The Mulder-Scully Home
9:12 p.m.
It had been mortifying for Mulder and Scully to come home to their new nanny, who was surprisingly good-natured about the whole thing. Mortifying, because not only had they nearly come home from their filming after getting frantic calls from the Gunmen during their break, but they found that the godfathers had also sicced Krycek on the guy. Alan had explained that everything was cool between himself and "Uncle Alex," but hoped that there would be no future surprises like that. Mulder expressed similar sentiments, and was surprised that the big guy said he'd stay on. It's a good thing he had a good sense of humor about the whole thing, so Mulder resolved to re-read the guy's resume, since at the time it seemed more hyperbole than truth, even if a couple of the senators he knew had recommended him personally.
Scully, however, had felt more guilt than anything, even offered to bake him something to take home, but Alan had politely declined, saying he had a date. The three youngest were disappointed, but looked happy to see him the next day, while the others expressed varying degrees of envy and enthusiasm for William, Brianna and Zoe.
She resolves to herself that she'll take extra care of her babies while they're home, and waits after everyone was tucked in to do a full check while Mulder's re-reading Alan's resume.
That was why Scully is surprised to find William bouncing around past his bedtime, enthusiastically talking to an empty corner. "An' we were gonna take home the rocks, but Alan says the stream needed 'um more than we did. Don't worry, tho I'm gonna bring one rock for you, too," the little redheaded boy says.
"William, who are you talking to?" Scully asks gently, but curious all the same.
"Huh? Oh, no one." He jumps, almost guiltily. "I'm sorry, I'll go to sleep right now!" And he practically throws himself into bed and pulled the blanket over his head.
She smiles, shaking her head. "It's okay," she says, pulling his blanket down and kissing him on the head. "Just be sure to save playtime for when you're awake, not bedtime."
"Okay," William says, and shuts his eyes tightly.
His mother giggles, and goes to check on her baby girls. They weren't as excited as their older brother about their new nanny, as they were practically sleeping at the dinner table earlier. She smiles, then kisses both their sleepy little heads before rejoining her husband in bed.
"You should read this," Mulder says, handing a small sheaf of papers at her. "It makes for some interesting bedtime stories."
Scully smiles briefly, putting it in the bedside desk drawer. "William seems quite taken with Alan," she says, "he was practically bouncing around before."
Mulder raises his eyebrows, then groans. "Great, Will's best hero isn't his daddy anymore, it's Big Al." He pouts.
She snorts. "Big Al? Really?"
The pout stays on his face. "Well, he is big."
She smiles and kisses him on the nose. "You're being silly," she says, "You know that William's always going to go to you first."
He looks barely mollified, but agrees only after she showers the rest of his face with kisses.
March 9, 2006
The next couple of days go more smoothly for the Mulders' new nanny, mostly because he makes a point to check before leaving the house. Mulder still isn't entirely sure he trusts him, but he has a niggling feeling that part of it is low-level jealousy over the big guy making such a big impression on his youngest son. Deep down he knows that Scully's right, but still…
He figures that she's also right about spending extra time with the smallest kids when they get home from work, if only for the benefit of their own feelings more than the kids'. So he seeks them out as soon as they get home.
"How was school?" Mulder makes a point of asking William as soon as he sees him, not minding that Scully has snagged their small, muddy twins and is already marshaling the girls towards the bathroom for a dunking as they tell her about the mud pies they made.
Considerably less dirty than his younger sisters, the small red-haired boy sighs. "Okay."
It's all Mulder can do to keep from sighing himself. The school had surprised him and Scully back before Thanksgiving by asking if they could move William into the morning kindergarten class at New Year's. At first they objected, Scully more strenuously, because they didn't like the idea of him starting first grade in the fall when he'd barely be five years old, and therefore he'd be just a month past his seventeenth birthday when he graduated from high school. The school heard their concerns but expressed their own concerns that he wasn't getting much out of the pre-k curriculum. Then they suggested a compromise: a year and a half in the kindergarten program, where he'd get more stimulation. This compromised pleased everyone.
Except William.
Unfortunately, when all the grown up where concerned about how he was doing academically, none of them really stopped to consider how he was doing socially. So when they pulled him out of the class with the kids he'd gone to school with for a year and a half of his short life, it came as a surprise when he wasn't happy to be put with a new class of kids who were slightly older. Mulder and Scully hadn't worried about it because there was a fair amount of interaction between the threes and fours classes, which they'd always known considering how many times they'd had kids in those classes at the same times, but they hadn't stopped to consider that all of William's friends were the same age as him, even if the kids in his new class weren't complete strangers because they'd interacted some the year before.
But all the same, William has spent the last three months of school more or less miserable. He's an average size kid for his age, but being not quite yet five, that means that he's quite a bit smaller than the kids in his class who will soon be six. He doesn't talk about it much, but Mulder suspects that being the smallest kid in the class, even compared to the girls, is a big issue for him.
He and Scully have talked quite a bit about whether or not they should declare the attempt a failure and put William back in the class he started out in. However, they do think that school has the valid point, and hope that he will adjust.
At the moment, Mulder reacts by picking William up. This used to make him giggle, but now he looks affronted. "Daddy, I'm too big."
Mulder gives him a surprised look. "Too big for what?"
"To be picked up like a baby," William insists.
"Like a baby?" Mulder asks, feigning puzzlement. To William's shock, Mulder lays him across his arms, one arm under his knees now, making him gasp. "I think that you hold a baby like this," he tells him.
"You do!" William says breathlessly.
"And you rock them like this," Mulder asks, demonstrating a technique that he hasn't had the chance to employ with any of his offspring for about three years. "Don't you?"
William is not amused. "Put me down!"
Mulder continues to rock him, hoping to get a laugh out of him. He does eventually get a smile, but then William begins to look queasy. So he stops, and sets his youngest boy back on his feet. "So…?"
William rolls his eyes in a way that would make Scully and Page proud. "You didn't pick me up like you do a baby, but I'm still too big to get picked up."
"Are you sure?" Mulder asks doubtfully. "What about when we let you stay up late to watch a movie, and you fall asleep. Should I wake you up and make you go upstairs?"
For a moment his son looks torn. Eventually he nods, but reluctantly. "Yeah, because big kids have to do that. You don't pick up Page or Sammy or April, you make them go upstairs by walking."
Mulder wants to tell him that it's different, because all three of them are so much older, but he doesn't. Usually, and maybe because he looks a little bit more like him than the other boys, Mulder thinks that William reminds him of Sammy the most. But right now, he's thinking about a conversation he had when David and Jared were about his age. Jared had gone through a phase of wanting to be different from his twin, and this strikes Mulder as somewhat similar. But instead of wanting to be different from them William wants to be more like his older siblings. And of course less like his two younger ones.
If it was Scully and William who were having the conversation, Mulder suspects that she would ask if he was being picked on at school, specifically if anybody had told him that he's a baby. And maybe if William continues to seem to have so many bad days at school he'll suggest that they have that conversation, but right now he doesn't want to be the one who brings it up.
So he says, "You're right, we make them go upstairs themselves. Spares our backs, you know." For half a second he wonders if he has just set himself up for a comment about how old he has to be, but William doesn't suggest anything like that.
"Then you don't need to take aspirin, right?" William asks earnestly instead.
"That's right." Because, really that is one positive effect of not lugging medium-sized sleeping humans around the house. Not really the point of making the older kids go up to bed on their own two feet, but nonetheless still true.
"So I would be kind of helping if I go to bed on my own, right?"
"Sure."
"Okay, good."
Mulder looks at him, wondering if he should suggest… Something. Growing up he had been fairly popular in school, at least until the year Samantha disappeared and he himself disappeared into depression. And none of their older kids, even the quiet ones, have ever expressed concern about not being able to make friends. So he's not sure how he should advise William to get the bigger kids to play with him.
"Dad, can we watch a movie tonight?" William wheedles.
This at least, makes Mulder smile. He reaches down and ruffles his son's hair, somewhat gratified when he doesn't get a scowl in return. "I'll ask mom."
"Oh. Good. You're good at making her want to do what you want to do," William says, before dashing out of the room on some sort of mission.
Mulder stares down the hall as he disappears. That sounded a lot like a very elementary way of saying that William thinks he manipulates Scully. But it isn't really like that, is it? he wonders. As far as he could always tell, she's been a willing party to his madness. Maybe the validity of that belief is something he should think about too.
Later that night Mulder is the one to tuck in Christopher and William. Since William is younger, he's put to bed first. His earlier bad mood has dissipated, and he's almost cheerful as he dresses after his bath.
"All done," he declares, wearing his favorite flannel pajamas. Most of his older siblings favored cartoons on their pjs at that age, but William likes a style that reminds Mulder of his grandfather's.
"Hey, oh, you missed a few buttons, kiddo," he points out.
William looks down. "Oops." Then he unbuttons the shirt and redoes it right. He's a lot better at it than his father would've predicted given he refused to dress himself even with help until he was three and a half.
"Much better," Mulder acknowledges. After William hops onto his bed, he asks, ''How was school?"
Since this is a bit of a loaded question, it's not surprising when William deflects. "It was school. How was work?"
This question charms Mulder so much he answers truthfully. "Pretty good. Reed's getting a lot of nice reviews for his new book so he was in a good mood. That made taping go better than usual this week."
"That's good."
"Yeah."
"But he's gonna be mad when he gets a bad one," William says as Mulder pulls up the covers.
"He's going to get a bad review?"
"Yup, a real bad one."
"Oh, are you going to write it?" he teases.
William takes the bait. "No! I can't read that good."
"But he's going to get a real bad review, huh. When?"
William yawns." Pretty soon."
"Oh, okay. Night, kiddo."
"Night, Daddy." William's head is on his pillow by the time Mulder turns off the light.
As Mulder walks down the hall, he hears a noise that makes him turn around: giggling. When he pushes open the door to his baby girls' room, he sees them in the glow of their night light. Both girls look up, surprised.
They look up at him because they're sitting on the floor in their night gowns (Zoe's is pink, Brianna's purple) with their tea set out, in the dark. Each girl has the stuffed bunny Monica gave them last Easter on her lap.
"What are you doing?" he asks, shaking his head.
Zoe gives him a bright smile, either oblivious to the fact they're doing something wrong or not caring about it. "Our bunnies aren't scareded of the dark neither!"
Wow, that backfired, he groans silently. "Un uh, back in bed."
''Aww..." they complain as he picks them up and deposits them in their beds. Then he gathers the tea setup, deciding to take it with him.
"Go to sleep," he says firmly.
"Ok."
When he leaves he hopes that's the end of it.
This time he makes it all the way to Christopher's room without any more interruptions. Christopher is sitting at his desk and has his finger between the pages of a book when Mulder enters the room, so he must have been reading.
"Hi, Christopher," he greets his boy. He has the urge to apologize for taking so long, but he knows that none of the kids ever mind staying up a little later than usual.
"What's in the bag?" Christopher asks, giving the pink bag his father is holding a slightly apprehensive look.
"Oh. Your sisters' tea set."
"Why?"
After a moment Mulder realizes Christopher is afraid he'll be asked to play with it: he is the twins' most frequent, reluctant, human party guest. Somehow William manages not to hang around for that particular game, but Christopher never has the heart to deny them.
"Oh, I just needed to take it out of their room. So, how was school?"
"Good! Me and Addy and Timmy and Isabelle are going to start a club at recess."
"What kind of club?" None of the older kids were into them but Mulder's aware of the existence of things like Pokemon and Pogs so that's where his mind goes. Pogs might not be in any more, he reflects.
"Pictionary! That's cool, right?" The little blond boy looks to him for confirmation.
"Very." Selfishly, he's pleased that it doesn't involve the headaches of collecting or trading things.
"We hadda fill out a form and get the principal to approve it, but he did so we can start tomorrow."
They had to petition? Mulder thinks, blinking. And they did it without help? Wow. "That's great."
Christopher climbs into bed. "I can't wait until recess. Maybe I'll dream about it."
"Maybe you will. Good night, Christopher,"
'See you in the morning," his son replies with a sleepy grin.
Mulder just barely remembers to take the tea set with him, but he does, bringing it to the playroom before he does anything else. For half a second he imagines the toys, bravely playing in the dark, but of course nothing's happening there.
Buckminster Fuller School of Design and Technology
March 10
It's Friday night, which means it's packed in the computer lab. Fortunately, Luke and Gibson are reading their feedback emails in Gibson's room, which currently is roommate-less and therefore free for the guys to wail, laugh, and complain at some of the responses their test game has been getting.
" 'Game play too clunky, too much lag time.' Duh." Luke rolls his eyes, "We're just starting on this thing, don't expect us to be Capcom or anything right off the bat."
"Pretty sure even 'Doom' had its detractors in its development stages," Gibson mutters as he scrolls down. " 'Could do with more character design and development. Not sure if this is supposed to be RPG or action/FPS.' Damn, they got us."
Luke groans, his eyes roaming the ceiling. "It's hard enough putting the damn thing together with semi-decent graphics, we have to worry about character development and junk, too? Who wrote that, a girl?"
"Says Mr. Unlucky With the Ladies," Gibson intones sotto voce, ducking the half-joking punch his brother aims at his shoulder. In a normal tone, he continues, "Yes, she's a girl, and she has a good point. If we're making this our main game, then we should at least figure out which genre it is before wasting any more time and energy."
"And brain cells," Luke agrees morosely, then leans forward to look at the screen name. "Huh. And people say gamer girls are a myth." He glances at Gibson. "Your girlfriend excluded, of course. But she's… special."
"Jerk." Gibson snorts. "For the most part gamers are guys, yeah, but this college has more women going into the tech side of things than I figured at first, either."
"Okay, sociology lesson over, we gotta get an angle on this so our players are happy, which means Professor Greg is happy." Luke scratches the back of his head. "If we're going for multi-player, FPS is probably easier to do, since there doesn't have to be much of a storyline, but it can get boring fast. On the other hand, if we do an RPG, we're gonna be stuck writing code for character designs, different storylines, scenery and all that junk for ages. Too bad we can't farm that stuff out."
"I wish," Gibson sighs, and they both look depressed. They'd heard horror stories about people who'd tried to farm their work out to other students, hell, even Russians or Chinese, and they'd all got caught sooner or later. "I don't wanna chance it. Besides, if we want to market it eventually, we can't half-ass it at the beginning."
"Yeah, yeah," Luke waves a hand, then yawned. "Okay, how about this? We can fake an RPG based on our folks, so there's a combat level, kinda like an FPS, but not as boring. We can ask Dad and Monica about their latest cases, use the general stuff but nothing specific that can get us killed or sued, and that way, there's playability for a guy character and girl character."
Gibson blinks. "That's a pretty good idea. Why didn't I think of that?"
Luke smirks. "Because you've been thinking about dinner with Katie all day, and it's about fifteen minutes away. Doesn't take a mind reader to figure out what that goofy face means."
"Shut up," Gibson tries to growl as he slugs his brother, but ends up cracking up instead. "Shut up! I mean it!"
Luke is laughing, too. "Awwww, wuv, twu wuv," he imitates the priest on that movie Hannah likes to watch, his voice cracking as he does so.
"You're such an idiot," Gibson finally says, getting up to get his face cleaned up.
"Says the googly-eyed idiot." Luke grins as he leaves for his shift. Being a waiter in a dinky restaurant isn't glamorous, but it does give him a little extra spending money on actual video games. "See you tomorrow?"
"Sure," Gibson calls from the bathroom. "We can call Mon and Dad and see what their plans are for spring break."
"Will do," Luke says, locking the door behind him. He yawns again, then resolves to get some Red Bull in his system before he starts work. Last time he yawned in front of a customer, he lost a tip and got yelled at by his boss. Good times, he thinks sarcastically.
a/n: talk to us, readers!
