After Mulder took Gibson home from the chess tournament, which he claimed to love, he and Scully had the afternoon, and the house, to themselves. Mrs. Scully insisted on taking William with her to go shopping, even though Scully protested that there were already enough toys for him to play with in the house. "There is no such things as too many toys." Maggie had said to over rule her objections.

"You know, Mulder, I wish she'd adhered to such a policy when I was growing up." Scully said with a smirk as Maggie and William drove off.

"Awww...but look on the bright side, kids who don't have every toy their hearts could desire are supposed to grow up to be more creative."

"That's true..."

"Besides, I bet you spent a lot of time playing games. House for example. Would you like to play house now?" He asked her, turning his puppy dog eyes on her.

"You're a devious man." She said with a smile. "However, maybe we should think about really playing house?"

"Really?" Mulder asked her, leading her up the stairs, back to Scully's childhood room.

" Well..." She said as she began to unbutton his shirt, "We have our son back, and you're no longer a wanted man...So I was thinking that the three of us would be safest from any over-zealous replicates if we were all together."

"Oh?" He asked as he shrugged off the shirt. "You think we could make the official family thing work?"

"I think we could manage." She said, dropping her shoes over the side of the bed. "It would be nice, though, if we could somehow find a way convince my mother that we eloped shortly before William was conceived, but forgot to mention it."

"What? And skip all the drama of living in sin?" Mulder said with a grin as he reached for her skirt.

"So you wouldn't want anyone to think we were married?" She asked with a playful pout.

Mulder laughed. "Who would believe that you'd married me?" Scully shrugged. "Nah, we can live in sin, scandalize your mother's church, and still plan for that honeymoon video you wouldn't let me make a few years back."

"Only if you're better at putting the lid back down than you were then." Scully said as she tugged on his belt.

"For you, anything. A little house with a white picket fence, two cats and a kid in the front yard."

Scully decided it was time to tell him. "What about two kids in the front yard?" She asked lightly.

"Do you mean adoption? Sure, it would probably take a long time though, unless we got an older kid-"

She put a finger across his lips. "I meant another baby, our baby." She said, stressing the word "our."

"I don't understand." He said, after gently removing her hand from his mouth.

Scully gave him a sober look. "I found a few months ago that there's a possibility that I'm not completely barren after all."

For a moment he nearly asked her why she kept it to herself, but then thought better of it, considering things he'd kept from her. "That's wonderful news." He said as her blouse landed on the floor.

"I'm glad you think so." Scully paused for a moment. "Mulder, I thought you said you weren't going to wear those Marvin the Martin boxers any more."

A moment later he gave her a broad smile. "Problem solved." Scully laughed as she reached out to draw him closer.

**

Spender's hands twitched with an impotent impatience as he forced himself to allow the nurse to do her job without his interference. It felt strange to him that the bandages were finally unraveling and falling away. As the innermost layer came off, and the conditioned air hit his bare skin, he felt a fleeting sense of loss; the bandages had been his second skin for over a week, and he'd gotten accustomed to their feel.

As the nurse finished, he looked up at her face, hoping her expression would tell him as much as his own reflection. Her face was devoid of horror or pity, so it made him hopeful. Either was an accomplished actress, or her impassiveness was unfeigned because the face she was looking at wasn't remarkable.

"I'll get you a mirror, Mr. Miller." She told him with a smile.

For a moment a cold and irrational fear filled him: he was sure he'd look into it and see nothing, then begin laughing madly in a sad parody of "the invisible man." The nurse hadn't seen anything horrible, because there had been nothing to see.

By the time the nurse held the mirror out to him, he was feeling braver. So he took it from her and looked. "I have a nose." It wasn't until she nodded in agreement that he realized that he'd said it aloud. He supposed he ought to have been embarrassed, but instead he gave into his fascination. He gently his nose with one scared finger, finding it firmly affixed. Further probing revealed the same about the ears that sat on either side of his head. The artificial hair that the doctor spoke so highly of looked nearly as real as the hair that had once grown on his head. A bubble of joy expanded in his chest.

Eventually the nurse spoke. "The doctor said to tell you that the redness of your skin should go away within a couple of days, and that it's normal for the bandages to have caused that sort of irritation." Spender nodded, thinking that even if by some chance it didn't, it was one hundred times better for people to look at him and think that he had a rash than to think he was a monster. "I hope you don't mind my saying so, but I've seen the pictures from before your accident, and I've got to tell you that yours was one of the most successful restorative surgeries I've ever seen."

"Thanks." Spender said, not sure her motives.

"The doctor would like to see you before you leave so he can schedule the next surgery to work on those scars of yours." Spender looked down at his hands when she said it, and thought that he'd like to have his old hands back too. "I know that you're be in and out of the hospital for the next couple of months, but I have some time off around Christmas...Think about it." She said, then walked out of the room.

Spender watched her go, his eyes wide with shock. The last thing he'd ever expected anything to think of him was desirable. He now had two reasons to hope the operations were performed quickly: the sooner they were done, the sooner he could contact Scully, and the sooner he could get his normal life back.

**

Mulder and Scully were lucky to quickly find a lovely three-bedroom house for sale in the same neighborhood as Mrs. Scully, which was handy since she might still baby-sit occasionally. For the most part, though, it was much as Scully had jokingly said the night Mulder won custody of their son, Mulder planned to stay home with William, while she took a job as a medical examiner in a large hospital. Mulder, however, had no plans to write a book about alien abductions.

The day they moved in, Mulder was ripping the tape off another carton when he heard a thumping sound. He quickly set the box down, and had a sinking feeling that Scully was wrong about William's inability to get out of the playpen she had left him napping in when she went to the grocery store a half an hour before. Despite the maze of boxes, Mulder reached the living room quickly.

Scully had opened a box before she left, and William was industriously emptying that box of books onto the living room floor, reaching in with one hand, while the other held onto box with a death grip so he could keep himself on his feet. More than a dozen books already surrounded the little boy. Mulder assumed that he didn't hear his work sooner because most of the books had soft covers on them.

"William-"Mulder began, wondering how to convince a just over one-year- old to behave.

William looked at him with an excited look. "Book! Book! Book!" he chortled.

Mulder crossed the room and gently took the book out of William's hand. " Mommy and Daddy's books. Let's see if we can find William's books."

A quick look around the room led him to find a box neatly labeled in Scully's hand writing. Mulder yanked the tape off the box, and set in on the floor in front of William, who immediately began to empty his picture books onto the floor.

Mulder sighed and looked at the pile of books that William had already scattered across the room before he got there. He decided it was as good a time as any to begin filling the bookcases that lined one wall of the living room. Fortunately, the only shelves at William's level had doors with secure locks on them.

Mulder busied himself with filling the bookcase, while William emptied the boxes. Mulder grinned to himself and thought that maybe he and Will made a good team after all.

**

"...so as soon as I got home from the grocery store, Mulder informed me that we needed to put William's crib together, immediately." Scully told Reyes the next day while out for lunch.

"Well, at least no one can say that William isn't already trying to help out around the house. Which I bet is more than you can say for Mulder." Reyes grinned.

"Oh, Mulder helps around the house...not much more effectively than William, though." Scully said, trying not to laugh. "I will say one thing, though, he's a much better cook than I would have ever given him credit for. Apparently he just never got around to mentioning that he took several cooking classes in college, until I expressed my astonishment at his culinary skills last night. When I asked him why he always ate fast-food then, he told me that cooking for one was depressing." Scully said, and rolled her eyes. "I wouldn't have minded helping him eat if he felt the need to cook for two."

"Isn't it funny how men keep little things to themselves like that?" Reyes asked archly, thinking about Doggett's recent revelations.

"Oh well, mystery is what keeps things interesting, wouldn't you say?"

"I guess so. So how do you like the house?"

"It's great. And with William helping, I'm sure that we'll be unpacked in no time." Scully said.

"I'm glad you guys are finally settling down. If anyone deserves some peace and quiet in your lives, it's you two."

"Don't say that, you'll jinx us." Scully told her, only half kidding.