October 30, 1996
Mulder walked down the hall to Scully's apartment, his arms full of files, and his head down, paying no attention to anything around him. If he had, he would have noticed the fall decorations on the doors he passed. He would have seen the pumpkin themed welcome mat Mrs. Carson had laid out in front of her door, but he did not.
Not until he raised his hand to knock on Scully's door did he take notice. There was a fall wreath on her door. A wreath. He actually turned his head, looking back and forth, to be sure he was at the right apartment.
The wreath had leaves of green, gold, rust, and crimson. Small pumpkins sat inside of it, green vines wrapping around the metal frame. Autumn Blessings was written on a small cream colored plaque in fancy lettering of rich orange.
Four years he had known Scully and not once had he seen a wreath on her door. It gave him pause while also filling his mind with many questions.
He heard her laughter through the door and he shook his head, knocking on it just below the wreath, still looking at it with curiosity as he waited for her to open the door.
When she did, he was once again taken aback. She had her hair up in a messy bun and her cheeks were flushed. She wore a black apron with two white smiling ghosts on it over a button up blue flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled to the elbows, and a pair of black pants. No shoes, but she wore green socks with orange pumpkins poking out from the hem of her pants.
Who was this Scully? He was sure he had never met her before.
"Mulder!" she said with a happy smile. "What are you doing here?"
"Uhh, what-"
"Auntie Dana, I washed my hands," said a little voice and Mulder looked past Scully, finding a boy of about four with reddish blond hair standing in her kitchen, wearing a long sleeved black shirt, jeans, and a dark blue apron with many happy smiling pumpkin faces on it.
"Umm…" Mulder said, looking back at Scully in confusion and she motioned him into the apartment with a small laugh.
"Mulder, this is my nephew, Brandon. Brandon… this is my friend, Mulder," she said, bending down to speak to him. "Can you say hello to him?"
"Hello, Mr. Mulder," Brandon said, sticking out his small hand. "It's nice to meet you."
Scully looked at Mulder, her eyes wide as she stuck out her lower lip and placed a hand on her chest at his actions. Mulder smiled and squatted down in front of Brandon, taking his hand in his own and shaking it solemnly and then letting go.
"It's nice to meet you too, Brandon. You can call me Mulder. Are you having fun with your aunt?"
"Yes. We watched Babe and now we're going to make puhkins."
"Pumpkins," Scully said with a smile. "Yes, we are going to carve pumpkins."
"Did you come here to help us?" Brandon asked, looking Mulder in the eye. "Do you know how to do that?"
"Well," Mulder chuckled, glancing at Scully. "It has been awhile, so I make no promises, but I think I could try."
"Okay, that will be good. We have big pumpkins. Auntie Dana said those are best for making jack… jack oh lam… lammers."
"Jack-o'-lanterns, yes," Scully laughed, stroking his cheek, and tapping his nose with her finger. "Like a light, remember?"
"Yes. Will you help us to make the jack lanterns?" Brandon asked, his bluish green eyes on Mulder.
"Sure I will," Mulder said, standing up and setting the files in his hand onto the table behind Scully's couch. He laid his coat beside them and rolled up his sleeves, nodding his head at Scully. "Where do I get an apron like one of those?"
"You don't," she laughed, shaking her head. "I only have these for me and him. Although, there is one hanging in the closet if you want to use it, but it's not exactly… Halloween themed."
He left to check what she meant and came back with a cream colored apron covered in flowers and butterflies. Scully pursed her lips, trying not to laugh, but he saw the mirth in her eyes.
"Don't suppose you'll switch with me?"
"Not a chance," she said with a chuckle, retying the strings on Brandon's apron in the front, as they were far too long to trail down the back.
"Well then…" he said, slipping the apron over his head and tying his own strings behind his back. Looking down, he nodded as he smoothed it down. She laughed again, seeing how it came to just below his crotch, the waist of it near his chest.
"A perfect fit," she said, her eyes sparkling.
"Absolutely. Definitely not too short."
"Nope." He smiled at her as she helped Brandon up into the kitchen chair, the table covered in plastic and four large pumpkins sitting on top of it, the tops already cut.
"I want that one, Auntie Dana," Brandon said, pointing to the one in the middle, and she nodded.
"I know. Okay. We just need to be careful, right? First, I'll draw the face you want and we'll trace it like you do in school to cut it out, okay?"
"Yes. I will be careful."
"We just finished scooping all the insides out, didn't we?"
"Yeah. They were yucky. I didn't like it."
"No," Mulder said, reaching for a pumpkin. "I don't blame you. It's an odd texture."
"What does testure mean?" Brandon asked, looking at Mulder with a frown.
"Texture," Mulder said with a smile. "It's how something feels. Like the pumpkin here, what is it's texture? How does it feel when you touch it?" He held his pumpkin out to Brandon and waited for him to touch it.
"It's… smooth but it's bumpy too," Brandon said, looking at Mulder for confirmation.
"That's right. How did the texture of the inside of the pumpkin feel?" Mulder smiled, raising his eyebrows as Brandon furrowed his brow and gave it some serious thought, his small fingers touching the outside of the pumpkin as he did.
"It was… yucky. And not smooth." Mulder flicked his eyes to Scully and saw she was smiling at Brandon with such a soft expression, it made his heart ache.
"I'd say that's a good explanation," he said, patting Brandon's back gently. "Now how about that face, huh? Tell your aunt what you want her to draw."
As they began to plan out their own jack-o'-lanterns, Mulder listened and watched Scully interacting with her nephew. She laughed and smiled more than he had ever seen and he reveled in it, loving seeing her so happy.
Brandon helped to carve the pumpkin until his attention began to wane and he asked to get down and play with his toys. Scully went with him into the bathroom to both wash his hands and use the toilet, leaving Mulder alone at the table.
He listened to her again, how she spoke to Brandon, the caring and kindness in her voice. Remembering their conversation on a bench in front of the police station, in a town rather ironically called Home, he stopped what he was doing and simply sat and thought.
He had not lied to her when he said he had never seen her as a mother before. Their work lives did not afford a family life, well not for him anyway, and therefore he had never thought of her living her life in that manner. But, did she want a family? Is that what she was hinting at? Speaking truthfully of her own worries while still projecting about others?
He knew she had to have her worries after her abduction. Worries about what had been done to her without her consent and how it would affect her ability for children. Christ, what if she would not be able to have children? That was a common thread with women who had been taken. But not her, right?
"Fuck," he breathed, not wanting to think about it. She was a doctor, a woman. She had to have had tests done when she had been well enough.
But would she have told him something so personal?
"Can I have my backpack?" Brandon asked and Mulder sat up, breaking from his thoughts and reaching for his pumpkin, a forced smile on his face.
"It's on the coffee table, remember?"
"Oh, yeah."
Brandon ran to the living room and Scully rejoined Mulder in the kitchen, laying Brandon's dark blue apron along the back of a chair. She smiled and nodded toward the bottle of wine on the counter.
"Would you like a drink?"
"Sure."
She poured them each a glass and brought it to the table, glancing at Brandon with a smile before she sat down to finish the pumpkins.
"Your brother's still in town then obviously?"
"Until Sunday, yeah. He and his wife wanted to go out to dinner, just the two of them, so I offered to watch Brandon."
"Hadn't had enough of Babe yet?" he asked, smirking at her and she laughed softly.
"Apparently not. But we only watched it once tonight, so there is that." He laughed with a nod, glancing at her before looking back at his pumpkin.
"Was there something you needed tonight?" she asked, picking up her small knife and looking at him. "A case?"
"Eh... not exactly, just something I was thinking of looking into a bit more."
"Halloween related?"
"No."
"Hmm… you know it's interesting, considering the cases we do pursue, that we've never gone out to a pumpkin patch at midnight on Halloween."
"While we sit around waiting for the Great Pumpkin? Come on, Scully. That's not real."
"But vampires, werewolves, and witches are?" she teased, raising her eyebrows and tilting her head.
"Yes," he said firmly without thought and she laughed.
"Auntie Dana, can I watch Babe?" Brandon asked, coming over to stand beside her chair. Scully groaned under her breath, but rose from her seat to put the movie on for him, holding his hand as they walked into the living room.
Once he was engrossed, echoing the dialogue of the movie and dancing around, Scully and Mulder worked together to finish the pumpkins, though they did not speak much as they focused on their task.
"You have some small candles?" Mulder asked as he stood up a few minutes later, stretching and looking at her. She smiled as she glanced up from her pumpkin.
"I forgot you were wearing that apron. That's hilarious."
"Yeah, thanks for swapping," he said sarcastically and she shrugged.
"I didn't buy this to not wear it. You crash the party, you get the flowery apron." He nodded and smiled, glancing down at it again.
"It's not so bad actually, just wish it was a bit longer." She looked up at him and he saw her mouth twitch and her eyes dancing, as he realized how sexual it sounded. "Not how I meant it."
"Mmhmm," she hummed, nodding her head with a smile. "Candles are in the cupboard behind you."
Turning around, he took out four votive candles and put one each into the pumpkins he had finished and one into the Scully had done. She was still working on the last one, so he set the candle beside her for when she had finished.
Untying the apron strings, he took it off and laid it on top of Brandon's as he went to use the bathroom. He looked around at the spaces he did not usually get to see, the private part of Scully that did not belong to the office. He liked to see the things she chose to display and hang on her walls, to learn about that woman, the one he still did not know very well.
"Okay, I think I'm finished," she said as he reentered the kitchen, giving her pumpkin another look. "Yeah, that's good. Brandon, you want to come and see the jack-o'-lanterns?"
"Yes!" He ran over and looked at them all lined up as he scrambled up on the chair for a better look. "Oh, I like them!"
"Now, we just need to add the last candle," Scully said, lifting the top of the pumpkin and placing the candle inside.
"Why is there a candle in it?" Brandon asked, rising onto the table to look inside.
"So it makes it like a light, remember? Like a lantern. Watch." She took a box of matches from the cupboard and lit each candle, replacing the top of the pumpkin as Mulder turned off the lights.
"Ohhhh," Brandon exclaimed and Scully met Mulder's eyes over his head, smiling as she blew out the match and rubbed Brandon's back. "It's like a nightlight."
"Kind of, yeah," Scully said softly, bending to look at them from his eye level.
"People used to light pumpkins like this to ward off evil spirits," Mulder stated and Scully raised her head, glaring at him as she shook her head and looked down at Brandon in warning.
"Oh," Brandon said. "That's smart."
"You think so?" Scully asked him cautiously and Brandon nodded solemnly.
"If pumpkins can take warts off, it's smart to use them. My friend had a wart. He said it was from a frog."
Mulder blinked his eyes, looking at Scully in confusion, her expression mirroring his own, when she suddenly smiled and covered her mouth. He shook his head, still not understanding, and she leaned close to him, exhaling a soft laugh.
"They lit pumpkins to wart off evil spirits," she explained in a whisper. "That was what he heard."
"Ohhh," he whispered back, clearing his throat to cover his laugh, looking at her as she shook her head with a huge smile.
"Can I blow out the candles?" Brandon asked.
"Sure, just be careful," Scully said, standing close to him again. "Do you want to do it through the top or through their smiles?"
"Oh, pick the smile, it's more fun," Mulder said and Brandon smiled, getting closer to the first pumpkin and blowing hard.
The candle went out and he laughed, moving onto the next one. Mulder watched Scully watching Brandon, keeping a hand on his back as he moved down the line of pumpkins, her tender smile once again making his heart ache.
When the last one was out, the only light in the room coming from the television, the scent of burning pumpkins in the air, she scooped Brandon off the table and squeezed him. He laughed, hugging her back, and suddenly Mulder felt as though he might cry.
It was so innocent, so simple and small, and yet it stole the air from his lungs.
Never before had he thought of himself as a family man, never wanted to have that, knowing he would most likely fuck it up somehow, given his own family's track record. Never had he considered any of his past relationships maturing to the point of marriage or children.
But seeing Scully with her nephew, the love she felt and the ease at which she cared for him, he knew if he were to ever change his mind, it would be because of her.
With her and her alone.
And the realization of that nearly knocked him on his ass.
"Auntie Dana, it's too tight!" Brandon said with a giggle and Mulder swallowed down the lump in his throat, forcing yet another smile to mask his feelings.
"Too tight? What? I don't think there's any such thing," Scully argued, tickling his sides and making him laugh harder.
"No, it's too tickly," Brandon said between giggles and Scully stopped, pulling back and looking at him with a smile.
"I love you Brandon Bee," she said, kissing his cheek.
"I love you Auntie D," he answered, obviously something they had said many times. Kissing him again, she set him down with a smile as he ran toward the television.
"Can you get the lights?" she asked Mulder and he nodded.
Turning around once he was done, he watched her gathering things and putting them into the sink. Joining her, he helped her clean up, placing all the trash into two trash bags, the pumpkins sitting proudly in the middle of the table.
"I can take these when I go," he offered and she looked at him with raised eyebrows.
"That's okay, I can do it later. You sure don't want to stay? I'm going to put him down soon. We could discuss that case you brought over." She gestured to the table and he shook his head with a smile.
"Nah, it can wait."
"Because it does involve a werewolf, doesn't it? I knew it," she teased and he smiled.
"You have no proof."
"Not yet, but once you tell me about it and I'm standing in another forest, freezing cold and-"
"Rolling your eyes?" he teased back and she laughed.
"Most likely," she answered with a smile and he nodded.
"I'll let you two enjoy the rest of your evening. Thanks for this, it was fun."
"Even the apron bit?"
"Especially that bit," he said, picking up his coat and putting it on with a smile. "That's my apron from now on, I've laid claim to it."
"You may have to fight my mother for it if you, should both be here at the same time, but other than that, consider it yours."
"Oh, your mom won't ever fight me. She cares about me too much," he said, picking up the files and winking at her.
"I know," she said with a sigh, shaking her head. "She would get such a kick out of seeing you in that apron, she would gladly hand it over." He smiled and looked at Brandon who was sitting on the floor with his diecast cars around him as he stared up at the television.
"Brandon," Mulder said, squatting down beside him. "It was nice to meet you. Thank you for letting me help with the jack-o'-lanterns."
"I like you, Mr. Mulder. You're nice." He got up and came to Mulder, wrapping his thin arms around his neck and hugging him tight. Mulder put an arm around him, tears threatening to choke him again.
He really needed to leave before he embarrassed himself.
Squeezing him once more, he said goodbye, smiling at him as he stood up.
Nodding to Scully, he said goodnight and headed to the door. Glancing back at the pumpkins on the table, staring at their happy, big-mouthed smiles, and he nodded, glad he had made the impromptu decision to stop by.
"Goodnight, Mulder. See you tomorrow. Owoooo…" She howled softly, smiling at him as he raised his eyebrows.
"Oh, Scully… never a dull moment with you," he said, shaking his head and walking out of the door and starting down the hallway. He turned around and saluted her with two fingers to his forehead. "Autumn blessings to you."
"And also to you," she said, making the sign of the cross. He laughed and she smiled.
"Goodbye, Mr. Mulder," Brandon called, stepping into the hallway and waving with a smile. Scully bent low and wrapped her arms around him, rocking him against her, as they went back inside the apartment, the door closing on their laughter.
A part of him wanted to forget his pride, to go back and stay until she kicked him out, tired of his constant dotage, wanting to give her the world and asking nothing in return except to see her happy smile.
But the other part of him, the one that knew he had no right to ask that of her, to demand anything, was the one that walked down the hall and toward his car.
Alone, and for the first time in a long time, wishing that he was not.