Vacation: Day Nine
They wait until the next to last night to hit any of the casinos. Scully is reluctant at first, but Mulder insists that they take at least one night for themselves, and she eventually agrees after they listen to the kids argue about what they want to watch on one of the suite's TVs. They're met by a babysitter just moments after dressing for a night out on the town.
Since he doesn't care where they go, he lets Scully choose which casino they should waste money in. She picks a flashy one he's pretty sure that they've seen in at least one movie, and are barely in the door when waitresses descend upon them with the offer for free drinks. They both wave them away with a smile, promising to hit them up for a drink later in the night.
As he scans the casino floor, Mulder thinks he catches sight of a familiar figure, and begins to hurry in that direction. Scully nearly stumbles in her haste to keep up with him and hisses "Mulder, where are you going?" just as they sidestep a drunk man wearing a ten gallon hat.
"Isn't...?" he mutters to himself, stopping short when he loses sight of the man he's been tailing. Cupping his hands around his mouth, Mulder shouts "Melvin!"
People around them give the couple odd looks, making Scully flush in embarrassment.
She opens her mouth, clearly about to ask Mulder what's wrong with him, when people standing near them begin to react as someone shoves their way through the crowd. "Get out of the way, would ya?" a voice growls.
A few people step aside and a short man glares at those who remain in his way. Scully's eyes widen in surprise. "Frohike?"
"Fancy running into you here," Frohike says in a clear effort to be charming. "This your first time in Vegas, Dana?"
Mulder feels a weird feeling of disorientation, and has to bite his tongue from snapping that the gunman knows very well that it isn't: as far as Frohike and Scully are concerned, the past when the gunmen tricked her into going to Vegas never happened - it had been Mulder who'd been dragged trying to help them instead. He's sort of surprised to continue to occasionally feel that disorientation even now, months after the new timeline has caught up to and surpassed the original one.
"It's my first time here," Scully agrees.
Mulder, although still not exactly pleased that the Gunmen had gotten him drugged the last time he was there, is grateful that being forewarned allowed him to spare his then- pregnant wife the experience.:: The things we do for love:: he thinks ruefully.
"So, are the other stooges with you?" he eventually asks.
"Yeah," Frohike admits with an indignant glare.
"What's the special occasion?'" he asks, wondering why the guys hadn't told him that they were going to be in Vegas too. It makes him worry a little that they might be strapped for cash again, though he knows Yves made some overtures towards paying them back for the money they were out looking for her. Langly had said something about her getting royalties for a legitimate program, but Mulder had been distracted at the time so he'd been left with only a hazy idea of what all that had been about.
"It was a spur of the moment thing," Frohike explains. There's a hint of defensiveness to his tone. "We wanted to show the ladies a good time and somehow that led us here."
"The ladies?" Scully asks with raised eyebrows, voicing exactly the question Mulder has. Trying to be discreet, Mulder looks for the other gunmen, hoping he won't see them in the company of women who are on the clock, so to speak.
To Mulder's utter shock, Frohike begins to blush. "We were going to tell you about them soon but we didn't want to jump the gun..."
"So, when and where did you meet them?" Mulder asks pleasantly, telling himself that this is good practice for when Sammy brings home a girl for the first time; somehow he thinks that will be less stressful then when Page begins dating.
As if channeling Sammy, Frohike squirms under Mulder's mild gaze. "There was this convention back in April... They were selling a pretty useful program-"
"You still go to those things?" Mulder blurts out, thinking of the way he met the trio himself.
"Yeah. They're a good way to meet people," Frohike grumbles.
Mulder puts up his hands. "No arguments here."
Scully smirks at them, and Mulder can't imagine why until she says. "Someday I'd like to hear 'the uncles" version of how you and Mulder met. It made quite an impression on the kids."
Frohike groans. "Do they still remember that?"
"Page does," she says, and Mulder blinks: he didn't know that. "Sammy was a bit too young to, though he told me about it at the time."
"Babysitting leaves scars," Frohike intones.
"Ha," Mulder retorts. "On you, you mean."
"Exactly." He sighs before brightening. "I guess you want to meet them," he says, sounding a bit shy.
"Of course," Scully answers for them both, so Mulder nods.
Frohike begins to thread his way through the crowd, and they struggle a little to keep up, mostly because so many of their fellow casino goers have taken thorough advantage of the free drinks and have no idea what they're doing as they stumble around.
Just when Mulder reaches the point of wishing he still had a gun and badge to see if that would make an impression on the half-stupor'd crowd, Byers and Langly come into view. They're alone, and for a moment Mulder pities Frohike for feeling the need to have told them a story about girls, but Langly notices them and asks Scully, "Why do chicks always go to the can in packs?"
"Flocks."
"What?" Langly looks comically confused.
"Birds travel in flocks, not herds," she explains calmly.
"Actually," Byers says from his chair. "Chicks travel in broods. Or chatterings."
"Chatterings," Frohike repeats, looking disgusted.
"Nerd," Langly accuses the most dapper gunman, who just shrugs. "But yeah, a chattering does sound like chicks. Ha."
Mulder is tempted to ask "so these girls are real?" but he notices a trio of women clearly making their way over to the gunmen.
Looking them over, Mulder amuses himself by trying to figure out which of the women prefers each of his friends and finds himself with only a 33% success rate matching them up.
The blonde wearing a Darth Hello Kitty tee shirt darts to Byer's side, a polished raven-haired woman dressed in a blouse and skirt combo that a bank teller might favor joins Frohike, and a brunette who looked like she might have inherited Missy's pre-mommy wardrobe kisses Langly hello.
Glancing at his wife's face, Mulder is fairly certain she didn't score any better at the match game than he did. But she looks slightly more guilty for engaging in stereotyping than he does.
Langly's companion claps her hands when she notices them. "They told me that you were close friends." The woman doesn't seem to notice the confused look on Scully's face at the phrase 'close friends' and simply goes on. "But as much as I wanted to believe that, it was hard to, you know? Probably a thousand times as many people claim to be friends with TV stars than actually are."
Scully looks like she's going to protest, and he hopes it's that they're TV stars, not good friends, but he glances at her and she relaxes. Smiling, she simply says "Yes, we've known them quite a long time."
The blonde, who is clearly older than her perky tee-shirt suggests, gives them a curious look. "Were they really at your wedding?"
"They were," Mulder tells her. "I think that was the very first time Frohike hit on-"
"Hey!" Frohike squeaks and gives his date a worried look. She doesn't look scandalized so he gives her a wan smile.
"Just kidding," Mulder tells the woman. "Melvin was a perfect gentleman."
To his surprise, the dark haired woman rolls her eyes. "Now I know you're lying."
"Steph-" Frohike begins to say, but she cuts him off with a look.
Reaching out, she pats his arm. "Dating a perfect gentleman was never a big goal of mine. We're all adults here. We all have pasts."
"Except for Byers," Langly says wittily, suggesting he's been indulging in free drinks too.
Byers gives him a long suffering look, but is mollified when the blonde awws and kisses him.
"Melvin started to tell us how you met, but not your names," Scully tells the other women.
After a flurry of speech, Mulder thinks he's got it down: Byers' blonde companion is Tracy, the raven-haired woman by Frohike's side is Stephanie but refuses to answer to her Christian name, and the brunette perched on Langly's lap is Carrie. Still, he sort of wishes he could talk them in to wearing Hello My Name Is stickers, just to be sure he doesn't slip up. Glancing at his wife, he's sure she at least has committed the names to memory.
"Alright," Steph says. "So these guys really went to a celebrity wedding."
Mulder's laugh startles her quiet. "It was hardly a celebrity wedding. Ten and a half years ago we were still a couple of broke-ass FBI agents."
Tracy shakes her head. "You're celebrities, it was your wedding, it counts."
"Okay..."
"Anyway," Steph says loudly, making herself blush when they all stare at her. "What I was going to ask is, are these guys really your kids' godparents?"
"I am a god father," Frohike declares.
"You wish you were the godfather," Langly retorts. "But he was taller. And fatter."
"I said 'a' not 'the', you dolt."
Mulder holds his hands in the international sporting gesture for a time out. "Yes, they're our children's godparents."
"God help them," Langly say owlishly. He winces when Byers elbows him.
Scully shrugs. "You don't give yourselves enough credit."
"We were young and dumb?" Mulder offers.
Scully rolls her eyes. "Our kids call them 'our uncles'," she offers.
"aww," Tracy coos again.
Mulder decides that she has to be smarter than she comes off as, or Byers' tastes have changed radically over time.
"Yeah, yeah," Langly grouses. "They call John and Monica aunt and uncle too."
"John and Monica?" Carrie asks.
"Feds."
"But they don't call Walter Skinner or Michelle that, do they?" Byers asks.
"No one dares calling that man 'uncle Walt'!" Mulder crows. "I bet his sisters' kids call him 'sir' too."
"And Michelle?" Byers asks. "Most of the kids have known her their whole lives."
"'Most of?" Carrie murmurs. Her eyes widen when Langly clumsily holds up nine fingers, and she quietly gasps when a much more sober Byers nods.
Byers' question makes Mulder think about how Scully had told him on the plane that Michelle intends to leave in June. It makes him more than a little sad because she's been such a reliable presence in their lives for so long, but he understands why a woman who might one day wish to have a family of her own would want to get out of nannying before her thirties.
"To be fair, they still don't call Amy or Rachel aunt," Mulder deflects.
"Michelle has stuck around a lot longer," Byers says, surprisingly persistent.
"Maybe they will when she leaves," Scully quietly suggests.
Mulder glances at her, wondering if she does make Scully feel like an older sister as he's always suspected. Scully outright admitted that Michelle helped her cope when he was six feet under, and she clearly holds Michelle in higher regard than she did previous nannies. When his mind next wanders to Kyrcek, he chokes on a laugh, making most of them look at him funny. "Sorry," he says, but doesn't elaborate.
"Is she leaving?" Frohike asks, looking mildly alarmed.
"In June," Scully admits before sighing. Waving a hand she says, "It's probably time for a day nanny instead of a live-in one anyway. Seven out of nine kids are in school at least part of the day, anyway, and it's not like we travel for work all of the time, either."
Byers casts her a sympathetic look. "But you'll really miss her."
"Obviously."
"Do you know what she plans to do when she leaves?" Frohike asks intently.
Mulder gives him a long look." Fro, why are you so interested?" If it wasn't for Steph's existence in the man's life he might have assumed that Frohike was interested in her, but it would have to be a latent interest given that he'd never hit on her... At least not in Mulder's hearing. Which is good for Frohike's well-being considering that Scully isn't the only one who cares a lot for their nanny.
Completely unaware of Mulder's concern, Frohike shrugs and says, "If she needs a job, send her to us. She's a smart cookie and anyone who can sanely look after nine little kids has the necessary temperament to get along with us."
Scully looks flustered, but Mulder hugs her while saying, "I'l1 have her send you her resume."
"Thanks."
Langly suddenly looks grumpy. "Enough with the yapping. Some of us are here to gamble."
"You're that eager to have to eBay off your cartoon porn to make the rent?"
"It's anime!" Langly protests.
"It's demented," Byers tells him.
"Puritan."
"Quiet, hippy," Frohike growls.
Mulder leans down and whispers in Scully's ear. "Let's hit the roulette table."
"Feeling lucky?" she asks archly.
Mulder snakes an arm around her, patting her on the butt as he does so. "With you? Always. Always."
"Get a room," Langly groans.
"Quiet, Ringo," his girlfriend tells him. When he gives her a questioning look she says, "Critics don't get public displays of affection themselves."
Rolling his eyes, he addresses the other couple. "Then keep it PG-13. I'm not exactly an exhibitionist myself."
"Noted," Mulder says, smirking at him before trailing kisses up his wife's neck and jaw.
Steph laughs and suggests that they all hit the roulette table, leading Mulder to believe that his whispering wasn't quite as private as he thought.
In the end Langly doesn't need to sell anything and in fact comes ahead by a few grand, which he loudly rubs Frohike's nose in. As for Mulder and Scully, they come away from the tables five hundred dollars richer.
