what_wings_dare | 🅧 Please explain to me the scientific nature of 'the whammy'

"I'm happy for you." It's even true. He wants to start with the truth, the vulnerable reality that etches tiny drooping edges into his face. Someone else might not see the sadness with which he says it, but Scully knows him too well. "I know how much you wanted this."

She'll have a little Doggett to love and raise, and he'll be a doting uncle on the sidelines. It's more than he can stand to think about, but asking questions that hurt him is an especial talent of his. "Have you thought about marriage? Or are you going to do things the modern way?"

She believes him, that he's happy for her; but that's not what she's really asking, and she thinks he ought to know that.

It's not until he asks about marriage that it occurs to her-- possibly-- that they've been having two separate conversations.

(It wouldn't be completely shocking if he was asking to marry her on the spot. But that's not the way he's asking-- he's asking what she thought before he came back, when it's self evident to her that she'd been thinking of herself as a widow, in every way that matters.)

"Are... you thinking about marriage?"

This is not the gentlest way she could respond, but honestly she's too bemused to know what to say.

It's rubbing salt in the wound, asking that right now.

Mulder's chewing on a particularly stringy piece of beef, and for a brief, idiotic moment, he wonders if there are still holes in his molars. He's going to have to hit the dentist at some point, it's been more than six months, and maybe their X-rays could pick up the spots where he was drilled. It'd be nice to have some proof left from his ordeal, something that shows he didn't spend nearly a year hallucinating the most physically painful experiences he's ever survived. And then Scully answers his question with a question, and his chest aches with it, pulled back from mental tangents to the reality of her situation.

"Who would I marry?" he asks, unable to keep a morose edge out of his words.

There's a not-insignificant bit of relief at the fact that she isn't currently being subjected to the world's worst proposal. It's followed up with annoyance, and a little bit of guilt; it's unfair to expect him to take hints, when she isn't pushing. Mulder has plenty of reason to think it's impossible for her to be pregnant.

She shuts her eyes and lifts her chin, taking a calming breath, hand over her belly in an unconsciously protective way.

"Mulder, whose baby do you think I'm having?"

She had a whole speech half on the tip of her tongue-- I don't want you to feel pressured, I know this isn't what you agreed to, but you're the one who told me not to give up on miracles. I wanted to believe you'd be happy about it for yourself.

But all of that follows on the assumption that he realizes he's the father.

He suspects he's wounded her, a guess from the way she closes her eyes. She's trying not to respond with whatever instinctive response came to her first, trying to find the right words for whatever's waiting to be said.

And of everything she could say, he doesn't expect the question he gets. Mulder goes very still, staring at her while an ad for Ponderosa Steakhouse plays in the background. The implication is obvious, but the timing - well, it barely works, if it works at all.

But it could be. It'd be a miracle, but maybe -

"Whose baby are you having, Scully?" he asks gruffly, his throat already going tight. He needs to hear it from her. He needs to know, in no uncertain terms.

"I don't understand how." It's barely more than a whisper-- like if she's too loud she's going to wake up and none of it will be true; Mulder will still be gone, and she'll be alone, without even a piece of him to hang onto.

"That's why I was sick-- before you left. You were already-- gone." Taken. Lost. "By the time I got the results."

By now, tears are streaming down her face. It's not worth trying to hold it back; she sniffles, lifts the back of her hand to scrub at her face.

"How could there be anyone else?" Even the idea of it is too terrible to consider.

Mulder sets his food down on the coffee table, chopsticks sticking straight up inside a noodle nest. There's no thought to it, all his attention on reaching to cup her cheeks in his hands, trying to swipe away the tears. What kind of a jerk makes a pregnant woman weep? The kind who impregnated her, apparently.

"A year's a long time," he murmurs, a lump in his throat. For the first time, he really lets his gaze settle on her stomach, a hand twitching like he can't decide whether he has any right to touch. "And you're your own woman, Scully, I couldn't ask you to wait for me."

Except that he had, somehow. The child growing inside her ended up being the messenger. Part of me is still here. No matter what else happens, I'll never truly leave you. She'd waited, wanting to believe, and she's here now - and he is a colossal jackass.

As much as she appreciates his efforts, it'll take a while to stem this flood of tears; it's a broken dam, the sweep of everything she's held back. She's always kept her feelings on a tight leash, but she's lost hold of it now.

"I missed you so much," she gasps, the words soaked with raw grief. Blindly she reaches for his arm, fingers closing around his wrist to drag his hand down to her belly.

"I thought he was all I'd ever have of you."

"He," Mulder repeats, looking down at his hand with a sickening sense of awe. Something under her skin moves, maybe a kick or maybe just the shift of a small body in an increasingly smaller space. Maybe it shifted, and that was its shoulder. Maybe its hand, pressing out through layers of flesh to try and match his father's. "He's a - he's a he?"

He's real, is what he means. He's a real child in there, who really belongs to a sobbing woman and her wet-eyed, staring lover, a child born of miracles. He's the closest Mulder's ever gotten to believing in God - this very moment, feeling the vague outline of baby underneath what he assumes is the latest in stylish maternity wear. I did this. I made this happen. I'm sorry your mother's crying so hard - I didn't mean to do that. You can feel the vibrations, can't you? Has she cried like this the whole time? Promise me she hasn't cried like this the whole time.

Every moment, every milestone of this pregnancy is surreal-- a gift she was sure she'd never get, an experience she'd taught herself not to wait for. But this more than all others-- Mulder's broad hand on her, and the baby stirring within.

"Our son," she affirms. It's smaller and desperate than she wants it to sound, her fingers still wrapped around his arm like she's afraid he'll pull away.

Please want this as much as I do, she prays silently. As if she has the right to ask for more than the myriad gifts she's been given-- but she wants so badly for it to be true. When she'd asked him to help her have a baby, she hadn't asked him to be a father, not exactly; but she'd always hoped deep down--

Not even so deep down, really.

"Your son," she repeats, just a whisper. It's half a secret-- though she expects most people have guessed it, even if she won't say. But he deserves to hear it said aloud.

He couldn't pull away now. The creature inside her - your son, your son, your son - has a hold on him; it might not be physical, but it keeps his hand splayed flat on her, palm resting against the hard shape of torso or leg or head. He doesn't know what he's feeling, only that he's feeling it, and that's alive, and that it's his.

With effort, he looks up at her again, and he can't bring himself to do anything about the tears that have made paths down his cheeks. He's never been ashamed of crying in front of Scully, and he's not about to start now. "Who knows?"

Everyone knows about the baby, at this point; it's unavoidable. But the baby's origins, its unwitting father, is something else. Has she told people? How much of a secret is he?

Finally, the flood of tears is starting to dry; her face crumples uncertainly, a graceless map of too many emotions, too long spent trying to deny them. Things she couldn't have faced on her own, but had no one else to help her carry.

The baby stirs and shifts, indistinct but unquestionably present. Someday she'll tell him how she tried to keep him present-- playing old, saved voicemails so the baby could hear the echo of his father; telling stories late at night when she couldn't sleep. But for now this is enough. It's everything.

"I expect a lot have guessed. No one's dared to ask."

"Not even -" The end of the sentence could go any number of ways. She's not at the center of some kind of HR crisis, at least; it sounds like the Bureau couldn't care less, provided she doesn't make it a problem for them.

He tries again, pulling her closer in a one-armed hug. He's not letting go of the baby, or the beginnings of the baby; his hand's restless on her stomach, though, shifting between resting flat and his palm lifting unconsciously, until only his fingertips are touching her. Some instinctive part of him is ready to dribble. I'm going to buy you a basketball. And a ball and glove for catch. A football, a baseball bat, a tennis racket - we're going to try out everything, just to see what you like. I'm going to teach you to swim. We'll go running - "What does your mother think of all of this?"

Mrs. Scully must know; he remembers a look she gave him, years ago now, when Scully was comatose and the doctors didn't have much hope, even if Melissa swore up and down she could feel her soul in there. She's a smart woman, Scully's mother, and she saw it even then. When her daughter came home, partnerless and pregnant, she must have guessed how half of it happened.

Which makes her smarter than me. But it leaves him uncertain still, wondering whether he's going to be welcomed back with open arms or an accusatory glare. He couldn't blame anyone for the latter.

She falls against him heavily, with all the weight of her long waiting. There's something miserable about it, but in an oddly satisfying way. All these months she hasn't been able to grieve the way she needed to, because the only person who could have handled her in that state was the man she lost.

"I'm sure Skinner knows. And John must have guessed." Mulder, his territorial mistrust aside, knows how hard it is to keep secrets in their basement office.

She threads her hand into his to keep it close. Tomorrow she'll pull out the imaging and dig up a stethoscope to hear the tiny heartbeat; for now she just wants him close to her.

"My mom misses you. She knows-- I mean. I told her about the IVF. After, when it didn't work, and I think she knew..." she shakes her head a little. "When I told her I was pregnant-- I didn't have to say it."

She'd seen the understanding, the mingled joy and horror, on her mother's face.

Putting the memory aside, she presses her cheek against his arm.

"Since--" she pauses, starts over. "We haven't talked about it since the funeral. But I know she'll be so glad to see you."

"Skinner would," he agrees. He's known both of them too long not to be aware on some level. Hell, even Kersh has probably figured it out, if only because of Bureau gossip, and the same for the elusive John Doggett. (Agent Doggett is no longer a focus of speculation and resentment, now that he and Scully have absolutely, positively never fallen into bed together, but that just means speculation and resentment will have to wait until they've met.)

Maggie Scully, on the other hand, felt like a less predictable reaction. He always feels like the tagalong neighbor kid when he sees her; it's impossible not to default to calling her Mrs. Scully and hoping vaguely that he'll be invited to dinner rather than sent home. She's never been anything but kind to him, welcoming even when her own son would have rather seen him out of the picture, but that doesn't mean she'd appreciate his knocking Scully up and disappearing into the night.

But it soothes something in him, to know he's not persona non grata in the Scully family. (The part of the Scully family that matters to him, anyway. Who knows what Bill thinks, and more importantly, who cares? And it's not like he has more than a passing familiarity with Charlie Scully's existence.) He doesn't have anyone to offer this kid, only stories of people who died long before his conception. Scully's family will have to be everything to him - and it'll be easier, better, if they're still willing to be something to Mulder, too.

"Call her tomorrow," he says quietly, before he can change his mind. "I don't know how soon they're going to let me back at the files, even with an unbelievably good bill of health. So if you want to do...I don't know, baby stuff..."

Do they have to buy things for it? Does he have to sign paperwork? Under better circumstances, he would have had time to figure this out.

Neither Skinner nor Doggett need to listen to gossip; both of them have spent time enough with her. And John is working on the x- files, which is by nature working in Mulder's shadow. You learn something about a man that way. He's an investigator; and her desperation and her grief and the ever-more-obvious pregnancy are easy enough to piece together.

"We'll call together. I know you're eager to get back to work, but even with a clean bill of health, you'll need time to adjust." That's not much of an argument. With a slight frown, she amends it. "I need time. There's plenty to stay busy with here."

She lifts their joined hands slightly to pat her stomach. She's not above using this distraction to get her way.

She's not wrong, much as he hates to admit it. Nothing slows Mulder down, from forced vacations to minor illnesses to eight-month alien abductions - but a baby throws a wrench into all of this. He still isn't sure just where he fits into Scully's life now, what his role is from here. Is he allowed to be his son's doting father? Can they have the same casual-serious thing as before? How far can they take this before it means risking the ire of the FBI?

He's studying her hands, one twined up with his, the other directing his attention back to the star of this conversation. They suddenly have everything, and he still knows nothing. "What do we do now?"

"Right now? We decide if we want something else on TV, and I eat soup until he decides we're done with it, and we worry about everything else tomorrow." It goes without saying, as far as she's concerned, that she's not leaving. Finally-- for the first time since the hospital-- she's not worried about him turning her away.

"Mom will probably want to see us." Which won't be a bad thing, probably, but will be A Lot for everyone involved. Maybe Mulder will actually want to rest afterward.

She squeezes his hand.

"I was thinking of calling him William."

She looks up, trying to gauge his reaction to the name.

"Well," he says, a little weakly, "the good news is, we have plenty of soup."

The rest still feels like a mystery, a difficult one. They have two apartments, two last names, two separate lives - even if they're as twisted up together as their hands right now, there's still a certain degree of separation. And it's not solely on his end of things; Scully's the one who had the occasional habit of disappearing in the middle of the night, leaving him to wake up alone.

He wants answers, the same insistent way he always does, but Scully seems comfortable with the ambiguity at the moment. He's ready to press for more, right up until she changes the subject to one that catches him up short.

"After your father," he says after a moment, because after me sounds so irrepressibly sad. She'd expected to raise this child alone, hanging the only respectable moniker he has on it as a memorial.

There's a lot to untangle-- more than they can figure out tonight, or tomorrow. It's not quite right to say she isn't worried. Some of it hinges on whether they can get him reinstated, on whether he can work with Agent Doggett while she's on maternity leave, whether they can picture a life less on a knife's edge.

And Scully hates not having control-- but right now, she's resolved not to care about anything for at least the next twenty-four hours.

"After his father." she insists. And, yes, hers. And Mulder's, she supposes, but maybe it's better not to mention that. "You'd have hated if I went with Fox, I figured."

The thought of it gives her body more gravity, drawing him into a new orbit around her. Not only his son, but his son, named for him. He's too much an iconoclast to allow himself to put stock in the idea of having a Junior running around, but there's something about it that makes him feel like he's been sucker-punched. But in a good way? He's pretty sure it's in a good way, right about now.

"You're right," he murmurs, a smile spreading over his face. "But I wouldn't have hated it nearly as much as he would. We're not going to call him Bill, are we? We already have three between us."

"Definitely a William, not a Bill." Her brother and everyone else can assume it's family tradition if they want. It felt-- it still feels-- like the right way to honor everything that makes him up. If he'd hated it, she would have reconsidered-- but it would be difficult, at this point. She's gotten comfortable with it.

"I know this is-- well, there's no way you could have been ready for any of it. But maybe this least of all," she murmurs. "I wanted so badly to be able to tell you-- when you were gone. I never thought it would be-- well, like this."

He laughs a little, self-conscious. "You didn't think I'd be dumb enough to assume Agent Doggett knocked you up."

Not that there was a good way for any of this to go. Welcome back, I'm about to have your baby was destined to be a shock no matter how it was presented to him. Imagine if she'd stayed away, with some idea of waiting until he'd healed - he'd have been half out of his mind, demanding to see her. Instead, he simply got the wrong impression, stunningly so.

She squeezes his hand again-- much too hard, overcome as she is by a rush of affection so intense it needs an outlet. There's a silly little part of her still indignant over that assumption-- but it's outweighed by how glad she is to be able to be annoyed at him over something so meaningless, to have him here to roll her eyes out.

"I really didn't," she says fondly.

A moment like this - when she's exasperated, but fondly so - feels so much like before the abduction that he could nearly start crying again. He doesn't, instead pressing a kiss to the top of her head. And because he's terminally incapable of leaving things alone, he asks, "So. Are you thinking about marriage?"

[ n a m e ; ]	Dana Katherine Scully
[ c a n o n ; ]	The X-Files
[ g a m e ; ]	spicy times in noctiumrp

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