Author's Note: Thanks very much for the reviews thus far. I'm glad people are enjoying the chapters so far. The title for this story comes from the Foo Fighter's album Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace.
Hearing him speed down the driveway hurt. She knew that Mulder's confrontation with himself was inevitable, but for some reason, she had hoped that he wouldn't fly off the handle; that somehow, the events of the past few weeks would have softened him. Looking back, Scully realized how naive it was to assume that Mulder would turn inward, and take comfort in the security of their new family, instead of lashing out and pushing her—them—away.
A wave of panic suddenly gripped Scully, as he realized she wouldn't be able to run after him, at least not yet. She allowed herself to slump against the wall for fifteen seconds, taking in deep breaths. It was a trick she had learned while working during her cancer treatment; it was the closest she ever came to showing weakness, an exercise that Mulder had politely pretended never to notice. Ten, fifteen seconds at a time, that was all she permitted herself to spare back then, and that was all she would permit herself to spare now. She had already left the kids alone for too long.
Brushing away the single tear that had yet to splash from her left eyelid, Scully closed the den door behind her, reminding herself to not open it until she had cleared away the vase. Wandering back into the kitchen, Scully peered through the sliding door to the deck, watching Kyle chase his younger brothers around the yard. She fished some popsicles out of the freezer, grabbing a handful of napkins on her way back outside. "I have some treats," Scully called out, hoping that the smile on her face didn't appear too forced.
Mulder had barely pulled out of the driveway before the first waves of regret washed over him. "Fuck," he muttered, banging his palms on the steering wheel. His stubbornness prevented him from doing the logical thing—to go back home, and more importantly, to immediately apologize to Scully.
Twenty minutes later Mulder found himself back where it all began, in front of the Chilmark house, the exact place that he had scrupulously managed to avoid the entire summer. He shut off the engine, tilted his seat back slightly, and closed his eyes. He opened them to a jumble of memories; the lush green lawn and huge oak tree intermeshed with the pair of girls from the photos, hair plaited and lunch boxes swinging. He saw himself fearlessly climbing the tree, long limbs dangling. His mother was on the porch, looking more formal than motherly, fussing over a plate of snacks and pitcher of lemonade.
He wasn't sure how long he sat there before he realized that the sky was slightly darkening, and dancing shadows began to obscure his view of the front lawn. As he turned on the ignition and drove away, he looked back for a split second, and could have sworn he saw his sister wave goodbye.
—
"Where did Dad go?" Kyle asked as he ripped open his popsicle wrapper, shoving it back into the cardboard box. Scully had been wondering the identify of the culprit for that little stunt; she had been constantly peeling off sticky bits of wax paper whenever she opened the fridge or freezer.
"He had a few errands to run," Scully murmured noncommittally, busying herself with making sure that the toddlers sat down while they ate. The yard was getting muddy from the water, and with the Mulder family penchant for bizarre accidents, she wasn't taking any chances. "He'll be back as soon as he can."
For the first time that summer, Kyle didn't press the issue of his father's exact location. As she was mentally preparing some sort of explanation for why Mulder hadn't personally explained that he was leaving, she realized that Kyle had accepted the news without the slightest bit of panic or alarm. Her heart sunk; if Mulder didn't return in a couple of hours as she had just pretended he would, Kyle's progress on his trust issues would probably falter.
"What are we doing tomorrow?" Kyle asked.
"Charlie and everyone's arriving around eleven or so," Scully said as she began to wipe off drips of grape popsicle from Nathan's arms. "I think we're going to do a big cookout for dinner, but if I know my brother, he's going to want to get in the water with you guys and your cousins."
"So Peter and Noah, are they my cousins too?" Kyle asked, looking at Scully intently. She turned away from her task, figuring that at this point, only a bathtub full of soap would be able to clean Nathan's mess with any success.
"They are part of our family," Scully reasoned, nervously fiddling with a towel that had been draped across the arm of her chair. "I know they might not feel like it to you, and that's okay. You don't have to call them your cousins, and you don't have to use the words 'aunt' or 'uncle' around Charlie and Karen."
"I just forget that you and my dad are married," Kyle shrugged, sticking his mouth full of popsicle again.
That's because you can't forget something that never happened, Scully reasoned silently. "Don't worry about it. So do we," she responded, her restless hands running through Nathan's curly hair. "It's new for all of us…Are you okay with it?"
Kyle's eyes widened, the only indication that led Scully to realize that she had been speaking aloud.
"Yeah," he finally said, twirling his red popsicle around. "You're cool."
"Thanks," Scully smiled. "And for what it's worth, I think you're cool too."
It didn't hit Scully until a few minutes later that Kyle had pretty much spent the entire afternoon playing with his brothers, or at the very least, not complaining to them or about them. She wondered whether it wasn't so much the appearance of two small siblings that had been rankling Kyle, or whether his recent bout of brattiness was really about the adjustment of his relationship with his father. It bothered her that she hadn't figured it out sooner; she was no stranger to abnormal familial dynamics.
"Would you be able to do me a favor?" Scully asked Kyle casually, as Will handed her his rapidly melting green popsicle before wandering back towards the sprinkler.
He nodded. "Could you help me with your brothers? They are both going to need baths, and I think it will be easier if they go one at a time."
Kyle glanced back and forth between the two dark haired moppets. Nathan had abandoned his popsicle in favor of some mud, and was now sitting in a puddle, looking perfectly content as he squeezed clumps of grass and dirt in his hands. While Will wasn't sitting down and playing like his brother, his legs were caked with dirt and grass. "What do I need to do?" Kyle asked, a hint of nervousness in his voice.
"Don't worry, I'll stick with bath duty," Scully explained. "But while I'm with one, can you just play with the other, or read a book, and make sure they don't get into any trouble?"
Kyle looked doubtful. "But I don't really know what to do," he protested.
"You did great earlier today," Scully encouraged him. "When you were running around, they were having fun. And you tell them stories sometimes, and Will always sits next to you when you're playing video games. They like you."
"Really?" Kyle asked, taken aback. The look of shock on his face was reminiscent of the many faces Mulder had made over the years, particularly upon learning a blatantly obvious piece of information.
"Don't look so surprised," continued Scully. "You're a fun kid. I think you'll do a great job. And if it doesn't work out for some reason, then we'll try something else the next time. It's going to be a big help to me. They missed their naps today, so if we wait until your Dad gets home, they'll probably be really cranky."
"Okay," Kyle sighed dramatically. "I'll do it. I don't want them to get really loud. And since Dad said he'd take me swimming tonight, I don't want that to get messed up. So this benefits me maybe even more than it benefits you."
Scully arched her eyebrow, silently praying that Mulder returned home at a decent hour. "In that case, we have ourselves a deal," she confirmed.
—
The thought of directly returning home crossed Mulder's mind, but he didn't want to show up until he knew what he was going to say, and how he was going to say it. He grabbed his cell phone from the passenger seat, wondering if he had missed any calls. Usually Scully gave him a couple of hours' worth of space after an argument; like clockwork, he would storm out, he would ignore her phone calls, and then she would show up at his door.
He was an asshole.
But before he could face the music, he needed to clear his head, so he drove in the direction of Aquinnah. Normally he would go running, but he didn't have any of his gear. The next best thing was a walk, and his favorite brooding place on the island was the Cliffs.
He found his favorite bench, and pulled his cellphone from his pocket. No missed calls.
It hurt. There were a zillion different reasons for Scully not to have checked up on him, all of them justifiable. Then there was the fact that she was alone with the kids; they were a handful. Even during the handful of times over the past few weeks when he felt that they had the parenting thing under control, they were running ragged.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a little boy scramble up the other end of the bench, stand up, and promptly jump off. "Don't do that!" he heard the mother admonish.
"I'm sorry if he's bothering you," the woman apologized, pulling her son towards their group.
"Not at all," Mulder chuckled. "My boys do the same thing."
His resolve built, Mulder got up and walked towards the parking lot, hitting the speed dial on his phone. "I'm on my way home."
Kyle sat on the living room floor, a Disney picture book of Robin Hood on his lap. The inside cover had a mural of all the Disney characters in the forest, with a castle in the foreground. "Which one's Mickey Mouse?" he asked Will, who was freshly bathed and attired in Lion King pajamas.
Will pulled his forefinger out of his mouth and pressed it against the page.
"Good job," Kyle said, trying to ignore the drool. He was running out of ways to entertain his youngest brother; Dana and Nathan had been upstairs for almost a half-hour, and judging from the noise, it hadn't been going too smoothly. From what Kyle could tell, Nathan had escaped from the bathroom at least once. Will's turn had gone much more quickly, even though he yelled when his hair was being washed.
Kyle could hear Dana's cell phone going off, and passed the book to Will. He ran into the kitchen, and when he saw his father's name displayed, picked it up. "Hi Dad," he said cheerfully. "Are you going to be home in time to go swimming?"
"Of course, bud, I'm on my way home now," Mulder said, taking Kyle's mood as a good sign. "Can you put Dana on?"
Kyle clambered up the stairs, poking his head into the bathroom. "Dad wants to talk to you," Kyle said, his voice drowned out by that of his brother.
"Can you explain the situation?" Scully asked, trying to dodge some of the splashing. "I'm trying to make sure Nathan doesn't climb out of the tub again."
"Did you hear that?" Kyle asked his father, hopping down the stairs.
"Probably as well as you did," Mulder responded dryly. Not being able to speak with Scully made him want to get home even more. "I'll be home in fifteen."
"I'm sorry I was gone for so long," Mulder called out as he hung his car keys on the peg by the door leading out to the garage. He looked up, and realized that the kitchen was empty, despite it being the time the boys normally ate dinner. He saw that the den door was closed, and peaked his head into the living room, where he saw his oldest and youngest sons hanging upside down on the couch. While Kyle's legs hooked over the back of the sofa, William was much more precariously perched.
"Before you ask, Dana doesn't know," Kyle immediately spilled out.
"Obviously," Mulder wryly answered, tickling Will and picking him up.
"They've been up there for a zillion years," whined Kyle. "We're bored."
"Are you hungry? I'm assuming you didn't get dinner yet," Mulder asked.
"We had snacks," Kyle responded. "The less you know the better."
"Got it," Mulder said. "But you might want to do a better job of cleaning up the Oreo crumbs on your mini-me next time. Go grab a wet washcloth from the sink."
By the time Scully had made her way downstairs with Nathan in tow, Mulder was at the kitchen stove, flipping grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches, while Will sat strapped in his high chair, eating carrot sticks and sipping milk. "You are just in time," Mulder said as he began to cut the sandwiches into squares with his spatula.
"Thanks for making dinner," Scully said as she settled Nathan into his booster seat. "I know we have a couple of very hungry caterpillars."
If he couldn't tell by her voice, a quick glance at her face confirmed her exhaustion—it practically radiated from her face. "Were you giving your mommy a hard time?" Mulder asked Nathan as he placed his plate in front of him.
"No," Nathan's bottom lip quivered.
"Well you shouldn't," Mulder told his middle son, but more for his mother's benefit. "That's my job, not yours, buddy."
Scully couldn't keep back a snort of laughter, a small sign that let Mulder know they were going to be okay.
She felt his presence in the den even before his shadow cast over her, and the click of the closing door sounded across the room. She hesitated for a second before standing up, leaving the dustpan and broom on the floor. Before she had turned around, he was right behind her, his breathing somewhat heavy. She stared seriously into his eyes, batting down the urge to play with that lock of hair that always seemed to be standing up straight.
"I shouldn't have left," Mulder said softly. "I didn't mean to walk out on you like that. I mean I shouldn't have walked out on you like that. I wasn't thinking."
The look of remorse on his face pained her. "We can't keep doing this," she softly said. "The hardest thing for me to do was to not walk out after you. And then having to pretend that you were coming right back."
"You shouldn't have had to pretend," Mulder admitted, cupping her face with his hands, tracing lazy circles under her left cheekbone with this right thumb. "I shouldn't have taken off like that."
"Only you can be our boys' father," Scully continued, trying to control the groundswell of tears she had dammed over the past few hours. "But I need to know…are we going to be enough for you?"
"Oh Scully," Mulder spilled; slowly, everything rushed into place, the puzzle pieces clicking.
Scully was insecure. About him—about them. And it had nothing to do with her past relationships and personal hangups, and everything to do with the way he had acted over the years.
"You are more than enough," Mulder promised. "I never…Scully, I never meant to make you doubt that."
With that, he bent down to pull her into a searing kiss, one that showed none of the restraint of their earlier exchange at the farmer's market. Without any preamble, Mulder hoisted Scully up, her legs immediately wrapping around his hips. They ground into one another, the denim of Mulder's jeans scratching Scully's thighs, the friction making them both frantic. Suddenly, they were moving, and Scully felt her back slam against the wall without warning. Instinctively, she reached for Mulder's jeans, their hands fumbling to find buttons and zippers, Mulder taking advantage of their slight change in position to try and wrestle the fly of her shorts.
Their kisses slowed for a long moment, their eyes locked, and then, without warning, as quickly as they had stopped, they returned to their heavy rhythm. Scully felt a tug and realized that Mulder was trying to move them, and she pushed herself off the wall as best she could, propelling herself forward and Mulder backward. The next thing she knew, she was slightly airborne and then with a thump, she was on her back, melding into the couch cushions, with Mulder on top of her, his fingers looping into the waistband of her shorts and panties, pulling them down past her knees, her hands then working with his to do the same with his jeans and boxers.
—
Their coupling hadn't been that frenzied since the first time she had visited Mulder in New York. She remembered that night, and how nervous she had been, overly conscious of someone sleeping just down the hall. Flash-forward three months later, and she had apparently been successful in hurdling over those hangups, if her half-naked state and the possibly unlocked door were anything to be taken into consideration.
They rearranged themselves slightly, with Mulder wedging himself flush with the back of the couch, both of them laying on their sides. Mulder fussed with the afghan draped over the back of the sofa so it covered them, sliding his left arm over her, resting his head on her shoulder. "We need to talk," Scully murmured.
"I knew as soon as I was out the door that I wasn't handling it right," Mulder explained softly, holding her tighter. "I love you and the boys more than anything, and I wouldn't trade what we have for a second."
"We'll find her, Mulder," Scully said, before being interrupted by the blare of a ringing phone.
"Damn it," Mulder swore, trying to get off the couch, forgetting that his pants were in the way.
"It's probably Karen," said Scully as she reached out to steady him.
"Didn't she already call?" Mulder asked, vaguely remembering that Scully had been on the phone when he and Kyle had made their way down to the dock a couple of hours earlier. Of course, by the time he made his way to the cordless phone base on the desk, the ringing had ceased.
"She never calls once, Mulder," Scully reminded him. "I either hear from her three times a day or nothing for weeks. She and Charlie know something's up."
"Dad?" They could hear Kyle call out from the hallway, jiggling the handle. "Are you in there?"
Mulder unlocked the door, and Kyle bounded inside, holding out the phone to his father. "Who is it?" Mulder asked.
"It's Assistant Director Skinner," Kyle said. "He said it's an emergency."
