs, even if it wasn't perfect. She of course agreed because even if there were problems she could never do anything to harm a child of theirs on purpose, not with what she'd been raised to believe about morality.
This afternoon has her feeling better about the new baby than most, and she's sure it's because she's relieved that her past their prime ova haven't caused her surprise child any damage. It's been hard wrapping her head around the idea of another baby, too, because while she probably wouldn't have minded more after Zoe and Brianna they thought that a vasectomy had put a definitive end to the expansion of their family, and she'd made her peace with that years earlier. Unmaking your peace with something, even a good something, feels odd.
It's her hope that maybe from this point on, with a lot less to worry about now, she'll begin to enjoy her pregnancy more. At least so far it's been less physically difficult than the last one. When she told Mulder that she found that surprising given she's more than five years older than the last time, he pointed out that she's only half as pregnant as then, which is true. Fortunately there's only one baby in there, not two. And thank the Lord not four like Tara's second and last pregnancy.
"I'll talk to him about it," Scully promises Page.
"Do you think April will be nicer about things now that we don't have to worry about the baby being…sick?" Page asks then.
Scully wonders that herself. When they told the kids that she was pregnant two months earlier, she expected that Zoe and Brianna would be the ones who would take the news the least well. After all, they were the youngest, and had gotten to enjoy that position in the family years longer than any of their siblings had. But they actually seemed pleased by the idea of having a little brother or sister to boss around someday soon.
The older kids seemed to be a mixture of confused, concerned (just the ones old enough to understand that having babies is riskier at older ages), and somewhat pleased.
Except for April, who had given both her parents a disgusted look and declared, "This is so embarrassing!"
Mulder had given their almost eleven-year-old daughter a confused look and repeated, "Embarrassing?"
"If you have another baby, all my friends are going to know you still, you still do it. At your ages!" the preteen wailed in response.
"Considering Mom and Dad are still married and not having affairs, most people assume they still do it with each other," Page had told April, making their mother blush.
"But now they'll know for sure!"
Scully's blushing had only gotten worse when Sammy decided to help defend them. "Your forties isn't too old to do it. I hope I'm still doing it in my forties too."
"Still?" Mulder had asked, sounding like he was going to choke. She couldn't tell at the time if he was trying not to laugh or had actually been worried.
"Dad! I don't mean I am now," twelve-year-old Sammy had protested, and the relieved look on Mulder's face had suggested that he had indeed interpreted Sammy's comment that way. "But when I do find someone to. Well, you know. I hope we do for years and years, you know?"
"Uh, I don't know what to say about that, Sammy," Mulder had said faintly. "That's good, I guess."
"Yeah, so I totally don't blame you and mom for sti…" Sammy trailed off then when he looked at their faces.
By that point Scully had wanted the floor to open up and swallow her. They'd thought teaching the kids where babies came from and what to expect during puberty would be the most uncomfortable conversations they'd ever had with them. But they were so very wrong.
"Mom?" Page asks, pulling her head out of the clouds.
"Hmm? I don't know. We'll have to hope," Scully finally answers Page's question. If they're lucky it'll turn out that April's distaste has really been masking worry that the baby could turn out not to be chromosomally normal. Of all the kids she was the most interested in medical things, and occasionally that led to her having worries she shouldn't really need to.
"She'll get over it," Page says but her tone implies that she's not sure of that herself. "By the time we get to hold him or her for sure."
The idea that April might on the other hand still be moody over it until July does not gladden Scully's heart. But what does is when the baby kicks and Page notices. "Can I feel that?"
"Of course."
Page puts her hand flat on Scully's belly, then looks awed when the baby obligingly kicks again. "That is so cool. Does it feel different from the inside?"
"Yup."
"I'm going to wait until I go to college and get married first, so don't worry, but…I'm definitely going to do this too," Page confides. "I just hope I'm as good at it as you are."
The thought of Page wanting to be a mother someday too makes her happy, especially since it's the first time they've discussed it since she's been old enough to understand that you don't have to be a parent or get married just because you've grown up, which seems to be what most small children believe. She can't resist teasing Page, "You hope to be as good at it as me? You mean you want a kajillion kids too?"
Page instantly looks worried, obviously giving the thought of ten kids serious thought. "Um, maybe not that many. But a few."
"What's a few?" Scully asks, curious now.
"Four or five?" Page suggests.
"Oh, I see, a small family."
"You must think Aunt Missy and Uncle Charlie's families are tiny then," Page shoots back with a smile.
"How my little brother and Elaine ended up with just one kid, I'll never know."
"It seemed like Uncle Bill was going to too," Page points out. "But now there's five of them!"
Scully smirks at this. Just a week earlier Mattie sent her a video of the quads' latest antics, which he confided had gotten him in trouble with Bill for taping instead of stopping it, but capturing them on film wrapping each other up in toilet paper 'to be mummies' had totally been worth getting grounded a week for. At least he's having a lot more fun being an older brother now that his three small sisters and brother are no longer needy babies, she muses. And poor Brandon has no one to play with, she thinks, though given her oldest nephew is now a college freshman he probably doesn't mind.
But still, it would be entertaining to alarm her little brother with the suggestion that he and his wife could give it another go. They're both younger than her, after all. "You know, you should call your uncle Charlie and ask if he's ever going to give Brandon a brother or sister. He doesn't have enough kids of his own to give him a hard time."
"Funny, Mom." Page snorts. "You know if you told Sammy to, he'd really do it."
She grins at her daughter. "And he'd tell you about it with a completely innocent look once he'd done it too."
Behind them the kettle on the stove begins to sing, and acting like a siren it brings the kids inside running to the kitchen.
Except for April.
But it's William who comes to join Scully and Page after everyone else grabs their mugs and scatters again. Giving them a suspicious look, William demands to know, "What are you talking about?"
Page seems torn, and after a moment or two apparently decides not to tell her youngest brother something that might get back to Sammy. "The new baby. Mom and Dad haven't decided if they're going to tell us if it's a boy or a girl yet."
The red-haired boy looks surprised. "But we know."
"We do?" Page asks skeptically.
He shrugs. "Well, I do anyway."
Page puts her hand on her hip. "Well, which is it?"
"A boy," William says confidently.
"You don't know that," Page protests. "How could you know that?"
"I just know," he declares confidently.
They both look at their mother, but Scully holds her hands up. "Very clever, but I'm not falling for it."
"Falling for what?" William asks, looking confused.
"If I take someone's side, then you'll know. And as I told your sister, Daddy and I haven't talked about it yet," she explains.
"Oh."
"Go on, before all the hot cocoa is gone," Scully tells them both, point them in the direction of the kitchen. They go without argument. As soon as they're done, she'll set up another round for the snow shovelers still outside.
Watching after them, Scully shakes her head. As they'd begun to suspect a couple of years earlier, William is able to figure out things that he shouldn't be able to, just like April does. But unlike his older sister, he has no qualms about declaring that he "knows" things he merely wants to be true.
Maybe it's better that way, she muses, given he's much more extroverted than April. The world isn't ready for an out-going child who can flawlessly tell what's going to happen, so it's probably better that people believe he's being fanciful even on the occasions when he's right. Silly kids make friends much more easily than ones who are eerie, and they're glad that he's made more friends in first grade after such a rough start back in kindergarten.
Humming to herself, she wanders back into the living room, feeds the fish, pets the cats, and calls her youngest girls back to hang their coats up again, properly this time, before Mulder and the boys come back in. The snow outside is getting heavier, and she wonders if they'll need to shovel again later, or if the storm will pick up so much that Alan will be watching all the kids the next day, not just the littlest ones after school.
All of the sudden Scully hears a distinctly liquidy sound, then Page exclaims "Will!"
There's a quieter "oops" just before Scully reaches the kitchen and an agitated teenage sigh. She's not overly surprised to see a flood of cocoa spreading across the counter and threatening to cascade down to the floor. "What happened?"
Page rolls her eyes. "Will wasn't paying attention and almost knocked me over when he bumped into me looking for marshmallows."
It's then that Scully notices that a chair has been dragged to the counter and a few doors to the upper cabinets hang open.
"I didn't mean to!"
"Yeah, well, I was in the middle of pouring," Page complains. "Now look."
William's eyes scan the mess of cocoa and knocked over mugs, and she'd almost swear that he's only really comprehending the extent of the problem he has created. Looking meek, he says "sorry."
"I'll clean it up," Scully announces. She refills the kettle and calmly puts it on the stove before turning back to the two children.
Her oldest gives her a wary look. "You will?"
"Yes. The two of you are going to put on your coats and boots and take Daisy for a walk."
Daisy, their five-month-old springer spaniel, has been dozing in her bed on the far side of the kitchen but her ears prick up at the word 'walk'.
"I was going to ask April and Christopher to do it, but it seems like the two of you need the exercise more," Scully concludes.
"But I just came in-" Page protests, but she breaks off with a sigh when Scully gives the wet counter a pointed look. "Come on, Will."
The second Page reaches for the leash Daisy scrambles out of her bed, tail wagging excitedly. It's hard not to smile as she watches the puppy dance around the kids as they put their winter gear on, or back on in Page's case.
Scully and Mulder had chosen Daisy specifically because she and her littermates were going to be old enough to go to their new homes at Christmas. They'd already brought the kids to see Daisy twice by the time they realized that Scully was pregnant, so her and Mulder's conversation over whether they should still get a puppy even though they'd told the kids that they couldn't have one before the youngest kids were five was very brief. Even they were unable to say "we're not taking you" while looking into the black and white puppy's soulful brown eyes. That's how Mulder found himself abandoned in Petco three days before Christmas, suddenly picking out puppy supplies himself when she'd run next door to find a restroom once she'd been struck by a sudden wave of morning sickness.
"What are you doing?" Mulder asks a couple of minutes later, startling her because he'd come into the room so quietly.
She notices his cheeks are pink from the cold when he plucks the sponge she's been using from her hand. "I can do it," she protests instead of answering his question. "It's all on the counter so it's not like I need to get on my hands and knees to do it."
Even after nearly fourteen years of marriage, he still smirks when she mentions getting on her hands and knees. She pokes him, making him smile instead.
"I know you can clear this up," he says, picking the mugs up and wiping under them. "But I don't want you to feel like you should have to." He glances at her. "You didn't do this, did you?"
"No, William did," she admits.
"Figures," Mulder mutters. "Alan asked me yesterday if I think some of his sudden perchance for causing chaos is due to being jealous about the babies coming soon." The second baby in this statement is Alan's own: he and his wife are expecting their first baby a couple of weeks after Scully is due, and Alan will be bringing his new daughter to the house while he works. Some people they've told about this arrangement think it's odd, but letting Alan have his baby there too is a small price to pay to get full time care for the baby without the stress of shopping for yet another new nanny. They're just grateful Alan was willing to work with them to find a way for him to move from part to full time like they need him to.
"What did you tell him?" Scully asks.
He shrugs and rinses the sponge. "It's the age. Sammy, David and Jared broke or otherwise ruined more things than I want to think about when they were his age."
"Probably that's it. We should keep an eye on it, though."
"Of course." He leans down and kisses her forehead.
"What's that for?"
"You're just awesome."
"Thanks, you're not too bad yourself."
The kettle on the stove that Scully filled to finish making cocoa whistles, bringing the boys who'd been shoveling running in.
She shakes her head slightly when Sammy jumps in to poor cocoa for the three of them. With all the activity in their house all the time, it's a minor wonder that she and Mulder ever found enough time alone to find themselves unexpectedly expecting.
"What are you smiling about?" Sammy asks suspiciously as soon as she thinks of something.
"Nothing," she declares.
"Your mind was really blank, or I'd regret it if I keep asking?"
"Yes."
"Mom, you can't answer yes to an 'or' question," David complains.
"She just did," Jared points out.
"I KNOW that, but..."
Still smirking to herself, Scully decides her earlier thought was right: a good lock on the door to the master bedroom definitely helps.
Eyeing Mulder as he referees, she decides it should help once everyone is sent to bed, too.