Present Day, Martha's Vineyard
"Can we go swimming? Please?" Kyle requested again.
"We have to see Hannah and Lyman first," Mulder said. "But if we hold off, we can do some night swimming."
Kyle's hazel eyes immediately brightened. "Let's do that!" he agreed.
"Should we stop at a grocery store and stock up on some food?" Scully asked, although the last thing she wanted to do was to climb back into the car.
"Hannah already went," Mulder said with a smile. "She usually does that for our first day. And when I talked to her yesterday, I even told her about your crazy bee pollen fetish, so don't you worry."
"So she assumes I'm some stuck-up health food freak?" Scully probed. Mulder had spoken very warmly about Hannah, who had worked for his family since he was a boy, mostly as a housekeeper/nanny, and then, after his grandfather had died, became the caretaker with her husband Lyman. They lived in a cottage that was part of the Mulder estate.
"No, she thinks you are a good influence, actually," Mulder smiled. "She's looking forward to meeting you. Kyle put in a good word for you too."
Scully couldn't help but blush. "Let's go tell her we're here," Mulder said, holding out his hand.
It almost felt strange, walking with him hand-in-hand towards the light green cottage. Kyle was running ahead, telling them to keep up, and as soon as Hannah opened the door, she had the eleven-year-old enveloped in a huge hug. "You've gotten so tall," she gushed, her snow-white hair pinned back in a complicated bun. "I'm thrilled you are here for the entire summer."
"Fox," she softly said when she noticed Mulder and Scully approaching the porch. "You look well."
Mulder bent down to kiss her cheek, and she patted the side of face with her right hand. "You look well," she repeated softly. "I'm glad you are spending time here. You need it."
"I know," he agreed as he hugged her. "There's someone special I want you to meet."
"Dana, I've heard so much about you, from both Fox and Kyle," Hannah gushed, immediately opening her arms for a hug. "I feel like I know you already. I feel so much better knowing that you are looking after these two when they aren't here."
Scully smiled, hoping that her face didn't betray how taken aback she felt. She knew that Mulder kept in close contact with Hannah, but she had assumed that their conversations centered around the upkeep of the estate, and more recently, on Kyle. "It's so good to finally meet you too," she said with a polite smile, catching Mulder's eye.
"I told you," he mouthed.
"I went to the grocery store, and I made some of your favorite cookies," Hannah gushed as she led them towards the main house. "And I have your rooms set up. Lyman also made sure to get some gas for the boat. It's in the blue shed."
"Boat?" Scully asked, surprised.
"Yeah, we have a speed boat but we don't go on it much because Dad gets really seasick. Sometimes he pukes," Kyle explained.
"Good thing Scully's a doctor, huh buddy?" Mulder asked, ruffling Kyle's hair before his son shrugged him off.
Hannah led them up the stairs to a wraparound porch, and opened the kitchen door with a key. "Now I don't want you to worry about me dropping off unannounced," Hannah said.
"You're always welcome here and you know it," Mulder interrupted. "You're family."
Scully was taken aback by the size of the homey kitchen. Although it boasted new appliances and had a huge marble island in the middle, of the room, it had a rustic feel. A huge wooden table ran alongside the exterior wall, and she could see a tupperware container of cookies and a few newspapers were neatly piled on one end.
"The meat is in the basement freezer," Hannah instructed, pointing to a bolted door on one corner. "And you should have enough food to avoid going to the grocery store over the weekend."
"This is great," Mulder said, giving Hannah another hug.
"I'm off to go volunteering," Hannah excused herself. "If you need anything, you know where to find me."
"Dad, when can we go night swimming?" Kyle asked.
"At night," Mulder quipped, grinning when he saw the look of frustration cross Kyle's face. "After dinner. And, after we unpack. We're not going to start grilling until everything is out of that car."
"What's the deal with night swimming?" Scully asked.
"We take a lot of bug repellant and a lantern and go down to the beach," Kyle responded, munching on a cookie. "Dad and I do it whenever we're here. But you can come if you want."
A small smile crossed Scully's face, and before she could accept, Kyle had scampered away, thumping up a staircase. "For the record, Scully," Mulder said. "I would have invited you too."
"I wouldn't be intruding?" Scully asked.
"Of course not. This is part of why we came up together, remember?" Mulder asked. "Don't ever think that you are intruding, okay?"
Scully nodded. "So night swimming it is."
A few hours later, as dusk was settling, the trio set out for the small private beach. Kyle begged to carry the lantern, and was reminded not to run down the slope that led to the water. Mulder followed behind with some towels, while Scully carried a tote bag packed with bug spray, a citronella candle, and a first aid kit. She wasn't taking any chances; Kyle had turned out to be nearly as accident prone as his father.
Kyle bounded into the water, shrieking at the cold temperature before admonishing his father to get in. Scully sat on the dock and dipped her feet in the ocean, not quite ready to jump in yet. Despite Mulder's constant assurances that she wasn't a third wheel, she wanted to give them a couple of minutes to themselves.
She sat back, thinking of how everything had changed over the course of the past four months. If she had been told a year earlier that she would be taking a three month absence from the Bureau to forge a family with her partner and the son she never knew he had, she would have laughed.
Scully had never not worked; even when she was in middle school, she babysat and helped neighbors with housekeeping and chores. She worked all through high school, college, and med school, trying to keep her student loans as minimal as possible. Now here she was, taking a 180 degree turn from her usual work ethic. But hadn't she earned it? She had taken minimal time off when she was sick with cancer, despite Mulder's protests that she ease her way back into a full-time schedule.
But making the decision to take a leave of absence had been so easy, it hadn't seemed like a life-changing decision at all.
Four months earlier
"Missing?" Mulder sat up groggily, fighting the lack of sleep. "How?"
"You might want to turn on your phone, Agent," Skinner snarled.
"Shit," Mulder muttered, making a beeline to the kitchen to find his cell phone.
"How did you find out?" Scully asked.
"I received a call from Agent Spender," said Skinner. "He's up in New York now and has been trying to reach Agent Mulder. The New York field office is handling the investigation."
Mulder was frantically dialing numbers, throwing his cell across the kitchen phone in frustration. He finally managed to plug in the cordless phone wire and started pacing as soon as he heard the dial tone. "Can I talk to him?" Mulder barked.
Immediately, his voice changed. "I'm coming up now, it's just going to take a couple of hours," Mulder said. "Are you having fun with Uncle Jeff?"
Scully thought her head was going to explode as her mind began to make connections. Spender was Mulder's half-brother and Agent Fowley's partner. No wonder Mulder had been climbing the walls at the office recently. Scully was betting that Diana was playing her ex against his brother, and her recent in work in DC was just upping the ante. Things were starting to click in her sleep-addled brain.
Skinner saw the look that transpired between the two agents when Mulder got off the phone and Scully called out his name.
"I'm getting the next shuttle to New York," Mulder muttered, running his fingers through his dark, spiky hair as he hunted around for his leather jacket.
And with that he was gone, leaving Scully to wonder whether he would have said more if Skinner hadn't been in the room.
Meanwhile, Mulder had paid through the nose to get on the next flight to New York, enduring a torturous cab ride from JFK Airport to the Upper East Side. He nearly had a heart attack when he couldn't find either his son or half-brother in Diana's apartment, barely comprehending the ASAC who both tried to direct him to the apartment downstairs where Kyle's best friend lived and handed him a note addressed to him in vaguely familiar script.
Mulder spent the next couple of hours in a haze, splitting his time between harassing the investigating team and annoying the polite but very reserved Sarah Bingham-Baker with his nervous energy. Her nanny usually walked her son and Kyle to school in the morning, and Sarah had taken charge when Kyle informed her that his mother—and most of her possessions—were gone when he woke up. "So will you be needing us to keep Kyle overnight?" she asked pointedly while sipping a cup of tea.
Mulder was stunned by the question, and before he could stumble over an answer, Sarah excused herself to answer a ringing phone. In an almost reflexive move, he called Scully.
"Are you guys coming home tonight?" she blurted out, before he could say anything. Skinner had managed to pass along a few details about the investigation, so she knew that it was looking like Diana had voluntarily left. She had stopped herself from calling Mulder a hundred times, not wanting to rock the boat. "Because the guest room is—"
"Yes," Mulder answered decisively. "We're coming home tonight."
Present Day
Mulder breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Scully shed her t-shirt and shorts and jump into the water. He knew that she was purposely giving him some time alone with Kyle; for the past few months, she had shown a great sensitivity to making sure that father and son made up for lost time, no doubt thinking of her own experiences growing up with a father who remained largely absent for most of her childhood.
Scully caught his eye as she swam closer to him. "Watchya thinking about?" she asked.
"Two things," Mulder said, snaking his arms around Scully's waist as best he could while watching Kyle swim towards them. "One, that first night when I brought Kyle to DC, and realized that you had somehow fixed up your guest room in just a few hours."
"That was nothing," Scully protested. "I know what it's like moving around as a kid, that's all. It was instinct."
"So you say," Mulder smirked. "And the second was when you said you would come here with us. And that was more than nothing, Scully."
"We needed to give ourselves a break," Scully agreed. "Three months on Martha's Vineyard in the summer. No work. No school. Making up for lost time."
"And then back to the DC grind in the fall," Mulder finished, bending down to give her a short kiss. "In a new home."
"Dad?" Kyle yelled, swimming towards him. "Are you listening to me? Can we set up the telescope tonight?"
"Sorry, buddy," Mulder apologized. "I haven't found the telescope yet, but we can set it up as soon as we can figure out where it went."
"Can we look for it tonight?" Kyle protested. "There aren't any clouds tonight, and it's supposed to rain tomorrow."
"Sure," Mulder agreed. "But let's enjoy night swimming first. The summer is pretty long, Kyle. We have lots of chances for clear nights while we're here."
"Dana, do you like looking at the stars?" Kyle asked Scully.
"Of course," Scully answered, smiling at Mulder. "You know, your Dad taught me a lot about the stars and the constellations and the myths."
"He taught me, too," Kyle stated. "He said we can look for the telescope tonight. We always set it up on the upstairs porch."
Please leave reviews, or let me know if you want to beta! Let me know what you think so far—now that the set-up is complete, there is lots more coming, if you are interested.
