JCTIOT Studio
October 5, 2008

Scully is feeling out of sorts when she and Mulder arrive at the studio. Since he's literally had two lifetimes to get to know her (or maybe it's technically one and a third) he doesn't need to ask her if going back to work bothers her. He knows it does. And he knows her well enough to let her be rather than to try to jolly her out of her mood, too. Yet another thing to love him for.

Instead he lets the songs on the radio fill the car and leaves her to her thoughts until they get there. And then he takes her arm and walks in with her.

As soon as they reach the sound stage, Mary Green pauses her walk towards her dressing room, detouring to come over and give her a hug. "Welcome back!"

"Thanks," Scully says, fighting the temptation to bite her lip.

"Finally," a voice says behind her. When she turns, Reed startles her by saying, "Now we have someone reasonable around here again."

"Um, thanks?" She wonders if Reed has undergone a personality transplant, or if Mulder has been extra unreasonable in her absence. Honestly, it could have gone either way with Reed.

"So, did you take pictures this morning?" Green asks eagerly.

"Oh, sure," Scully says, pulling out her phone. Wayne joins them and peers down at the screen too.

"You didn't have twins without telling us, did you?" Wayne asks, looking confused.

It takes her a second to realize that he's not joking. She supposes that seeing two babies side by side in their seats could be confusing. "No. This little one is Sophie. The nanny's daughter."

"Oh. That makes more sense," Wayne says. When they first told people that Alan would be nannying for them, Wayne had asked if they'd picked a guy because they have more boys than girls, and he still doesn't seem convinced that gender hadn't been part of the criteria for replacing Michelle.

"Sophie, that's a pretty name," Green offers. "She's about a week younger than Isaac, right?"

"Just about."

"Huh. I wonder if her mom has gone back to work too?" Reed asks. "If your nanny has brought her with him today."

Scully blinks. She hasn't really thought about Alan's wife until now, and obviously today is the first day she's not around her new baby either. Somehow, figuring this out makes her feel less alone. The first day back is never a favorite day, but this one is beginning to feel a little less bad.

Mulder Home
October 7, 2008

Page wakes up in the middle of the night when Daisy, the normally-sleeping-at-this-time springer spaniel, jumps on her bed. The sudden jolt has her hand automatically reaching out to slam her alarm, when she reads "1:42 AM" in large digital readout. "Dummy," she mutters, wishing the mostly grown puppy would just stay put. She wonders briefly if Wallace has trained Daisy to be as irritating in the middle of the night as he is, then thinks that's way too silly. Animals can't do that deliberately. Though she supposes that the puppy could have learned from observing him.

"Come on, girl," she finally says, giving in to puppy licks on her face. She might as well give the puppy a little exercise before putting her back in the living room. And this time she'll make sure her own door is securely shut and can't be head-butted open again.

The puppy makes a happy chirp rather than a bark, and Page smiles. As she and the black and white puppy walk down the hallway, she hears voices. Since it is only her parents, she is mildly relieved, but she is curious as to what they'd be talking about this late at night, especially with the door cracked open.

"…not like John and Monica can help him, so far away with their own baby. And Luke's all by himself…"

"So far, Luke is fine, and so is Nicholas. Doggett says his landlord's very understanding, and there's a daycare group–"

"Mom? Dad? Are you talking about how Luke's keeping the baby and not Adrianna?"

"Yes," Mulder answers slowly.

"Good," Page replies. "I'm glad one of them is doing the right thing. I just wish they could've worked it out the way you did, though."

For a moment Page thinks she sees something unfamiliar on her mother's face – fear – but it's gone in a moment and she recomposes herself before asking, "What, um, do you mean, Page?"

"You know what I mean," Page insists. Her parents look at each other, and she rolls her eyes. "I know you guys got married when Mom was pregnant with me, I can do the math."

Her parents share another look. It's obvious that this is the part of The Sex Talk that they hadn't planned on discussing with their kids until they were already married with their own kids, or maybe never. Whichever came first.

Mulder, for his part, is thinking desperately. There's no way I can really talk about the second chance with Elsbeth and time travel thing, he thinks, but how do I explain to her that getting her mom pregnant out of wedlock had a better reason behind it than Adrianna and Luke? And how do I NOT bring up Duane Barry? "Well," he starts off, hoping his mind will catch up to his mouth soon, "it's like this–"

"Page, we honestly did use protection," Scully interrupts him, her Mulder sense apparently telling her he is about to say something really stupid that would get them both in trouble, "but even protection doesn't work 100% of the time."

"Yeah, I know, you've told us and I heard that in sex ed class, too," their oldest daughter interrupts them both, startling them yet again. "It just ticks me off that Adrianna didn't handle getting pregnant as well as you guys. I mean, even Luke is handling it 100 times better, and he's a guy!"

Mulder asks, "What do you mean by 'handling it'?"

"I mean, Luke stepped up and is keeping the baby," Page explains. "He's taking care of his son, even when he's going to school. Adrianna's being all selfish, just wanting to get rid of her responsibility and give the baby up for adoption in the first place! Why couldn't they get married like you guys, too?"

Mulder blinks. He hadn't realized how hardcore his daughter is, but at least she's telling them and not, say, her aunt.

Scully, however, wants to repair familial relationships, even if it's currently strained under differing opinions. "Page, honey, it's harder for Luke and Adrianna. They're both much younger, for one thing, and trust me, getting pregnant doesn't automatically make it easier on relationships, especially premarital ones. Your cousin and Luke aren't the only ones who have broken up because of having a baby, and I'm afraid they're not the last."

Page scowls. "Well, that's dumb," she mutters, "but I hope Luke gets a lotta help watching over the baby, especially since it's just him."

"Me, too," Scully says, then pats her side of the bed. "Come here, sweetie."

Her oldest daughter sighs, but walks over, and allowed herself to be hugged. Even her dad leans over her mom to give her a hug, too.

"Okay, I get it," Page still grumbles, even if she felt much better.

Her parents smile at her. "Good night, Page," her mom says.

Daisy yips, and it's obvious that her parents have forgotten about the puppy in the middle of the conversation. "Good night, Page. And Daisy," her dad adds with a grin. "Please close the door behind you."

Page nods, making sure the puppy is following her out rather than staying with her parents.

After she closed the door behind her, she can hear her parents murmuring resume, and she flicks on the staircase light. Now, however, she doesn't mind the late night talk. She knows how they feel, and they know what she thinks about the whole Adrianna and Luke thing. She hopes that Luke and the baby will be okay, that someday her cousin will grow up, and that Aunt Samantha will start coming over and talking to her dad again. Even she knows it's kinda awkward, that whole thing, but she figures, someday, she'll do better.

She knows her parents have more than made the best of their own situation, especially judging by how many siblings she has, but she also knows that it's better to learn from other people's mistakes than your own. She just wishes that it wasn't her cousin and their family friend that made the mistake in the first place.

Of course, she hasn't always been aware that her mother was pregnant when she got married, but a few years ago she learned enough between learning the average length of a pregnancy and how to calculate the time between dates to realize that it's unlikely she'd been a several weeks' early baby and on the large size for a baby girl. Her parents obviously hadn't waited long to tie the knot, but still. Some parts of her wonder how many of her younger siblings have figured this bit of family history out on their own yet, but she gets the impression that it might matter to most of them less because they weren't the baby who prompted their parents' marriage.

On the other hand, she also remembers Aunt Missy saying, after a bit too much champagne a couple of New Year's Eve parties ago, that she'd known that her sister and her husband were going to get married from the first time she heard her talk about him, a few months after they'd begun working together (at the time Page had thought it was strange that her mom and aunt hadn't talked for months, but she remembered that Missy was reported to have a lot of wanderlust when she was young, and most people didn't have cell phones then). She thinks the phrase Missy had used was "so obviously besotted even then" one word of which she'd had to look up the definition of. When she did, she'd been both charmed and amused to imagine her mother speaking of her father that way, especially long before they started dating.

Apparently it hadn't been true love between Luke and Adrianna after all, she reflects, feeling a little bad for her cousin now, not just mad at her.

"Daisy, it's a good thing you're a dog and don't have to worry about all this stuff," she sighs, sitting on the floor and plumping up the pillows that make up the sides of the dog bed.

The puppy, oblivious to the girl's thoughts, or the previous conversation, runs around her bed, tail wagging at a furious rate. But it only takes a few minutes until she runs herself tired, and falls asleep in the middle of the kidney shaped bed.

It takes Page a while longer, but in the end, she, too, manages to fall asleep in her own bed, her mind finally clear.

October 16, 2008

Luke is having a horrible day. He thought everything would hit him on a Monday, but since it was Discoverer's Day (Bucky's name for Columbus day), they had the day off and he got to work a full day at the restaurant. Since he didn't have either classes or work, Gibson had offered to watch Nicholas, and Luke accepted gratefully. He and his brother finish off the night working on some homework. All in all, Monday was pretty good.

Today, Thursday, however, it seems that destiny has basically crapped on his head like an overhead pigeon. He woke up late because his alarm clock battery died overnight, and so he rushed getting himself and Nicholas ready. As a result, he almost forgot Nicholas' baby bag until he was about a hundred yards away from the bus stop and jogged back for it, trying his best not to jostle his baby too hard as he did so. He ended up missing the bus anyways, and caught the next bus half an hour later.

Nicholas has been in a fussy mood since the wee hours of the morning, and the day care worker that day didn't seem too enthusiastic about handling the wailing baby. "I'm sorry I woke up late," Luke apologized, "I think my bad mood rubbed off on Nicholas. He should be fine in a few minutes, right, little man?" he smiles hopefully at his son, bouncing him a little before handing him over to the skeptical girl.

"Don't forget to sign in," the girl says, taking Nicholas. Luke nods and did just that. He only felt safe leaving when the girl finally turns her full attention on his son, cooing as she brought him over to a crib.

When he got into class, his professor gave him a dirty look as he sneered, "So glad you could finally join us, Mr. Doggett. We were only covering how to survive the economic downturn in regards to our industry. Since you felt confident enough to come in at such a late hour, I was wondering if you'd like to share with the rest of the class how one might create a safety net for a business venture."

He and Gibson had covered that very thing Monday night, and while his brother shoots him a sympathetic look, Luke tried not to let the irritation build in his gut. Ordinarily, topics covered in study sessions would have stuck in his head, but that was three nights ago, and this week has been full of three-to-four-hour naps at best, and he can barely remember his own name. Crap. "Sorry, I don't," he says, and tried not to slink into his seat like a sullen teenager.

The professor grins viciously at him and proceeded to eviscerate Luke and anyone else who seemed to "act like a slacker" in his eyes. There are quite a few people who didn't appreciate the mass execution, and Luke really did sink into his seat. It takes what felt like forever for the professor to get back to his lecture notes, and everyone's hands are cramping by the time the class ended.

After class, Gibson chuckles, shaking out his hand. "Wow, not your lucky day, huh?"

Luke sighs. "Do you have two spare triple-A batteries? My alarm clock died on me."

"Sorry, no." Gibson shrugs, but then says, "You don't use your phone?"

Luke frowns. "What?"

"Your cell phone. You can program your alarm times in there, and if you're like me, you're more likely to check on and recharge your phone than your clock," Gibson explained.

"Huh, okay." Luke blinks. "Sounds like a Katie idea."

"It was." His brother quirked up a corner of his mouth. "Good luck with your next class."

"You, too," Luke says, and they go to the opposite sides of the campus.

But luck is nowhere to be had. His next professor decides to spring a test worth twenty percent of their grade on them, and it seems to cover nothing that they'd studied. A few students protested, claiming it is probably future chapters, but the tests are still handed out and the T.A. (who is probably a bar bouncer in real life) backed up the professor. At least I'm not the only one getting an "F" in this class, Luke thinks pessimistically.

His last class for the day is lab, which he thought would be a breeze. Normally, it would, except that all the computers had a virus that is frustrating the usually-brilliant IT team. It didn't help that the professor is taking up the IT techs' time arguing that his students could debug the computers themselves. They all look at the professor in disbelief, but the madman seemed to think that time is money, and seemed determined to frustrate the professionals in doing their job. Luke tried to sneak out of the room along with the rest of his classmates, but given his sucky luck, tripped over one of the rolling chairs and unplugged one of the stations. For his infraction, he is docked twenty points and forced to take notes on what the IT team is doing.

By the time he got to work, his eyes were dry, his hand cramped again, and he was seething at the unfairness of the world. He tried to leave his bad mood at the door, but it seemed he sucked at putting on a happy face, and his tips are in the single digits. To make matters worse, he can't even finish his shift because the daycare worker for that evening had a fever and everyone had to take their kids home.

Now finally at home, Nicholas sounds like he hadn't lost his fussiness from the morning, and while Luke would love to have blamed it on the diaper rash he found while changing his diaper earlier, his baby continues to flail and cry while he tries to get classwork done. Nicholas seems to time his outbursts at odd intervals, so that Luke has to start at the beginning of the first chapter several times, and he is supposed to read five chapters.

"Stupid dead batteries," Luke grumbles while heating Nicholas' milk for yet another unscheduled 'study break', "stupid bus, stupid professors, stupid tests, stupidwork, stupid sick people," and then when Nicholas breaks out into a loud wail, Luke yells "and STUPID BABIES! GOD!" He slams his fist on the counter and swears when this hurts his hand, shaking it out.

The worst thing is, it's not the first time he's overslept since Nicholas arrived, and it's not the first time his professors have asked him to go above and beyond what he expected to do, and it's definitely not the first time the daycare cooperative have flaked out on him. He sighs, then swears again as the stove timer's beep makes Nicholas cry. It's also not the first time Nicholas has been irritated by sudden noise. It's been hard enough trying to get him to sleep more than three hours at a time, and his baby's sensitivity's starting to make Luke jumpy, too. While Mr. Sanchez had joked about feeding him beer to make the baby sleep longer, it's starting to sound like a good idea to Luke.

"And that's why I need more sleep, if stupid jokes sound like good ideas," the tall grad student mutters as he waits for Nicholas to stop fighting the bottle's nipple and start to suck on it. He sits down on the couch, wanting to turn the TV on for some mindless entertainment, but that would only make the baby cry and postpone whatever little studying he can get. Luke sighs and leans back, staring up at the ceiling.

Nicholas, sensing that he is being ignored, stopped suckling at the plastic nipple and starts to kick and cry.

His father sighs and looks down. "Are you serious?" Luke snaps, close to shoving the damn bottle in his stubborn son's mouth. "Come ON!"

The baby only cries louder, putting his full lung capacity into it.

"Shut up!" Luke shouts, not caring that yelling at a baby makes no sense. "Just shut up!"

Nicholas doesn't care about sense or no sense, he only continues to cry whole-heartedly until his face turns red and his legs only stop kicking to fuel the energy needed for full-body crying. After what felt like forever, but is only a few minutes, the infant coughed a couple of times, and turns his face towards the bottle.

During the crying fit, Luke had to force himself not to think about smothering his child. He'd heard of parents doing just that in a fit of anger, and he'd always condemned them for being bad parents, but now that he is in their shoes, he sees how easy it is to fall into temptation. When Nicholas finally stops crying, Luke stops clenching his hands into fists, and finds he had been clenching his jaw as well.

God. It's only been a couple of weeks since he started taking care of Nicholas, and he is already on the verge of murder. Crap.

He kissed his son's still-bald head. "I'm sorry," he whispers, the words choked from a tight throat. "Daddy loves you."

Nicholas fusses when tears fall on his face, and Luke quickly wipes them off with the soft cloth. When the baby boy is assured that no further wetness would bother his milk time, he goes back to the bottle.

It takes a while for Nicholas to go to sleep, and even longer for Luke to forgive himself and go back to studying.

The next week, which seemed to be full of non-stop bad days, Luke wonders if he should ask the Mulders if they could take care of Nicholas, just for a little while. He'd ask his parents, but unlike Mulders, they not only have dangerous full-time jobs, but they've got Jon-Jon and his two sisters to raise without any help from a nanny as well. It wouldn't be the first time the Mulders would or could help out his family, and it would just be temporary… As he doodles aliens on the side of his notes, he wonders how long "temporary" would be. Maybe a couple of months? Or until the end of the school year? Hell, what about until he finishes grad school?

Blood drains from his face. Yeah, the Mulders are nice enough people who would actually watch over Nicholas for that length of time, probably even adopt him if they wanted to keep him in the family, but the thought of having to hear about his son's firsts from other people is starting to make his stomach cramp. Even if they are related now in a convoluted way and good people, Luke would rather lose sleep and hear his son say his first word in person than have to rely on the Mulders to do it for him.

Not for the first time, he can't believe that Adrianna would willingly break off any and all contact with Nicholas, willingly miss out on her baby's smile of recognition, miss out on his first steps, his first words… He starts to tear up at the thoughts, and exhales.

Yeah, just more proof that he and Adrianna are more different than he thought they were. Sometimes he hates when his dad's sayings are right: Forbidden fruit doesn't make the best pie. But they sure tasted good at the time, Luke adds mentally. And that's when Nicholas wakes up and starts to fuss.