I got a prompt from the lovely MonikaFileFan and I was beyond excited to tackle it. "Mulder and Scully have to awkwardly explain to their growing daughter what they were doing "making each other cry to God while wrestling one another naked" Bahahaha. So, I haven't really dabbled to much in Post-Series MSR (hardly ever) and especially not with child, so I'm really excited to see how this goes!
Mortification didn't even begin to cover what Scully was feeling right now. One second Mulder was thrusting into her, sending her into her third orgasm of the night; then the next, he was tossing her off of him, desperately wrapping them in a sheet while yelling, "Close your eyes sweetie!"
Scully's head whipped around, hoping she wasn't about to see what her gut knew she would. No such luck. At the door was their daughter, bright blue eyes shining in the moonlight, trying to absorb and understand the scene going on in front of her. The scene of her riding the life out of Mulder, as loud as she was naked. Scully scrambled to help Mulder in covering them as she pleaded, "Close the door, honey. We'll be out in a second, okay?" Her red ringlets bobbed around her head as she nodded, grabbing the knob of the door and shutting it lightly.
"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," Mulder repeated, jumping out of bed with his erection dying against his leg. "How long do you think she was standing there?" he whined as he grabbed a pair of boxers, almost falling over with the force he slid them up his legs with.
Scully was no better, almost falling out of bed with the sheets wrapped around her legs. "I don't know, I didn't even notice her."
"Well, I know why we weren't able to hear the door open," he teased. She was always vocal in bed, but she thought she'd toned it down significantly since the home expanded to three.
"Don't you blame this on me, I wasn't the one banging the headboard against the wall earlier!" she responded before trying to take control of her soaring adrenaline while wiping in between her legs with her forgotten shirt. "It's both of our faults. We need to stick together."
"What if we just say we were wrestling?" Mulder asked in a desperate hushed tone, slipping on the t-shirt she'd ripped off less than an hour ago.
"We can't lie to her. Besides, what if she wants to wrestle with some kid later and suddenly strips off all her clothes and starts to hump them?" she rushed, getting tangled in the robe she was trying to shove herself into.
"Fuck," he cried. "I have to go make sure she's alright."
She ran towards him and grabbed his arm before he had a chance to open the door, "Wait!" Mulder stopped and looked at her, that kicked puppy expression taking up residence on his face ever since this happened. "We have to be calm, cool, and collected. We can't make her feel bad or let her see our embarrassment. I don't want this to taint her view of sexuality and cause her to think sex is something to be ashamed of."
"Scully, she's four years old. Besides, will she even remember this?" he almost pleaded, as if she could predict the future and tell him if his daughter will always be haunted by the sight of his hairy ass-crack.
"Mulder, I don't know! I hope not, but there's more of a chance she'll remember if we allow this to be the first time she sees us distressed. I don't want her to associate naked bodies with her parents being upset, leading her to be ashamed of her own body because she thinks there's something wrong with-" she was spiraling in her rambling, trying to remember every sexuality class she took in med school but only succeeding in stressing herself out more.
"Oh god, will this impact the rest of her life?" Mulder interrupted with a cry, his face set in panic.
A soft knock at the door interrupted her response. "Mommy, Daddy, you okay?" Katie's asked, her little voice laced with concern.
Mulder whipped open the door to reveal their daughter standing innocently at the door, her chubby fingers playing with the bow on the top of her nightdress. "Hi sweetie, yeah we're okay, everything's okay," if Scully wasn't in the same boat as him, she would have been amused by how high and rushed Mulder's voice was. "Baby, what woke you up?"
"Can we talk at the table?" she requested politely. They both nodded in mortification and followed the wide-awake toddler down the hall with heavy steps.
They had a longstanding tradition in their home of discussing things at their dining room table. If Katie had a question about something she learned at preschool that she didn't understand, if she was curious about why the leaves on the tree weren't orange in April, when she wanted to know how Santa managed to find time to star in so many movies when he should be making toys; it didn't matter, they talked about it at the table. Even more recently, it was where they had to chastise her for different misbehaviors. However, as they sat across from the little girl with the floral nightie, hands authoritatively clasped in front of her, Scully couldn't help but feel like they were the ones about to get reprimanded. The girl who wasn't even four feet tall yet somehow had mastered the gravitas of A.D Skinner. Was that what he taught her when he babysat?
For a second she thought maybe she hadn't really seen. Maybe she all the sudden decided she wanted to talk about something that happened at school at two in the morning. "Sweetie, w-"
"What were you guys doin'?" she asked, bright eyes bouncing between the two blushing adults. Of course they wouldn't be that lucky.
Scully always knew this conversation was coming, it was inevitable. She'd even made the promise to herself that she wouldn't make it nearly as awkward for her own daughter as her mother had made it for her. "When a man and a woman love each other very much-" She still shuddered at the memory. The diagrams and the cautionary tales left her traumatized for weeks after. She couldn't even look at a boy without thinking of the words tumescence or fornication or syphilis.
However, in all of her imaginings of this event, Katie was starting to hit puberty, a time where these questions started to be asked as her body started to change and people who used to annoy her suddenly became interesting. Never did she think the conversation would happen when she had barely only started preschool. Especially not like this.
"Um-" Scully began, sending a resentful glare to Mulder who was looking at her with that same bright-eyed curiosity as Katie. As if he didn't know damn well what they were doing in that bedroom. "Parents have certain activities they like to do with each other in their private time."
"Activ-tivities?" She perked up, attaching to the familiar concept she knew, even though it had more syllables than her vocabulary was used to. "Like playing soccer?"
"Yes, like that. Except it's an activity I only do with Daddy in our bedroom." It was times like this where she swore she was telepathically connected to Mulder. She wasn't even looking at him, but she could hear him internally adding "and our office, and every room in this house, and in all those rental cars, and-"
"Your activity is sitting on daddy?" Scully'd smile if she wasn't dying inside.
"Um-," Mulder started, trying to ease some of the burden off of Scully. "It's an activity that only mommies and daddies do called 'making love'." Scully reached out and squeezed Mulder's hand, as if to congratulate him on good phrasing.
The praise may have come to soon, because fat tears started rolling down her cheeks as her bottom lip pouted out. Scully jumped up and ran around to kneel next to her chair, wrapping the tiny girl in her arms. "Katie-bear, what's wrong?"
"You g-g-uys n-never ma-make love to m-me," she cried between gasps for breath, devastated she was being excluded from this activity. Mulder stood up, probably beating himself up now, and mirrored Scully's position on her other side. She turned to him and, with eyes Scully knew were piercing Mulder's heart, eyes she's used on him herself, and whimpered, "I l-love you b-b-both."
"We love you too, Kaite," he started.
"More than anything in the world," Scully added, stroking her silky hair.
"When I said 'making love', thats a different type of love."
"D-difwent?" she repeated, traces of her baby talk still evident, always managing on tugging their heart strings.
"Yeah, that's the type of love that can make babies," he elaborated. Scully stopped suddenly to shoot him a look over their daughter's lap, to which he shrugged with a look of panic on his face.
"There are just certain ways that mommies and daddies touch each other. You know how we're married right?" Scully asked. When she nodded, she added, "Do you know what that means?"
"You're husban' and wife and you have matching wr-rings. Like best friend bwacelets," she declared seriously.
"Exactly. So, because we're married, we touch each other in special ways-"
"It's like a secret handshake. You know how we have our secret handshake?" he asked, holding out his hand. Katie smiled and threw her small, chubby hand in his direction. They touched front and back a few times before making fist and touching them together top and bottom. Finishing off by pulling them back and feigning an explosion. Mulder exaggerated his explosion noise ridiculously, causing Katie to giggle and squeal. When she settled down he continued, "You only ever do that handshake with me right?"
"Duh, Daddy, it's ours," she emphasized. As if doing it with someone else would be the world's biggest insult.
Mulder smiled at his daughter's sincerity and Scully felt her own smile growing. It always touched her heart to see how deeply his relationship with his daughter meant to Mulder. "Exactly. Just like I will only ever do that handshake with you, I will only ever make love to mommy."
Understanding dawned in the depths of blue and she started nodding, haphazardly raising her fist to clear away her tear tracks. Mulder and Scully simultaneously grabbed for the chairs nearest to them. Now that the crisis was evaded, their joints desperately screamed at them to get out of their kneeling postures. "Do you always have to pray during it too?"
"What do you mean baby?" Scully asked, raising her hand to cup a rosy cheek in her hand, wiping away the remaining wetness with the pad of her thumb.
"You were screaming 'oh god'." And she was eternally now too.
This time Mulder couldn't help himself and he had to bring a hand up to cover his mouth, which was no doubt plastered with a shit eating grin. "Yes. I do. I always think it's important to say my prayers before I go to bed," Scully managed to say straight-faced.
"Even when you're making love?" she asked, playing with the silk fabric of Scully's robe.
"Especially then," Mulder deadpanned.
She nodded again, absorbing this information. "Do you have any other questions about what you saw, honey?" Scully asked before placing a kiss to the crown of her head, taking a moment to smell her hair.
"No, I got it now. Thank you," she smiled.
Mulder mimicked the motion of wiping sweat off his brow, but she knew the gesture wasn't all that far from the truth. "Okay, well it's time to get you to bed, little girl. It's way passed your bedtime," he said in a sing-songy voice, scooping her up in his arms.
She squealed in delight and clung to Mulder's shirt, resting her head against his shoulder like a doll. Scully stood up, relieved all of this was settled, and followed them into the room decorated like the sky. Scully grabbed the comforter of the rocketship bed Mulder had made and pulled them back, so he could ease the now sleepy toddler into her cocoon.
Mulder was about to lean down to press a kiss to her forehead when, in a small sleepy voice, she yawned, "Your lucky Mommy's a doctor."
They both laughed at the inherent truth in that statement from years of proof. "She didn't sit on me that hard honey," he laughed, earning a playful pinch from Scully.
"No, not for that," Katie sighed, burrowing into bed.
"Then what for, baby?" Scully asked.
"Somethin's wrong with your pwivate parts Daddy, they don' look like Mommy's and mine," she said seriously, looking in his face, mimicking the same look Scully had given him countless times over the years. "But don' worry Daddy," she comforted, freeing one hand to rub it clumsily over the skin of his cheek. "Mommy'll cut it off and you'll be good as new." Neither of them could help the laughter that escaped that time.
That was a discussion for a later day.