Early Wednesday
At the back of her mind Scully had always wondered what sort of people – besides Mulder in his younger, more enthusiastic days – visited roadside attractions. It had never been anything she'd spent a lot of thought on, but as they'd passed by one sign or another, signs that Mulder had never failed to point out, perhaps to irritate her, she'd wondered who had looked up at the lurid roadside billboards and thought to themselves that their life would really be improved by stopping to see a really big ball of twine or the pelt of a 100% genuine imitation bigfoot.
Now, as her kids stared wide-eyed at a block of cheese over a dozen feet tall, she knew. It wasn't people who were looking for a thrill. It was road-weary travelers who hoped that maybe stopping off there or at a flea circus on the way to Grandma's would pacify their children well enough to put an end to the seemingly endless bickering between them in the backseat of cars that overflowed with sleeping bags and luggage.
Or so she assumed from the glazed looks of other parents surrounding her and Mulder. The overheard conversations also told the same stories.
Of course, she wasn't there to keep the kids from fighting because so far they rarely did, though all bets were off if that would continue to be the case as they grew older and their interests diverged more at puberty, but so far she was content that their infrequent arguments passed like spring showers. So her reason for agreeing to stop and look at cheese when they begged to was different – she felt that they owed the kids some fun after dragging them halfway across the country.
Neither of them had complained at all, but this didn't make her feel much better about it because she suspected that they were too young to think about complaining that the errand had nothing to do with them and held little interest for them, the nickel tour at Spencer's aside. She herself remembered being small enough not to wonder if there was anything in her parents plans for her, and not realizing that she could protest instead of going along with whatever it was that they wanted to do; for her this had also included much bigger things than being pulled out of school for three days and missing out on making turkeys out of construction paper, such as being moved to a house on another base.
Mulder nudged her, and from the grin on his face he was clearly not dwelling on negative childhood memories too, which she supposed was good considering that the grimness some of his put hers to shame. "Who knew that they'd like cheese so much?" he asked.
"Well, they do both enjoy a good grilled cheese sandwich," she deadpanned, and his grin got broader. "Tommy already asked me if we could have those for lunch, and yes, the menu we walked by did have them featured."
To her surprise, he shivered. "That seems a bit wrong, like cannibalism somehow."
"I won't tell the giant cheese if you won't," she promised, and he laughed. Since he was in a good mood she decided to broach a subject that had been on her mind. "Are you really up for going to my mother's tomorrow?"
His smile melted away instantly. "Of course," he said rather stiffly.
"Are you sure?" she asked, not meeting his eyes because she knew that the question was going to annoy him even though it needed to be asked. "My mother won't be offended if you-"
"I'm not an invalid," he snapped. "You don't need to worry that this trip has been too taxing for me like a goddamn canc-" Mulder seemed to become aware mid-word how offensive she might find the comparison considering her own history and bit rest of the word off. Still, he glowered at her to show that he himself had been offended by her question.
She just nodded and said "well, okay," in a mild tone, though secretly she was thrilled that this had gotten a rise out of him. Everyone had been treating him like he was fragile, and he hadn't done much to disabuse anyone of that notion until now. If he no longer thought of himself as sickly, he'd get better faster, or so she reasoned. Not that his recovery wasn't impressive so far anyway.
"Good," he practically growled. "I'm glad we're in agreement that I can manage the harrowing experience of having dinner with a troop of ogres like your family."
Desperately wishing that she had a poker face half as good as his had been before he'd been abducted, she forced herself not to smile as she said, "That's hardly fair. A whole troop of ogres?"
"Bill jr. is going to be there, isn't he?" Mulder asked, and she nodded, wondering where he was going with the question. He sighed dramatically before saying, "Well, there you have it. A bad apple spoils the bunch and all of that."
"Oh, Mulder," she sighed, breaking off into a laugh. He suddenly looked a lot less peeved too.
"Momma, Mulder!" a small voice called, and she wasn't surprised to see Grace running towards them. Tommy was only a step or three behind his little sister. "Take us a picture, please!"
"You want us to take a picture of you?" she asked, a bit puzzled.
"With the big cheese," Tommy said excitedly. "It's a big cheese like being a boss-guy, right?"
"I guess it is a bit like that," she agreed, wondering where he'd heard such a hackney description of power. It made her wonder if she should pay a bit more attention to the cartoons that the kids watched.
"There are tee-shirts too," Tommy went on. "They say 'I'm the big cheese.'"
"Do they come in kids' sizes?" Mulder asked.
"Yeah!"
"Then we'd better get some," he suggested.
Tommy looked delighted. And a bit suspicious. "Really?"
"Absolutely. I'd love to buy you those shirts."
Scully almost protested that he didn't need to spend money on her children, but she stopped cold. He didn't really think of them as her children anymore, and that was becoming more evident with each passing day. It was fairly clear to her that he wasn't the only one who saw them as having a future as a family… and this thought left her with a pang of regret about asking if he was up to Thanksgiving dinner – if he was beginning to think of them as a family unit, he'd probably been offended not only by her insinuation that he was still sickly, but also that he'd shirk his duty to said family by wanting to skip a family gathering. Luckily, it seemed as though he forgave her for her clumsiness.
She slide her arm around his waist, gratified that he no longer flinched when she touched the area of his scar, and then smiled up at him. "Maybe we can find them in adult sizes too, hmm?"
"Maybe we can."
"Can we all be the big cheese?" Tommy wanted to know.
"Sure, why not," Mulder replied easily. "We can all be different cheeses. You can be cheddar and I'll be gorgonzola."
"That a cheese?" Grace asked with a frown.
"It sure is."
"You are silly, Mulder," Tommy giggled.
"No, I'm Fox Mulder."
"No, you're silly Mulder!"
"Do I need to pull out my license and show you?" Mulder asked, sounding serious.
The kids knew he was still joking and laughed harder. And then they led them both to the designated area for taking photos with the cheese, pointing out the gift shop along the way.
In a suspiciously fortuitous turn of events, none of the delays Mulder worried about happened, and they were able to leave on their afternoon flight exactly on schedule. It wasn't until they were in line to board that Mulder admitted to himself that he'd been more than a little worried that something was going to go wrong and they wouldn't make it home in time to be at Maggie's at 10:30am on Thursday. He knew that Maggie would have taken them being late or absent altogether with a kindly resignation, and somehow that knowledge made him feel worse. Though he got along well enough with Scully's mother, they both knew from the time when Scully had been missing that he'd put her through enough, and he didn't want to give her any more ammunition against him that she'd never allow herself to use. He kept this worry to himself because Scully would have just told him that her mother didn't mind, and she would have believed it. He just allowed himself to feel grateful when the flight left the tarmac at the right time, so it never had to be brought up at all as far as he was concerned.
Once again Mulder and Tommy sat across the aisle from Scully and Grace, and this time the little guy was far more at ease than on the flight in the opposite direction. In fact, it turned out that he was calmer than Mulder: to his credit Mulder made it one and nine tenths of the way through flying without succumbing to the horror of realizing how painfully close flying in a plane is to being enslaved on an alien spacecraft, but then it happened. They were almost all the way back to DC when the landing gear extended with a noisy thump. It was this sound, the thumping, that triggered a memory for him. Unfortunately, that memory was of the sound of the hatch on the spaceship opening just before he was pushed out.
Sweat began to bead on his forehead, but he didn't make a sound. Instead, he silently tried to reassure himself that there were no aliens on their flight, and he didn't have to worry about being rushed at by tall gracile beings intent on heaving him to his death. He'd stay exactly where he was, safely belted into his seat, until the jet landed and they all got off together.
Given his lack of distressed noises, Mulder was surprised when he understood that his fear wasn't as invisible as he hoped. A very small, warm hand was placed over his own. When he looked down, Tommy gave him a rather wry smile. "It's okay to be afraid, right?" the little boy asked.
Mulder didn't smile in return because he suspected it would look rather ghastly. Instead, he nodded. "Yes, it is. Thank you for reminding me of that."
"Sure. You held my hand when I was scared, so it's fair."
"Yup," Mulder agreed, trying not to tear up. His therapist had explained that being what Mulder himself considered over-emotional was to be expected after experiencing the level of trauma he had, but it was still hard for him to accept his newly imperfect control over his emotions.
"Maybe next time neither of us will be afraid to fly," Tommy philosophized. "'cause we've done it together before."
This time Mulder did allow himself to smile. "I bet you're right."
"Yeah," Tommy said happily, obviously pleased by his agreement.
Besides his moment of panic over the landing gear, the flight home was uneventful, and someone must have forgotten to bring a crying baby onboard because it was quiet enough for Grace to sleep until they left the airport...which of course meant that she was wide awake when they pulled into the parking lot at Scully's apartment complex. She was so excited to be home that she inadvertently made it hard for her mother to help her out of the car.
Tommy, on the other hand, was drooling on his own shoulder, having fallen asleep nearly the moment they climbed into the car. "I'll get him," Mulder said before Scully could go around the car and do so herself.
"Are you sure?" she asked, sound like she didn't want to put him out, rather than like she thought he was too weak to, so he realized that their earlier conversation about his health had made an impact on her.
He looked at her holding onto Grace's hand as the little girl practically levitated, barely containing herself. Mulder got the sense that they'd be chasing her down if Scully dared let her go.
"Yup."
Scully flashed him a grateful smile and began to herd her daughter towards the house, leaving Mulder standing in the parking lot outside her already unlocked car. For a moment he enjoyed the crispness of the night air, and the brightly shining moon before opening the rear door to reach in for Tommy.
The boy sleepily asked "home?" as Mulder got him out of the car, but he was asleep again, resting his head on Mulder's shoulder before he could answer.
"Yeah, you're home, buddy," Mulder murmured, just in case he could hear. A soft snore in his right ear was the only response.
The moon seemed to shine a spotlight on the pair as Mulder slowly made his way up a path that was icy enough to make him wonder if they'd have a snowy Thanksgiving the next morning. He hoped not. A white Christmas was much preferable to a white Thanksgiving.
It must have taken him longer to reach Scully's apartment than he thought because Scully was trying to wrestle Grace into a pair of pink pajamas already when he found them. Scully looked up. "Could you put him on his bed? I'll undress him as soon as I'm done here." Grace made another lunge for freedom, but Scully grabbed her back before she could get past Mulder in the doorway.
"No problem."
After Mulder lowered Tommy onto his bed, he wondered if he should cover him, but he decided against it. Scully would only be another couple of minutes, he was sure.
He took a minute to look at the mollies swimming in the fish tank nearly the boy's dresser, marveling that they were still alive. They all swam towards him and for a moment he fancied that they recognized him, but he quickly realized they were just hungry – the time release block of food in the bottom of the tank was nearly gone. Smiling ruefully at his mistake, he quickly fed them their usual fish food flakes.
"Can we switch?" Scully asked from the doorway. Grace was on her hip, and Scully at least looked tired.
"Of course," he said quickly, holding his arms out for his daughter. "If the fish tell you they still need to be fed, they're lying, I just fed them."
"Fishies don't talk, Mulder," Grace said seriously as he took her from Scully.
"I know."
"Then why did-"
"I was making a funny," he told her as they walked out of the room.
"Nuh uh."
"Everyone's a critic," he sighed. Grace just giggled at his theatrics.
He brought her into the living room and looked through a stack of picture books on the coffee table. He'd hoped to find one that would evoke sleepiness but the cartoon characters on the covers all seemed to be having pretty good adventures. Grace sat on the couch and watched him quietly.
Before he completely gave up on the books, Grace asked, "Mulder, you gonna sleep at our house tonight?"
He shook his head. Fortunately, he and Scully had already approached the subject so the conversation was less awkward than it could be. "No."
"But-!"
"Sorry, I need to take care of my cat. He's been staying with a friend and I need to go get him to bring him home." Mulder had already arranged that, too.
"You have a kitty?" Grace looked fascinated. He suddenly remembered their conversation about her cousin Matthew's puppy with a twinge of nervousness. But Grace didn't take the opportunity to demand again that he 'make' Scully let them have a pet. "What's his name? What's his color?"
"He's a gray tomcat-"
"Oh, his name is Tom," she said as if this had just dawned on her.
"No, his name is Dempsey."
Grace stared at him. "You said tom."
"I know I did. Tom is the name of a boy-"
"Tom is a name of a boy." Grace nodded in agreement. "A grown-up boy. Tommy gonna be Tom, maybe."
"Okay..." Mulder pulled her onto his lap and tried to think of how to explain things in a way a three-year-old might understand. "Grace, do you know what a bull is?"
"A boy cow!"
"That's right. And do you know what a rooster is?"
"Boy chickens?" she asked, sounding less sure now.
"Exactly. There are some other animals like that where we call the boy one name and the girl another." He abruptly reminded himself not to bring up dogs because Scully wouldn't thank him for it. "Though people don't use the boy/girl terms too much for some of them. Cats are one of them: a boy cat is a tom, and a girl cat is a queen."
"A queen?"
"Yup."
"I wanna be a princess." Grace looked serious. "Real one. Not just a fishie for halow'n."
Mulder wanted to tell her that as far as he was concerned she already was a princess, but he worried about how appropriate that would be – there was still so much he and Scully needed to talk about... So instead he said, "I guess we need to find you a prince then."
"Okay," Grace said. "But no froggie-kissing. Nope."
"Hmm. I think I can agree to those terms," he said, stifling a laugh at both her words and her expression.
"Good." Grace looked up at him with a winsome smile. "After feedin' your kitty, we see you again?" She paused for a moment. "Tomorrow," she clarified, lest he think she was asking him to drive back after the cat was fed.
"Of course. I'm going to go to dinner with you at your grandma's house."
"You gonna make a wish?" she asked, and he couldn't figure out why until he realized she was referring to the turkey's wishbone. He hadn't thought about that tradition for a very long time; not since his mother would let him and Samantha break the one she saved and dried from a previous turkey. When Samantha was little she'd pout over not being allowed to play with the fresh one, but eventually their mother was able to make her understand that they were too bendy to break for quite a while.
"I don't know," Mulder said slowly, wondering if Maggie saved wishbones too. "Maybe you and Tommy should wish, huh?"
"Oh, I wish a lot," Grace told him earnestly.
"Really?" he asked, curiously. "What for?"
Grace spread her arms, and he wondered if she wanted a hug, but then she said, "The moon!"
"The moon?" Mulder bit his inner cheek to keep from laughing. "What would you do with it if you go it?"
"See if'n it bounces."
"What?" he asked blankly.
"It's a ball, Mulder." The look on her face suggested that any idiot should know that.
He thought about it for a moment, wondering if he'd realized at three that the moon looked small because it was so far away. Probably not.
"What do you wish for?" Grace asked. She then yawned.
"Oh, a lot of things," he replied.
"That's good." The little girl yawned again. "Wishin' good for you."
Mulder stood up and put her on his hip. She snuggled against him sleepily. "Who says?"
"Grandma. She knows everything."
"Well, she is pretty darn smart," Mulder said, but her head dropped to his shoulder.
It only took a few seconds to get her into her room, and he was soon covering her up. The amount of blankets on the bed seemed excessive, so he made a mental note to mention it to Scully lest the girl be awake and throwing up in the middle of the night like he used to when he was young and got overheated while asleep. Then he paused, looking down at her and the way she balled one fist and pressed it against her cheek – he had no idea if she took after him in that way. Or in what ways at all, really. Not yet.
Sighing, he turned to look out the girl's window, half-way wondering why Scully had put up gauzy pink curtains when they were never drawn. Outside the moon was still brightly shining on everything below it, though a parking lot full of moonlit cars didn't make all that pretty a picture.
Grace wished for a moon to bounce, to become a princess, and for a pet. What did he wish for, in his heart of hearts? To make this girl and her brother his family with Scully. To stop starting at loud noises or waking up from horrible dreams. Not exactly to forget what had been done to him, but at least not mind as much. To find out what happened-
A gentle touch on his shoulder had him nearly leaping out of his skin. When he whipped around to see, Scully gave him a contrite smile. "Sorry!" she whispered, eyes cutting to Grace sleeping in her white framed bed. "I should have thought better than sneaking up on you. I just wondered what you were thinking about – you looked so melancholy."
"I did?" he asked, surprised. He hadn't really felt sad, had he?
"Yes." When neither of them said anything for several seconds, she snapped her fingers as if annoyed with herself. "Dammit. Your phone rang."
"It did?" Mulder asked, wondering who might have called him.
"Yes, about five minutes ago," she said, sounding a bit guilty.
"Well, maybe they left a message."
"Oh, maybe," she agreed, looking relieved.
The message turned out to be Skinner, asking if Mulder minded a lot if he waited until the next morning to pick up Dempsey. He didn't, and called him back to say so, saying "What's up, do you have a hot date or something?" seconds after Skinner picked up the phone.
"Um," Skinner said uncomfortably. "Yes, actually."
Shocked, Mulder threw himself onto Scully's couch. "You old dog," he teased. "Why didn't you say that you had plans when I asked you to cat-sit?"
"I didn't have them then," Skinner said, sounding like the world's oldest teenage boy. "It just came up."
"Oh ho! Anyone I know?" Mulder asked, not expecting the answer to be yes considering that he'd been gone so long.
"You remember Kimberly?" Skinner asked shyly. "She'd been my secretary-"
"I didn't realize she no longer was," Mulder admitted; since he couldn't go back to the X-Files in his current condition, he made a conscious effort not to think too much about them because dwelling on it was only good for torturing himself.
"Of course she isn't," Skinner blustered. "It would be entirely inappropriate to have a relationship with a subordinate."
"Whoa, whoa, who's accusing you of doing anything wrong?" Mulder protested. "I'm serious, I had no idea she wasn't working for you anymore, or that you were seeing each other."
"Oh," Skinner sounded sheepish. "Even though she's now working at the state house, there have been some comments, so I'm a bit defensive."
"Jesus, some people have no lives," Mulder muttered, which was apparently the right thing to say.
"I know."
"So the state house, huh? Tell her I'm impressed that she's moved on to bigger and better things," he remarked, knowing that even if she was still an admin there was a lot more prestige in working for a politician than for an FBI AD.
"I will," Skinner said, a hint of pride in his tone that Mulder found interesting. He got the sense that the plans had been unexpected but that it wasn't the first time Skinner had seen her socially. It made him wonder if his staying with Skinner back during the summer had put a crimp in the older man's social life, or it the relationship had come about sometime afterwards.
"And of course I'm happy to wait until tomorrow to pick up my bratty cat as long as you can stand him another night." He sort of hoped the night would end with Skinner's firmly shut door and his cat on Skinner's couch like a friend down on his luck. The thought of it made him smirk, though he didn't dare suggest anything of the sort to his former boss.
"He's been really good," Skinner assured him. "He only hissed at me once and has kept his claws to himself."
This made Mulder wonder what cat behavior Skinner was used to if he considered being hissed at only once gold star behavior. "That's, uh, good. Is nine tomorrow morning okay?" he asked, hoping it was so he had more than enough time to get to Maggie's.
"It's great," Skinner said happily. In the background Mulder heard a feminine voice say something, and Skinner smothered a laugh.
"Well, I'll let you go…" Mulder hoped it didn't sound too awkward.
If it did, Skinner didn't comment. "See you in the morning."
"Bye, Walt."
A soft touch on his shoulder made him turn around. "It was Skinner?" she asked, and he remembered that she'd told him about the phone ringing in the first place.
"He wanted to know if I could pick Dempsey up tomorrow morning."
"Did he say why?" Scully asked curiously.
"He's got a date." Her eyes widened in surprise. "I take it that you didn't know that he's dating Kimberly either?"
"No, what?" she sputtered. "Is that why she left the Hoover building?"
"I'm not sure, but it's possible," Mulder replied.
They lapsed into a contemplative silence for a couple of minutes before Scully got a strange look on her face. He almost asked her what was on her mind when she finally spoke up. "So… if you're not going to go pick Dempsey up until tomorrow, do you want to spend the night after all?"
For half a second he hesitated, thinking about the first time he spent the night. But back then his problem had been because of the burden of keeping his secret to himself weighing on him…hadn't it? There was really only one way to find out.
"I'd love to," he admitted.
Her smile lit up her features, and he felt a burst of love for her. "Good."
An hour later Mulder had his answer. He enjoyed drowsing with her in his arms, the knowledge that all systems were still fully functional gave him relief, and he thought it gave her peace of mind too. She'd touched his scar again and it hadn't had any ill effect this time. He didn't ask, but he had a feeling that it had been deliberate, meaning that she had been thinking about how deeply damaged his psyche might be too.
"What are you thinking about?" she sleepily asked when she seemed to realize that he was still awake too.
"How good we are together," he said, kissing her neck. "How happy I am that we, um… were more successful this time." He felt a ridiculous blush creep across his cheeks, and was glad that it was dark in her bedroom.
"We are good together, aren't we?" she replied, snuggling against him.
He thought about all sorts of things he could say in response to that, but she was already asleep. Before very long, so was he.
