Mr. Sanchez finds Luke sitting outside on the stoop that night, the tall young man rocking the baby carrier with one hand while Nicholas hiccups and cries inside it. It looks like an average picture of an average parent with a newborn, a fussing baby and tired father, but on closer inspection, Luke's eyes are as flat and dead as some of his former coworkers used to have. The older man puts off his original intent of asking about the rent check and instead, sits beside the younger man. "Long day?" he asks.
Luke chuckles, but it is as dry as the desert. "Long month. It feels like a year."
Mr. Sanchez nods. "It's been a while, longer than you've been alive, but I remember the sleepless nights, the short temper, and the crying. And it wasn't just my oldest girl." He grins at Luke, who manages to pull up a corner of his mouth in the grim mockery of a smile. "There were times I had to just put my baby girl down and walk away, because the two of us yelling incoherently at each other wasn't helping my wife when she was trying to take a nap." He shakes his head. "Those were rough times, being a new parent. It got a little easier with each kid that came after, but four kids doesn't make you a perfect parent. It just means you get faster at calling for a babysitter before you lose your mind."
The smile on Luke's face is wider, but it disappears just as quickly. "I don't know," he mumbles, "I feel like a monster whenever Nicholas just cries and cries and I just get so angry. What kind of parent does that?"
"A human one." The older man glances at the baby in question, who has managed to pass out from his exertions during the brief conversation. "Though I don't know, maybe fox and swan moms and dads feel that way too," he adds, hoping to amuse Luke with the idea of other pair-bonded animals having parental woes too. It doesn't seem to work. "Hey, if they took every baby away from parents who got angry, every baby would be raised by the state." The younger man's moroseness eases up, just a bit. Mr. Sanchez presses on. "Hey, I told you if it gets too rough, just call me, okay? There are perks to being the manager of a business, and one of them is the chance to harass customers with a cute kid."
Luke snorts. "You're gonna regret that offer. I'm gonna call you so much your car will need a tune up every weekend."
Mr. Sanchez shrugs. "I'm gonna hold you to that," he says, getting up and dusting himself off. The look he gave the pale kid is now serious. "Hey. I'm telling you. Call me if you need to take some time to walk it off." He sticks out his hand. Yeah, he knows the younger man is embarrassed, and, as a man, he is, too, but he knows the kid needs more help.
Luke, after a long moment of hesitation, finally stretches out his long arm and shakes the offered hand. Mr. Sanchez gives him a firm grip, which catches the younger man by surprise. "I mean it." Then they let go, and the landlord sighs. "And when you're ready, you can give me your rent check." Luke nods, and the older man goes inside, having had his say.
October 26, 2008
That Sunday morning, Luke calls Ms. Scully. After Mr. Sanchez had offered his help (and actually coming through the next couple of days), Luke hasn't changed his mind about asking the Mulders to take Nicholas, firmly resolved that he won't. However, he still had some questions for her. "Hi, Ms. Scully?" he asks when she picks up after three rings. "This is Luke."
"Hi, Luke," she answers, her voice sounding a bit echoey. "Hope you don't mind, I've got you on speakerphone because Isaac gets fussy without his binky and it desperately needs a wash." The sound of a crying baby in the background underlines her statement. "Yes, you do," she coos, washing it in the sink with one hand while bouncing her baby on her hip with the other. "Oh, oh, look, Isaac! Look! Clean binky!" There's a bit of a silence after the water's turned off, and Scully exhales. "Sorry about that. Is everything all right?"
"I was wondering," he says, his voice cracking a little with uncertainty, then cleared his throat. "Um, did you ever get mad at your kids when they were babies? I mean, when they cried all the time, stuff like that."
"Hm," she muses, "no, not really. I got tired, but what with working long hours as a doctor and FBI agent, I couldn't afford to lose my temper because of missed sleep. I guess those experiences helped when I had kids, along with having a husband and a nanny." And now he feels like a monster again, in spite of what Mr. Sanchez said. "But I'm sure a lot of people do, since OB offices are full of handouts about letting the baby cry while you cool off, and asking for help when you need it. And we've never been shy about asking for help, although I'm fairly sure I tore Mulder's head off when he sent Page and Sammy over to the Lone Gunmen once without telling me first."
Luke is acquainted with the three strange guys, and he doesn't blame her. Yeah, they've mellowed out a bit, and they were pretty funny when he was a kid, but as a parent, he'd think twice about handing Nicholas over to them. "Yeah, well, I wasn't really in a position to visit OB offices," he says and shrugs, "what with classes and Adrianna and her mom not wanting me to be there."
"Ah," she notes. "On the topic of getting help, there might be a support group nearby. I'm pretty sure you're not the only single parent out there, especially if there's a daycare collective at your college."
He hasn't thought about that, but that is a good point. "Okay, yeah. I'll look it up. Thanks, Mrs., I mean, Ms. Scully!"
She chuckles. "You're welcome," she says, "and good luck."
"Thanks," he says again, and hangs up.
As he opens his laptop, he really, really hopes there's a group nearby. He can't be the only one who's going nuts raising a kid by themselves, right?
When he sees that there is a support group for single parents just a bus ride away from the apartment, he feels something like a huge weight lift off his shoulders. "Oh, thank God," he murmurs before he realizes he said it out loud.
Then he calls the number, and is surprised to hear a live person answer and tell him her name. "Hi, um, Dorothy," he barely remembers the introduction, "my name's Luke Doggett, is it okay to come to your next meeting?"
"No problem," Dorothy says. "Will you be needing childcare for the meeting?"
"Uh, yeah." Luke nods, as if she could see him. "That would be great."
"It is," Dorothy agrees. "See you next Thursday night."
"See you," he says, and hangs up. Normally, he'd shout in triumph, but it took so long to get Nicholas to sleep, he doesn't want to wake him up. So Luke throws a few fist pumps in the air, then texts his brother, "Going to a single parents support group meeting next Thu, wish me luck."
"Awesome!" Gibson texts back within seconds. "Did you finish your assignment for Prof Nitpicky?"
Luke's about to text a "Duh," but freezes. He's suddenly not sure, and opens up his homework folder on his laptop. "Shit, shit, shit," he hisses under his breath. He started it the day they got the assignment, but it seemed it fell through the cracks. "Thanks, Gib," he types instead, "the bags under the bags under my eyes say hi."
"Hi," his life-saving brother texts back, "you're welcome."
Luke groans, then pulls out the text book and proceeded to do his homework the way he always seemed to these days: by reading slowly and typing even slower, all last-minute, of course. This is his only economics course, and while it usually never bothered him, this year the material seemed ten times harder than it did last year.
He is halfway through both the chapter and his assignment when he gets up and stretches.
When he glances at the clock, he's startled. Wow, Nicholas managed to sleep two hours straight through! For a second he wonders if Mr. Sanchez has finally caved and fed the baby beer like he'd teased him about earlier, but it is probably the guy's years of experience which unfairly gave him the skills to put a fussy baby to sleep.
No, he isn't jealous, he is relieved. Okay, and jealous. He picks up his phone and saves the support group information on it, then writes it on a blank sheet of paper, taping it on his door. He makes sure to underline the THURSDAY written in capital letters, knowing that if he goes through another week half-dead like he did this past week, he'll need all the visual help he can get. Then he smiles. Yeah, he'll finally be talking with people in the same boat.
Then he looks at his desk, the open laptop and textbook almost taunting him, and grimaces. "Fine," he mutters, and gets back to working on his assignment.
XxX
That Afternoon
When Mulder picks up his boys from the Kryceks, they look like they'd gone through the wringer. Their aunt and uncle, on the other hand, look relieved, and there are no sign of the cousins. That's either a good or bad thing, but since Alex and Missy muster up small smiles and wave off the boys, it doesn't seem like they'd driven a lifelong wedge between the families. Yay, one less family crisis for the Mulders, Mulder thinks cynically to himself.
"So, how was it?" Mulder asks, since he'd been told this is the "last shooting day," according to not just Sammy, but Missy and Alex as well. "You did everything you needed to?" He checks that his boys are seat belted before pulling out of the driveway.
"Yup," Sammy says, staring out the window from the passenger seat.
Mulder waits, but there is no further elaboration. Ohhhkayyy… "So, how were your cousins? Did you drive your aunt and uncle nuts?"
"The girls were okay, but Ryan was the same – he kept getting mad that we didn't want him to 'help' us," David says, and Mulder wonders if he should lecture them for leaving Ryan out. Later, he decides, with Scully's help crafting the message. "Uncle Alex is funny. Aunt Missy is a really good sew-er."
"It's seamstress," Sammy corrects him.
"Whatever." His younger brother shrugs. "She made some really cool stuff."
"What kind of stuff?" Mulder asks.
"Trade secret," Sammy interrupts before Jared can answer. "You'll see it when the movie comes out."
Oh God, he's sounding like Wayne, Mulder thinks. "And when is the movie coming out?"
His eldest son frowns in thought. "Dunno," he says, "we gotta edit it, and I gotta check with Uncle Frohike when he's free. And there's no holiday until Thanksgiving but that's too short." This last is more like he is muttering to himself. Then, in a more normal tone, he goes on, "At least Jared and David can go back to Little League full-time when it starts up again."
Mulder is thinking that they'd better be able to considering baseball is still months away when his brunette twins high-five each other, then wince as their hands make contact.
Noticing their apparent achiness Mulder is seriously wondering what the hell the last day of the movie is about, and if he should be yelling at the grownups or the kids.
"And what about you?" Mulder asks. "Are you going to be able to go back to basketball full-time this year?" He'd only brought it up once last month, but he is concerned about the hobby that is eating into Sammy's practice and playing time, especially considering that basketball is just getting rolling for the year.
Sammy shakes his head. "I talked to Coach about it," he says, "He told me if I missed two more practice games, I can't play for the rest of the year. I'm going to miss 'em."
"Are you okay with that?" Mulder asks. Sammy has been playing on his middle school basketball team for the past couple of years and seems to like it almost as much as his younger siblings like baseball.
His redheaded son nods. "I knew when we were still filming when school was starting that it was gonna take longer than I thought. And I thought about the movie and about other stuff I'd wanna be doing and stuff I'd have to be doing. I made sure that David and Jared could switch off so neither of them missed too much practice, but I couldn't do that. I figured, basketball is gonna be there next year in high school, but I've got this one time to make a movie before school gets really serious and stuff. If I still like making movies when I'm done, I'll have to think about it some more, but right now, I wanna do it." Then he grins. "Besides, once the movie is done, I'll have more free time to drive you and Mom up the wall when Isaac's being too good."
"Oh my God, you have thought about it," Mulder groans. "Remind me never to turn you into a mad scientist that'll take over the world."
"Too late," Jared says, "he's already got an evil laugh."
"Seriously?" Mulder glances at his son out of the corner of his eye when the light turns green.
And then his oldest son, whose voice has barely started to crack, goes off with a perfect Bela Lugosi-style laugh. His younger sons start laughing, too when Sammy keeps it up longer than fifteen seconds, although their laughs are in their normal, semi-giggly way. Even Mulder cracks a smile at his kid's goofiness. Because while his son had shown some flashes of maturity (and frightening Kersh-like scheduling) in his decision-making, it is nice to know that he is still young enough and silly enough to enjoy a good, ridiculous laugh.
October 31, 2008
Brianna and Zoe's birthday party is, to no one's surprise, a tea party. And because it is so girly, their brothers are compelled to stay away and go trick-or-treating. Well, all except for Isaac, who is too young to care about tea parties or candy, anyway. Scully is just happy that her all children will be chaperoned in some respect or another, since either way it will be a night of sugar-indulgence, and wishes her husband luck as he tromps out the door with most of their sons and Ryan, with Krycek as backup adult chaperone.
The twins had invited a handful of classmates, but only two, Larissa Marley and Trish Achebe, show up. That is all right, Scully wasn't expected a large herd outside her own family, especially since it is Halloween and most kids, like her sons, are out harassing, er, asking neighbors for candy. And for a party for six-year-olds, it is still pretty crowded, or perhaps Scully only felt that way, being the only adult chaperone.
The other girls who attended are Rebecca and Hannah, Emily and Addy, as well as Ariel and Alyssa. Page was actually surprised that Ariel is staying, but when asked about it in the kitchen, her cousin shrugs. "It's better than the drama at home," her blonde cousin replied, and Page could only nod, since she wasn't sure what to say to that.
The birthday party itself is a low-key affair, only because having elementary-aged girls hopped up on sugar would be enough excitement. All the girls, the Hill girls included, are dressed up like princesses, although the birthday girls had fairy wings along with their princess outfits to distinguish them from the others. Even Page and April are dressed up as princesses, although Page is a blonde Princess Leia and April is Ariel from the Little Mermaid, although everyone still calls her April because having two Ariels is a little confusing.
They have the usual party games, as well as cake and ice cream, and the older Mulder girls stepped in as hosts when their mother is taking care of Isaac, so nobody feels left out. Besides, the girls are having too much fun being princesses, really, and the novelty of being a princess at a tea party is enough to keep them distracted.
It isn't until everyone goes home and the Mulder women retreated in the kitchen that Page felt free to sigh happily. "Thanks for helping me take care of everyone," she tells April. The birthday girls are by now bouncing around in their bedroom, still in their fairy princess costumes. "A lot more girls showed up than I expected."
"What do you mean?" Scully frowns.
The oldest Mulder girl smiles as she recalls the other girls. "There was Dorothy, dressed up like Tinkerbell, and Susie, who was Sleeping Beauty, Lydia, who was Snow White, and her sister Leticia, who was the other Cinderella. Oh, and Millie, who was Belle from Beauty and the Beast."
Scully is racking her brains, trying to place them. How could she miss five extra little girls, even if she was taking care of her baby? Granted, everyone looks alike when dressed up in tons of shiny, colorful dresses, but she doesn't want to admit that out loud. "Perhaps they came in later," she muses, then frowns. "I didn't see any extra adults coming in to pick them up. Are you sure-?" But that's silly, how could Page and April be mistaken about the number of guests?
April bites her lower lip, then sighs as she interrupts. "Mom, those were the ghosts," she says quickly, "I didn't want to spook the guests, but I think they just wanted to have fun too. Like you said, every little girl wants to be a princess at least once, right?" Page frowns at her, but her younger sister is looking at their mother.
Scully's eyes suddenly fill with tears. "Yes, yes, they do," she says, when she's sure that her throat isn't constricted with emotion. "I'm glad they had fun, too."
"Oh, Mom," Page looks embarrassed at the emotional display and shoots a look at her younger sister, but April only shakes her head. "Fine, okay," she sighs. "Well, for ghosts, they looked very real."
"'Cause they are." April rolls her eyes, then turns her head when they heard shouts from upstairs, followed by crying. "Brianna! Zoe! You guys are so busted for whatever you're doing!" she yells, running up the stairs.
Scully snorts. "I'd like to think she gets her mild cluelessness from Mulder," she confesses to her oldest.
"Not totally clueless, she guessed the extra girls were ghosts before I did," Page admits.
"Come on, I need to get Isaac fed before I have to give my other daughters a scolding," the red-haired woman says with a shake of her head.
Mulder hasn't come home with the boys yet by the time Page has gotten ready for the school dance. Scully heard April teasing her a little while ago, suggesting she go to the dance like she is, and Page had shrilly retorted that she couldn't go to the dance as a princess.
That had been twenty minutes ago, so Scully isn't surprised when Page appears with a hair brush and a handful of ribbons, holding them out to her. As Scully takes them from her, she tries not to feel chagrined that she now has to reach up to brush her oldest girl's hair – intellectually she'd realized that all of her kids would likely be taller than her when they grew up considering how tall Mulder is, but somehow it still came as a surprise when the first one surpassed her.
"Thanks, Mom," Page says happily when her mother is finished. "There's no way I could do my hair as good as you do."
"You're welcome. So… no one's dressing up for the dance?" she asks, knowing that even if it's a big deal to the ninth grader it's likely to be a tame enough affair, and slated to wrap up at 9:30.
"Nah. Emily and I asked some older kids that we trust, and they said it's definitely not a costume dance."
"And Emily will be ready by the time you and Uncle Alex get back to his house?"
"I just talked to her. She claims to be ready now," Page says, wrinkling her nose a little. Over the years Emily has made them both late to school functions more often than the other way around. "I kind of wish that Ariel and Alyssa go to our school."
"Why's that?"
Page shrugs. "This school year is going better for them than last year, but…" The teenager sighs. "If they could go to our dance, they'd forget for a while, you know? Like during the twin's party today."
"I see what you mean."
The front door opens noisily, and a bunch of young male voices talk amongst themselves, while a horn beeps outside. "Oops, Daddy and Uncle Alex must want me to come out to them," Page says, and then gives her mother a quick hug. "See ya."
"Have fun, sweetie," Scully advises. "You have to let me know how many boys you dance with, huh?"
"Mom!" Page exclaims in exaggerated exasperation, but when Scully looks at her, she's also blushing a little. She and Emily weren't asked to the dance by specific boys, but it turns out very few kids in their grade have "dates" to the dance so both girls are okay with it...but apparently still hoping to dance with some boys anyway.
"Bye!" Scully tells her cheerfully.
It'll probably be a few minutes before the boys come to find her, and Missy has called about taking the younger girls out "real quick" to hit up a few houses before Trick or Treat ends, so Scully takes a moment to indulge herself by thinking about Page.
Back when Page had been Isaac's age, Scully would have wanted nothing more than to keep her little and adorable forever. Fortunately, that passed as Page began to hit the typical baby milestones. All parents are occasionally charmed by the idea of keeping their kids tiny and safe if only they could, but Scully thinks about how much they'd all miss out on if a parent really could (and considering that Mulder knows people like Elsbeth, they probably had a better chance of achieving that than most parents). Babies are precious, it's true, but they're also helpless and dependent, two words that no longer apply to Scully's oldest, or most of the others in her brood either.
That's the way it should be, she reminds herself even though she feels a tiny bit wistful. A parent's job is not only to love and protect them, but give them a good foundation for being able to learn to stand on their own two feet and eventually make their own way in the world.
She thinks again about Page's disappointment that a rule at their school keeps her from inviting her cousins to the dance to make them happier. I don't think we're doing too bad a job of it, she muses.
Though when she walks into the living room and sees that her sons have spread out approximately 5000 mini candy bars on the floor as part of their candy trading negations, a bit of her smugness wans.
"This is going to be all picked up before bedtime, right?" she prompts them as she carefully tries to avoid stepping on peanut butter cups and milky ways.
"Of course!" the five boys all quickly say.
Somehow she's sure it won't be the only time she says that before the night is over.