Title: The Family G-Man: From Here to Paternity
Authors: Neoxphile and FelineFemme
Spoilers: seasons 1-9 plus I Want to Believe; the previous stories in this series
Series: The Family G-Man
Previous stories:
* The Family G-Man
* The Family G-Man: One Fine Summer
* The Family G-Man: Confessions and Connections
* The Family G-Man: I Want to Believe
Summary: In Mulder and Scully's family a new baby brings joy, but for Luke and Adrianna a new baby means stress, anxiety, and the sense that everything is falling apart. Meanwhile, Gibson's suspicions about young Alice finally come to a head.
Mulder Home
June 15, 2008
"Didn't we just go to Page's graduation?" Sammy grumbles. It seems that this year is worse than the others, because his older sister continually pulls the "I'm the oldest" card, even though he's the oldest boy. And it doesn't seem like it will get any better, especially since they have yet to go to high school and she's acting like a big bossypants already. "Why do we have to go to another one?"
"Are they gonna have a party at Uncle Scott and Auntie Samantha's?" Christopher asks as he peersover the back of the couch, not really bothered this summer by any over-assertion of elder siblings, since he has a few, Sammy included. "Have you seen Wallace?"
Scully cranes her neck around, but doesn't leave her seat. She finds it's harder to leave any sort of comfortable seat these days, even couches half-filled with squirmy boys. "Have you checked upstairs in Zoe and Brianna's toy box?" she asks, knowing it's the last place he'll want to look. "He seems to like cuddling with stuffed animals."
"But that's so," her almost nine-year-old son's face scrunches up as he complains, "babyish!"
Scully laughs, she can't help it. "Christopher, he's a kitten, he doesn't care," she giggles.
Her younger middle son's face wrinkles further, then he sighs loudly. "Fine," he says, "guess I'll have to rescue him again." And he scrambles off the couch to run upstairs and crash his baby sisters' tea party to "rescue" his young cat.
His mother doesn't bother to correct him again, as it seems he's fallen into the years of "not wanting baby stuff" now. But she'd rather have that than vicious sibling rivalry, which, thankfully, none of them have exhibited to any alarming degree.
"So, are we gonna have a party at Aunt Samantha's?" Sammy asks, looking slightly hopeful.
"Um, no." Scully looks down. Before she can go into details, her oldest child comes in with April and William just behind her. "How did it go?" she asks them.
Page makes a face, while April and William grin. "Lucky for you, you get the least messiest root beer float," her oldest daughter says. Then William burps. "Ugh."
Spared from having to explain why there isn't going to be a party to celebrate their cousin's high school graduation like there just had been for Page's eighth grade graduation, Scully smiles and takes the "least messiest root beer float" from her daughter, sipping the frothy and fizzy drink gratefully. She can't wait until her baby is born, to be honest. Maybe it's because she's much older now, but it seems like her youngest is taking his dear, sweet time to be born, even though her obstetrician has told her time and again that the actual due date is a couple of weeks down the line. The only good thing is that the children outside of her womb have occasional bouts of thoughtfulness, one of which is doing their best to help her with her cravings when Mulder isn't available to do so, like now.
Currently, Mulder's taping the on-location segment of a show about Sasquatch up in Canada. Originally, he'd insisted on just a cameraman to drive with him, but Reed kicked up a fuss about "seeing is believing" and all that, so it ended up being a nearly-full cast and crew being flown up. Nearly, because Scully's too far along in her pregnancy to fly, or want to. She isn't hopeful that they'd get any sightings, however, as the overgrown hairy creatures are even more skittish about publicity than, say, ghosts.
And how would I know that? she muses inwardly. When she realizes she's finishes the last of her root beer, she looks up. "What?" she asks, seeing her children's quizzical expressions.
"What are you smiling at, Mom?" Page asks.
Scully blinks. "Missing Sasquatch," she answers honestly.
April rolls her eyes. "Mo-om," she sighs, "you're so weird."
William giggles and clambers up next to his mother. "You want another one?" he asks.
"Only if you help make it." Scully smiles at her currently youngest little boy. April rolls her eyes again, but she smiles, and so does Page. "Okay, help Mommy up, and we'll see what else we can put in the root beer float."
"What do you mean?" William asks, his older sisters looking similarly confused, while Sammy smirks knowingly. He alone thinks he knows what their mother means.
"She puts other stuff in there," Sammy says, jumping off the couch and holds his arms out to her. "I can taste it."
Scully smirks back when it takes more than one child to pull her off the couch. "You're so good to Mommy." She smiles.
"You did that on purpose." Page narrows her eyes.
Scully shrugs. She gets her entertainment where she can. "Where are Jared and David?" she asks, looking out the front window. No one's in sight.
Sammy shrugs as they go to the kitchen. "I think they're trying to do what we saw in the video the other day," he says.
Scully frowns. "Which video?" They'd taken to watching action movies lately, although she makes sure they are child-friendly. Mulder tries hard, but he's not always on the same page about what is appropriate for the kids.
Her eldest son shrugs again. "I dunno. I think they wanna make a movie, too."
Boy, would Wayne be happy to hear that, Scully sighs inwardly. "Let me guess, they've got cameras and they're looking for subjects."
"Actually…"
Scully stares at Sammy, and so do his siblings. "Well, yeah, they got the cameras from Uncle Frohike's folks–" And Scully smiles at the appellation, "-but they're gonna make an action movie with Emily and Addy."
Scully blinks. "Really?"
He nods. "Yeah, they're into acting and stuff, so Jared said that it should be easy to make a movie with them." Sammy puffs up a bit. "I'm going to be the writer of the script. Director too."
Scully shakes her head. Her children will never fail to surprise her, but she puts on her mother hat and says, "I hope that your cousins will stay friends with you all after this. Even if they're family, it's hard making a movie."
April snorts. "Emily and Addy show off all the time. How hard can it be?"
Their mother sighs. "You take out the ice cream and root beer, I'm going to call your Aunt Missy."
June 16, 2008
Adrianna's graduation is louder than Page's, but that's probably because there are more people who show up to a high school graduation than a middle school one. At the same time, it's the most subdued and uncomfortable graduation Mulder and Scully have gone to, and that's saying a lot. Family and friends, which have a tendency to overlap at times like these, congratulate Scully on her impending birth. She wishes they'd rephrase it, since "impending" sounds a bit too doomsday for her taste, although she knows they mean well. Even her children can pick up on the tension, even if the younger ones don't quite understand why, and they start chattering with Adrianna's siblings to the side.
When people talk to Adrianna, on the other hand, they almost literally paste a smile on their face as they offer a perfunctory "congratulations." It's not quite clear whether they mean her graduation or her own pregnancy, but they probably mean the former and hope she takes it for the latter as well. Scully sighs inwardly. The girl may be young and pregnant, but she's not as stupid as they think. Scully's fairly sure she's one of the few who actually congratulate Adrianna on both graduation and pregnancy, surprising both herself and the girl by hugging her when she does, judging by the girl's pleased (if a little shocked) reaction.
The older woman also wishes that she looks as ridiculously glowing as the eighteen-year-old does, although at present that might be asking for a bit much since Scully's at the point where she'd almost happily go for a caesarean tomorrow if her OB/GYN offered. And yet, she doesn't envy Adrianna's timing or situation. Pregnancy is a trying time in general, and still being a teenager and unwed makes the trial even more stringent.
It was odd, hearing the news from Samantha during their Easter get-together but not seeing the girl herself then, her mother saying she was "with friends" at the time. She was also surprised to hear that Luke Doggett was the father, having heard, well, absolutely nothing on that front. When she pressed Monica about it, she said something vague about "not being her call about how and when to share the news but Luke's", and isn't surprised to find that Luke isn't at the graduation today because he wasn't invited.
"Gee, wonder why," Mulder drawls in her ear, startling her.
"Oh my God, don't do that," she hisses, even though she ought to know he can't resist a snarky comment after an uncomfortable conversation, whether it's immediately or days after the fact. "Do you want to shock me into giving birth right now?"
Her husband grins unrepentantly at her. "It might make you a little happier and shake things up a bit," he says. "I've been to livelier funerals."
Scully rolls her blue eyes. "The Alligator Man's funeral doesn't count."
His mischievous smile deepens into a real one. "One in five million," he says, not for the first time. "Well, it seems this is the second most interesting event we've gone to recently."
"What's the other?" Scully asks, having a good idea, but says it anyways.
"When Frohike got married-"
"It was a lovely service," she says warningly.
"I wasn't finished." He pouts, and she snorts. "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted–" She rolls her eyes at him. "I think his bachelor party was the most surreal thing I've been to."
"Why, because he asked me and Monica to go, too?" She smiles.
"No." He smiles back, thankful that neither woman had taken up the offer. He didn't really think Scully would have, but with Monica you never knew.
"Was it because the stripper was supposed to be dressed in a sci-fi theme?"
"No. Actually, the boys were kinda mad that she wasn't, since they'd paid extra for the Farscape costume."
He's rewarded by another eye roll. "Then what?" Scully says, starting to get exasperated.
"You know that the wedding was on March 17, right?" She nods. "Well, when Langley got drunk, he accused Frohike of getting married on St. Patrick's to, as he put it, 'horn in on the luck of the Irish', and went on to say that 'of course, you're gonna need luck if you're gonna make a marriage work'." Mulder makes a face. "And then there followed the most pathetic fist fight I've seen outside of elementary school. No, wait, those second-graders were rougher than those two."
Now she chuckles. "I'm not surprised that he had ruffled feathers when Frohike finally moved out, leaving him and Byers behind in their old place. Well, at least they're getting along again. Come on, let's get the kids before they make this exciting and start a riot."
"You mean, before I start a riot, right?" Mulder shoots a sideways glance at his wife.
"Whatever do you mean?" Scully lifts her chin with a suspiciously dignified tilt. Yeah, she may be pregnant, but that doesn't mean she's not up for a little troublemaking, if there's cause for it.
Mulder only smiles and shakes his head before getting their goodbyes said and wrangling the kids into the van.
July 4, 2008
Mulder wakes from a dream about a persistent woodpecker trying to drill a hole in his shoulder, realizing blearily that Scully has been poking him in that shoulder with a finger for who knows how long. A glance at the clock reveals that it's nine-thirty, and for half a second he's panicky about being that late for work before he remembers that he has the day off. Still it's surprising that none of the kids have made enough noise to wake him earlier. Enjoy it while it lasts, he reminds himself and has to suppress a moan when he thinks about the interrupted sleep they have months and months of ahead of them.
"What?" he asks, feeling both sleepy and irritated when he notices that she still hasn't explained why she woke him up.
"Today's the day," she says significantly.
At first he almost asks if she's referring to the holiday or the cookout everyone somehow decided it'd be best if they hosted – he himself thought that the idea that it would be easier on Scully if it was here instead of making her travel to someone else's house is one of dubious merit even if Maggie and Krycek are going to do all of the cooking – but then the significance of her tone finally sinks in.
"You're sure?" he asks, trying to sit up enough to look for his pants. It might be more than five and a half years since they've last done this but he still remembers that it's as important to be dressed from the waist down as the waist up when driving your wife to the hospital. "When did the contractions start?" he asks, knowing that she wouldn't wake him otherwise.
"About forty-five minutes ago," she says and he finally is awake enough to notice her uncomfortable expression. It's always disappointed him that labor doesn't seem to be something that gets much easier with practice – Scully once told him that labor had been the worst with David and Jared due to the drug Diana had given her to start her contractions, and Page the worst for their children who had been allowed to come on their own schedule, but he knew it was unfairly painful even under the best circumstances.
"How bad?" Mulder asks, knowing she'll realize he wants to know if they need to bolt to the hospital right that second. He really doesn't think so given she doesn't seem to be in all that much pain yet. Of course that will come, he thinks guiltily.
"Not too bad yet," she confirms.
It's at that moment he realizes that the bed and floor around it are distinctly dry, nor does he notice a tell-tale smell so he's pretty sure her water hasn't broken yet. Unless it was in another room...but she's too calm for that, he thinks. "So...what do you want to do?"
She holds out a hand and he helps her sit on the bed beside him. "I'm going to call Mom and Missy and let them know what's happening. If they still want to come over, I guess that they can."
This actually makes a strange sort of sense to him: one of them would need to come over and stay with the kids anyway, so they might as well get to enjoy lunch still. The kids would certainly be easier to handle if they're not hungry on top of being nervous and excited. "Okay."
An hour and a half later Mulder is beginning to doubt the wisdom of going through with the cookout. There are approximately two hundred and eleven children running around, mostly to avoid being asked to do anything by their grandmother and respective mothers, and fifteen minutes ago he had to fish both William and Ryan out of the grill. He's still not sure what possessed them to stick their arms in between the grates so deeply that neither boy could get their hands back out. And of course his explanations that they'd done something dangerous were met with protests by both seven-year-olds that the grill wasn't on yet.
"How are you doing?" Mulder asks his wife for the fifth time in the past hour when he finds her bringing a bowl of potato salad to the table with such slow deliberation you would think it was made of C4. The fact that Daisy is dancing around her feet isn't making it any easier, so he snags the half-grown puppy by her collar and encourages her to leave the room.
"All right," Scully answers through gritted teeth. He can't tell if it's because of a contraction or because she's annoyed at him. He thinks it could go either way. Giving him a long look, she says "I'll let you know when that changes."
"Unh huh."
"What's that supposed to mean?" she snaps.
Mulder tries to shrug innocently but he doesn't manage to pull it off. This doesn't stop her glare so he decides that he might as well say what he's thinking. "I'm just wondering if you decided you want to have the baby at home and just haven't told me." It's not like we're strangers to babies arriving outside of a hospital, he thinks unhappily. Four of the older kids didn't see the inside of a hospital until after their cords were cut.
"My water hasn't even broken yet," she hisses.
He just stares at her until she swears under her breath and makes her ungainly way away from him.
Mulder is still trying to figure out if he should apologize or get Maggie to help him gang up on her when a voice calls, "Mulder, bring out the buns, would you?"
He grabs the bags of hamburger buns by their open ends and wanders back out to the grill. Fortunately Krycek is the only one there now, not any curious little boys. "Here," Mulder says, letting the bags dangled limply from his fist.
Krycek gives Mulder a look and says "Your wife is they damn lucky I don't have the heart to give a woman who is nine months pregnant a piece of my mind" and then rolls his eyes.
Mulder is simply puzzled. "What did she do to piss you off?" he wants to know.
"I got a phone call from two idiots writers who wanted to know if they could interview me for a book that they're writing." Krycek looks offended.
"Who?" Mulder's first thoughts are that the writers want dirt on Alex's time as a double agent, but he's not sure why friends of the gunmen would earn Scully his ire rather than his own.
"Devon and Janelle Letourmaine."
"Uh oh." He gives his brother-in-law a sidelong look. "What are they writing about now?"
"A male nanny," Krycek says sourly. "And his attempt to balance providing childcare and romancing the little girl's single mother. I think they said they're calling it The Manny Diaries."
"Wow."
"I know that your wife reads them and that the pair of fools were involved in an FBI case." Krycek's expression leaves little to the imagination when it comes to how he must feel about the romance novel writers. "And I really don't appreciate the fact that your wife apparently told them that I looked after your kids while your stupid ass was off playing with the aliens."
Mulder immediately feels indignant, mostly because there was nothing playful about his time with the grays. Eventually he realizes that his wife might not actually be the guilty party, and even though he's annoyed with her for wanting to wait longer before going to the hospital, he does feel that he has to defend her. "Wait, John and Monica were the ones who were looking after the writers. For all we know, it was Monica who told them about… The services you rendered."
Krycek does not look mollified. "That would still be Dana's fault."
"How so?" Mulder asks, cocking his head to one side.
"Who told them I was staying with her and the kids?" he asks.
"Do you think that anyone necessarily told them? I mean, if they were over here… They would have noticed that you hung around and seem to be sleeping in the guest room." Krycek just scowls at him. "I–" Mulder pauses for a moment and gives his brother-in-law a confused look. "Wonder why they contacted you instead of Alan. I mean, he's the actual, lists-it-as-his-occupation-on-his-tax-paperwork nanny, not you."
"I'm guessing because Alan looks like a boxer and more likely to kick their ass than I do," Krycek grumbles.
Mulder smirks at him. "Look at it this way, being a pretty boy must've made it easier on you when you were double agent, so this is the flip side of that fortuitous coin. And I guess it's not your fault you're so darn cute."
"If you didn't have nine and three-quarter kids I might worry about a comment like that," Krycek tells him with another eye roll. He's been teased a lot about his boyish looks, by a lot of different people, over the years so it's hard to work up any real venom about it anymore.
Mulder smirks and begins to correct his comment. "Technically at this point it's more than nine and eight ninths-"
"Fox!" Missy's voice rings out over their argument.
When Mulder finds them, Scully is bent double, and clutching her sister's arm. A puddle of liquid spreads between their feet.
Mulder eyes his wife sadly. "Dammit. You didn't even get to have a hamburger first."
"I'm not really all that focused on food at this very moment," Scully says impatiently.
Mulder nods, but he sure that she'll wish she had gotten a chance to eat later.
"Go on," a voice says behind him, and Mulder is surprised that he hadn't heard Krycek's approach. "You take her, and will make sure that everything stays shipshape here while you're gone."
"Thanks," Mulder says sincerely, digging through his pockets for his keys.
To his surprise, Krycek gives him a friendly cuff on the shoulder. "Try not to punch any of the medical staff," his brother-in-law says with a grin.
"Why would I…" He thinks for a moment, and remembers hearing stories about Alex's bad behavior in the delivery room back when Ryan had been born. "I'll do my best."
Considering how quickly their youngest daughters were born, Mulder does not feel too guilty about not taking the time to say goodbye to Maggie or the kids before they leave. Instead, he just hustles Scully out to the car.
They pass Maggie and April on their way, and he hopes that he's the only one who hears April ask her grandmother "is mom going to be okay? I keep reading how dangerous it is to have a baby when you're older…"
Mulder sneaks a look at his wife's face, and is glad to see that she hasn't reacted to the question. Maybe he really is the only one who heard it. But if April is worried enough to ask, he wonders if that explains her attitude about the impending arrival.
It's only as he is putting the car into drive that he wonders if April has had any bad dreams lately. The thought makes him shiver, even though it is 90° out.
Later
To Mulder's credit, he doesn't say I told you so. Even so, Scully thinks that she notices him give her a look when they are immediately rushed into the delivery room as soon as they arrived at the hospital.
This baby doesn't arrive quite as quickly as his elder sisters did, but she thinks that her youngest daughter aside, who had been extremely eager to follow the sister who had been born in the ambulance itself, they're in though delivery room for the least amount of time of any of their babies, only about three and a half hours from the time they enter the room. There is some pushing, many words of encouragement, and then all of a sudden Dr. Hart is catching their newborn son.
A couple of moments later the cord is cut, and the new baby is placed in Scully's waiting arms. "He's beautiful," Mulder tells her, leaning over her shoulder to get a good look.
The doctor in her says that new parents are so overwhelmed by the experience of bringing a new life into the world that they somehow miss seeing how funny looking the average newborn is immediately after birth. Wrinkled, smeared with bodily fluids, skin a pale whitish purple in this particular case, and eyes tightly scrunch shut, but parents will swear that their baby is the most beautiful thing they've ever seen. Reality tends to catch up quickly for most babies, and a few hours of rest gives them a much cuter appearance so she supposes it's okay that her hormones and overwrought emotions are telling her that this baby is already adorable.
After a couple of minutes Scully becomes aware that her OB has not rushed off to another patient. He has often told her that he really likes the couple, and his actions tend to make that statement seemed truthful, so maybe that's why he is lingering. Smiling at him, she asks, "Would you like to hold him?"
"You know," Hart says, "I really would. I never ask because that feels too intrusive, but I do enjoy holding the babies once they're here."
Scully places her new son in the doctor's arms, wondering if they should have offered with the older kids too. Maybe it's enough that they are offering now.
"Picture?" Mulder asks, the camera he has already been taking pictures with still in his hands.
The doctor nods, and smiles for the camera. Scully makes a mental note to send him a print.
Doctor Hart looks down at the baby in his arms, then glances at his radiant parents. "So, what are we calling lucky number ten?"
Scully glances at Mulder who promptly replies "Isaac."
Hart has never stuck Scully as a religious man, but he raises an eyebrow. "He laughs?"
Mulder takes a measured step away from his wife before grinning. "It did seem fitting."
The OB nods thoughtfully, but then asks, "But what if you have another one later on?" It's his turn to smile openly when both new parents give him a look of naked horror.
A/N: A new baby boy, a married Frohike, times are a'changing. What do you think so far?