TITLE: Three
AUTHOR: Rain Garcia Chua (formerly "Agent Rain")
RATING: T
KEYWORDS: MSR, A
SPOILERS: IWTB, FTF, Seasons 4-9
SUMMARY: In his head, he scoffed at how naïve he had been a decade ago when she presented him with her decision to resign from the FBI after the bombing in Dallas. One was not always the loneliest number; sometimes it was two.
FEEDBACK: This is my first original 1/1 in over fifteen years! Yes, yes, yes, FEED ME!
DISCLAIMER: You may own them, CC, but remember, we helped make the revival happen!
This story would have never been conceptualized if it wasn't for Melissa (aka ScullyLikesScience) who writes one of the most well-sustained fanfics I have ever had the pleasure of reading and waiting updates for. Recently, we extensively complained about CC's treatment of William all throughout the last season and the second movie. Some parts here were real snippets of our conversation, so this fic is largely indebted to her wit!
As for me, I've always wanted to read a Williamfic from Mulder's perspective. Here's my answer to my own craving.
"Three"
Memories come to Fox Mulder in fragments now. They visit him like old acquaintances – often dropping by during inopportune times and forcing him to serve the chilled wine he has kept in the fridge for special occasions. When they do come, it never feels special; it feels heavy, actually, like the thick of air on a May afternoon before the season turns.
When he was younger and bolder, he once cursed his photographic memory for keeping tabs on even the most miniscule of pleasures and pains. Now, he finds himself staring at the bathroom mirror, demanding it back, all back.
He pops the cork and hopes she doesn't hear him. Taking a normal drinking glass – because opening the cabinet where they keep the wine glasses makes too much noise – and pouring into it the deep red liquid that'll keep him sated tonight, he pleads on the universe to let her sleep be so deep and dreamless that when she wakes up tomorrow, she'll be too satisfied to notice his red eyes and flushed cheeks … all telltale signs that 'special' once again came too early.
It has come too early, or late, depending on how many sips of wine he has had by that time. One minute, he was in his office cutting up a tabloid article on mysteriously disappearing sheep in New Zealand; the next, he noticed the date on the paper. It was the twentieth of May.
Nine years.
There it is again – click, click, click goes his memory.
Click, "You know, one is the loneliest number."
Click, "I know you had no choice. I just missed both of you so much."
Click, "I- I think our son left us both with an emptiness that can't be filled."
He takes another sip of wine in the kitchen, where he's chiaroscuro: in between the dark of the room and the light from his office. Here, the emptiness is always a gaping hole in his gut. He hopes the wine can fill it up tonight.
Mulder takes pleasure in waiting for her return home. He cooks dinner from recipes off the Internet or vague tutorials uploaded to those video-sharing sites. He sets the table for two. Sometimes, he sits on the porch to wait for her. Sometimes, he stays in his office and tides his appetite over sunflower seeds.
One late afternoon, their meal easily courses through dinner as their conversation keeps on stretching from one topic to the next. When they have finished eating, Dana Scully stares at him from the opposite end of the table, wiping her lips happily with the napkin. The ends of her eyes crinkle and he fondly notices the faint etchings of laugh lines there. He wonders when it has become this way – his memory now only catalogues the days through Scully's physical changes. Two years ago, there was her first white hair. This year, those lines on the edges of her vibrant blues.
"I got you something," she announces conspiratorially, her voice pitching higher than usual.
He sits back on his chair and crosses the utensils on his now-empty plate. "Ooooh," he says, "I hate to disappoint you, but my tastes in videos have changed. Nigella Lawson needs to be in each and every one of them. Preferably with a sexy apron and some greasy meat."
"Even better," Scully retorts, winking at him. She neatly folds her napkin and places it beside her plate before standing up. Grabbing her bag on a nearby table, she rummages in it for a while before whipping out a rectangular box.
When she hands it to him, he takes it and opens it excitedly. Scully stands beside his chair, placing one hand on his shoulder and the other on her waist.
Mulder pulls out the iPad and presses a button to boot the machine. It shows the white iconic Apple logo and cuts straight to the home screen. He releases a breath he forgot he was holding and looks up at her; she's smiling down at him, wide enough to show her even teeth.
"You can download all the Lawson videos you want there." She raises an eyebrow and click, he sees her ten years earlier raising that same eyebrow at him when he helped her stand up after a Lamaze class. She had panted as she struggled to her feet and steadied herself on his shoulders, harshly whispering, "Jesus, this kid will probably weigh as heavy as you do when it comes out."
He returns her smile, not the eyebrow. "Thanks, Scully. I'm touched you're encouraging my indiscretions." Mulder cranes his neck up and she meets him halfway, sealing his gratitude with a quick kiss. When they pull apart, she gestures to the device.
"I've downloaded some apps I think you'd like." She bends down to press a manicured finger on the screen. From the folder that says "games," she proudly shows him what she got: Hidden Objects, Sims, Crossword, Word Hunt. Mulder taps on the first one.
As the instructions scroll on the screen, he smiles goofily to himself. The screen changes and a white bar appears, demanding his player name. He begins to move his finger to the "M," but stops when he hears Scully above him.
"He'd be great with this one, I'm sure …" she trails off.
"Who?" he asks, keeping his voice still. Of course he knows who. How can he not? But he can't say it out loud; he's afraid the moment the name escapes his mouth, his insides will open up and swallow them whole.
She doesn't answer and he's suddenly aware of how heavy her breathing is beside him. He types "Mulder" on the blank that demands for his name and silently wishes that he can be brave enough to have typed another name instead.
The only moment his older memory doesn't deny him is the moment his son was conceived. It comes to him more often than before now since the night he realized that his boy was already nine years old. When he remembers, he doesn't need wine or to hear the familiar rotund click in his head. He closes his eyes and it happens as if he's there once more in his old apartment.
There was tea, an afghan blanket, rain outside. Scully shuffling to his bedroom and in a rare moment of exhaustion, she peeled off her clothes one by one as she walked from his couch to the bed, leaving a trail of Scully things on his floor. The bra came off last and he watched her in the darkness as she slid into the bed next to him. She stretched and yawned, then reached over to cup his cheek. She knew he was awake and had laughed when he pretended to be violated by her nakedness.
There was no awkwardness – none of that now. There had been many, many nights together before that one. But there was only one night, only that night, when he truly felt that they had become one soul, one flesh.
Two, three years ago, Mulder caught Scully seated on their porch during the last hot summer night of the year. She was wearing her pajama bottoms, but had replaced her shirt with a black tank top. She had folded her legs on her chest, rested her elbows on them, and was absentmindedly peeling away the dead skin from her sunburned shoulders. Her red hair was haphazardly braided, freckles wild on her face, and her eyes fixed on the clear night sky.
He joined her on the porch, pulling up a chair to sit beside her. He replaced her hand with his own and began to carefully peel away the dark skin to reveal the whiter, rawer one underneath. Despite her excessive slather of sunscreen, she had diagnosed her skin to have suffered second degree burns from their impromptu vacation. He hadn't been too keen on the sunscreen and he, of course, luckily only got one degree.
She smiled her thanks but didn't even look at him. She kept on staring at the sky, at the stars that shine and those that didn't – planets, out there masquerading as something less than they were. And those stars that shine the most brilliant, the most beautiful, were nothing but dead or dying.
"Seven," she whispered so tenderly, making him think that she wished he didn't hear her. But he did. Every single inch of him did.
"Seven," he acknowledged as he struggled with a stubborn piece of skin. He left it alone and opted to stare up at the sky she was staring at, willing himself to see what she was seeing there. On her shoulder, on the patch of new pink skin, he carefully draws a "7" with his finger and then a "W."
"He's out there somewhere with his family. Maybe some friends, too. He must be very happy." Her voice was upbeat, but he knew her too well to believe it.
In his head, he thought to the sky, Are you? Or are you thinking, where? Why?
Scully walks up behind him, touching his elbow as she shoves an unrecognizable bottle of liquor in his face. "Let's have this for next week when Mom comes over."
He squints and reads the label. He wishes he brought his glasses. "Bourbon? Really, Scully? Your Mom might make us pray the rosary by the corner when we whip this out after dessert." Mulder resumes his perusal of the cheese section. He spots the kind of parmesan cheese he likes and tosses it into their basket. Scully shrugs and she carefully puts it inside their basket, too. He doesn't protest – she has to be the one to bring it out after dinner, anyway.
Side by side, they cross the section and unexpectedly find themselves in the pets grooming area. They look at each other and smile.
Scully bends down and picks up a green squeaky ball. She gives it a squeeze, hears the squeak, then tosses it to him. He catches it with one hand and throws it back to the bin it came from.
"Remember that god-awful thing you had in your apartment? Geez, that dog hated me." With a smirk, he adds, "You should've named it 'Bill.'"
"Queequeg was the name, Mulder. He didn't hate you – he was just very territorial."
"He tried biting me when I sat down beside you, one time. We were just discussing a case!"
Scully has moved past the pets section and is already in the canned goods. He follows her steadily, anchoring his elbows on the shopping cart to push it.
"He didn't like it when you leaned into me and touched my arm." She looks at him through her shoulder. Mulder resists the urge to roll his eyes.
He gazes at the other end of the section, searching for an ingredient he needs for the dinner they'll be preparing together for Maggie, while Scully peruses the other end. He grabs a barbecue sauce he thinks her Mom will like and eagerly wheels his way towards her.
Mulder stops in his tracks when he sees where Scully's standing in front of and what she's holding in her hand.
M&Ms.
Click, "Hey Scully, you think he'll like this?"
From the bed, she smiled at him, her blue eyes wide with amusement. "Mulder, he's too young to eat that. Maybe in a few months or so we can let him taste the shell," she said, stretching her arms above her, then at her sides, until she hid them under the covers.
Mulder sat near her feet with the sleepy baby in one arm. In the other, he waved a pack of M&Ms – the classic ones - and tried to wiggle it in front of his son's face. No reaction.
"Is that what you bought outside while we were asleep?" Scully asked, the amusement now in her voice.
"Yeah, and a couple of things … enough to tide us for a week in here," he answered in a monotone, fascinated with the tiny human being who was clinging to his chest. He tossed the pack to Scully and stroked the baby's cheek with a finger. In response, the baby yawned and his heart swelled so huge it probably occupied the whole bedroom.
Before him, Scully opened the M&Ms and popped a couple in her mouth. She then offered it back to him, but he waved it away. He was too busy memorizing his son's every single sigh.
Back in the grocery aisle, Mulder opens his mouth to cut the air between them. Nothing comes out. Instead, Scully opens hers and speaks.
"Remember when …"
She can't, won't, finish it.
"I remember." He reaches over and takes the M&Ms from her hand. He gently places it back to the shelf and winces when her hand remains in the same position – as if she's holding an invisible plastic pack in between her fingers. Mulder takes her hand and brings it to his lips. In his head, he adds, but not everything.
He jogs in the early mornings, before she gets up for work. Before, he only could jog around their property. After the FBI pardoned him, he has enjoyed the luxury of jogging on the streets until the sunrise comes.
It is still dark when Mulder starts panting. He stops at a lamppost and leans on it to steady himself. He breathes so hard he can imagine his chest bursting open in the effort.
There's nothing there anyway, his brain leers, and he chastises the voice away.
He stares up to the sky. The stars are still there but reds, pinks, and blues have started to infiltrate the black.
His breathing is so ragged he can't feel his heart.
Mulder catches a dead star blinking far above him. "Are you happy out there, William? Are you really happy wherever you are?" He stops, feels silly, shakes it off, and continues, "I hope you are. I want you to be." His voice breaks and he hates it. Softly now, "Because I'm raw where I'm supposed to feel happy."
He wills the tears to come but they don't. There's nothing left in him to shed.
A year after their escape and for a period of a couple of months, Mulder had made love to Scully with a wild, animal-like abandon. Their lovemaking would be so fierce, so heated, that they had broken several bed rests of the cheap motels they would momentarily rent for a couple of nights.
Scully let him have his way with her: on all fours, against the wall, in the tub, roughly on the bed in compromising angles, on the table, on the chair, her legs to her chest, on top of him, against the door.
He never knew what she made of those desperate couple of months when they rutted like no tomorrow. Part of him was ashamed of his abandon; part of him was proud.
Yet, a huge part of him could only admit what he remembered the most during those months:
One more, just one more, the voice in his head chanted like one final wish, a prayer, a will, in time with his thrusts.
But then months would come. A year passed. Then two. They left the motels and bought a house.
He admitted to himself that there wouldn't be any more when she also admitted to him that she was going through the early stages of menopause, despite being only forty-two, most probably because of what her body had been unknowingly subjected to before.
In his head, he scoffed at how naïve he had been a decade ago when she presented him with her decision to resign from the FBI after the bombing in Dallas. One was not always the loneliest number; sometimes it was two.
William's photos are supposed to be hung around in their home. His tiny face needs a place in their intertwined life – he's the symbol of their partnership: the essence of their union.
More than that, Mulder needs his photo to remind him that once, he had a son, and once, his boy was real as the hole that permanently resided in his chest.
Scully is at work and he has sent her his usual instant message through his iPad that reminded her to eat something greasy for lunch. He always ends it with the green alien emoticon. In a few minutes, she's going to reply with either a kiss mark emoticon or a reminder to do something for her, or them, while she's away.
He scours their home for a spot meant for their son. He finds none too fitting, none too subtle, none too perfect for that tiny human who sighed sleepily in his arms for such a short time.
In the living room, Mulder stiffens and turns around to face the open door of his office.
One vulnerable afternoon after Maggie left and after he attempted to douse his open wounds with half a bottle of Bourbon, he pierced the air between him and Scully with an accusatory finger. They were pleasant with one another while her Mother was around, but it had taken a turn for the worse when Margaret unintentionally began to reminisce about her missing grandson … aside from recounting the important Scully family events that they both missed while they were on the run.
The hole in him opened up and festered until it became a black hole that sucked everything out in the open.
"You HAD him! I never did!" he shouted, slurring some of his words.
"How dare you say that to me?" she shouted back, curling her fingers into fists. "I did everything I could to protect him and you left because of that same reason too!"
"You don't understand –"
"No, YOU don't UNDERSTAND what I had to go through while you were away!"
"Scully, you DON'T understand!" he barked at her, his voice raw with the throbbing pain that boiled his blood. When the tears pooled at the corners of his eyes and streaked angrily down his cheeks, she shut up. He lifted his hands before him, as if pleading for something he would never get. "You were there! I was never there! You fed him, bathed him, kissed him … you had him! I never did!" He choked out another sob. "And I have no one else to blame but myself!"
"Mulder," she breathed out, her emotions in check. She understood now and it had to be said out in the open. There were hurts that they danced around in the long time they'd been together and his feelings about William had always been the biggest white elephant in their home. She never pushed him about it, he didn't want to be pushed, and now that it was out there, she was almost in awe.
"Mulder," she tried again, "we had him. We always will despite everything that happened."
He clutched his stomach, hiccupping, feeling the dull, empty ache there. "It isn't enough, Scully! Don't you see? I wanted him! I was never there! You WERE there!" He fell to his knees and placed his hands on the floor in an attempt to pacify his emotions. His mind reeled though, chanting, you said it, you said it, you said it, but he didn't feel any better.
When he stared up at her, she had closed her eyes and the tears gamely came spilling out. He could see the pain he caused her like it was another breathing, living entity in the living room but he had to say it out loud. He had to admit to his jealousy, his hurt, his need to blame her for what happened.
She feebly returned to her old defense: "I had no choice."
He counterattacked her with one that had always been at the back of his head but was buried for so long because of his love for her: "I didn't get a choice."
Somewhere in between them and that argument, something had to give.
He tried to leave her that same night, after she had passed out on their bed and he on the living room couch. He woke up, packed an overnight bag, and gingerly crept out of their house.
Mulder was already at the front porch, fumbling with the keys to his new car, when he felt her staring at him from inside the house. He told himself to not look back, don't even peek, but he did and felt that he betrayed himself.
From the inside of their home, she watched him. She was bathed in the darkness, but he could see her blue eyes clearly like a lighthouse at sea, beckoning him to safe, dry land.
Click, "Don't you dare leave me. You're all I have left."
Emotionally spent crying for his mother, he tucked his head into her abdomen, rubbing his tear tracks on her white shirt. Scully stroked his hair with one hand and rubbed the arm that had snaked itself around her torso with the other.
"I'll be here for as long as you want me, Mulder," she responded, her voice even and calm. "You're all I need."
Back on the porch, he watched her watching him. He waited if she was going to beg him to not leave her, but he realized a long time ago that she would never do such a thing.
Scully turned around and went back into their room.
He dropped his overnight bag on the porch. He heard the thud in his ears but felt it in his heart. There it was – alive and thumping in his chest. Somewhere inside him, he still felt something. The emptiness could never be filled … but she was there. She always would be. And he wanted to still be all that she needed for as long as he lived.
Mulder went back inside their home and closed the door behind him.
Click, "Nine minutes, Scully. Do you remember the last time you were missing nine minutes?"
Nine minutes. Now, he can laugh at that. It seems trivial to what they have been missing so far.
She comes out from their bedroom in her fluffy white slippers and blue cotton robe. Her hair sticks out in odd angles and she is still yawning as she joins him at their dining table. She offers him a sleepy smile and he places a hand on her nape to pull her in for a kiss.
"Morning, Doc," he quips, motioning to her mug, "your coffee is ready."
"Hmm, morning," she hums as she sits down on her usual place. "It's my turn tomorrow, okay, Mulder?"
"Sure," he agrees, not really meaning it because he truly enjoys taking care of her. It's one of those rare routines of their life when she allows herself to sit back, relax, and let someone else worry about her. He feels honored that he's the one she has chosen.
He turns off their electric stove and grabs the plates to set the table. He places one in front of her, one on his side, and then another on the space in between them.
Scully stops drinking her coffee. She swallows hard and places the mug down in front of her, eyes frozen on the extra plate. Her face pales.
Mulder studies her for a minute. Then, his face breaks out into a slow, wide grin. "Nine," he whispers, and for the first time, he says it without hurt or regret. Instead, there's joy and wonder: "William turned nine yesterday."
Scully's eyes glazes over but the tears don't fall. His heart swells and he feels it beat like a bass drum against his chest.
Mulder takes her hand into his and they squeeze each other's fingers tight.
"It's about time, Scully," he tells her, hazel to blue, and she nods. He sits down and they eat in comfortable silence.
Mulder cradles in his hands the last photograph Scully took of William before the adoption. It's his favorite, because he can clearly see which features belong to either one of them.
His son sat upright on his high chair, goofily grinning at the camera. He has the same piercing blue eyes of his mother, his lips, a combination of their hair that ended up a cross between red and brown (very light reddish brown, maybe?), his cheeks, her skin. That smile was also his.
Carefully, Mulder unpins the old yearbook photo of Samantha from the back of his door. He tucks it under his arm and with a smile, replaces its original spot with William's. He pushes a pin on the top white edge of the photo, and then grabs another pin to secure its right bottom edge. Another to secure the left.
He studies his handiwork and counts the pins in his head: One, two, three.
Soon, he thinks, and hears Scully's footsteps in their living room. He goes out of his office to join her for dinner.
END