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

He pauses for a moment as an FBI warning comes up onscreen - don't steal this movie! - and looks down at her in surprise. Hearing it once in a night is a surprise; twice feels like its own kind of miracle.

But she's not crying, and if he doesn't make too big a deal about it, maybe she won't start again. At some point, she's going to give herself a headache.

He can't resist answering, though, rewarding her just as the Mystery Science Theater 3000 theme song starts playing. (Who, after all, would bother watching Manos without a few robots?) Mulder kisses her forehead. "I love you, too, Scully."

Don't get too used to it, Mulder. A lifetime of careful repression is not so easily undone-- just set aside in the heat of the moment. (She'll try. Because she loves him, and he should know it. Because William should know how much his parents love each other. Because she wants to be the sort of person to whom it comes easily.)

With a soft sigh she relaxes against him, and apart from the prolonged crying jag that's left her eyes faintly itchy, everything in the world is perfect.

"This is a really bad movie," she murmurs after a bit, quietly delighted.

Tonight's special. Nothing about it has to carry forward beyond this moment (though if it does, he certainly won't complain). Scully curled up beside him, murmuring that she loves him, the child she's carrying resting against his side - he couldn't ask for more.

"Terrible," he agrees. He's slumped down some, his feet on the coffee table, and onscreen, Torgo's theme music plays. "One of the worst I've ever seen, if you want to know."

There's probably some happy medium between never and twice in one night she can aim for. It's enough, usually, that he knows it-- and she usually doesn't doubt. On her own, though, it was hard to feel so certain. The idea of losing him forever-- without ever telling him, honestly, that he had her-- was too much.

"How many times did you watch Plan 9?"

Maybe they could get married. Maybe it'd be enough, to live like this-- to have him come home to her and William day after day, to give up mystery for stability. Right now-- drowsy and content, worn out with tears and overwhelmed with relief-- it seems possible. (She knows herself, though; she's too stubborn and curious not to want to keep her hand in.)

"Forty-two." These are the kinds of things worth keeping track of, naturally. Mulder glances over at her, his mouth tugging up at one corner. "But we can make it forty-three any time you want."

Said like a come-on, possibly because it is a come-on. This is so comfortable, so like before the abduction - only better, he thinks, because there's no real sense of secrecy tonight. She's here, she'll stay here, and anyone who's surprised by that can direct their commentary to the nearest hole in the ground. It's enough to make him want to say stay, move in - or I'll move in with you, or we'll find a new place -

It'll look different tomorrow, probably, but right now, he wants to believe.

That gets a thoughtful hum; it sounds nice, not because she wants to watch the movie, but because staying curled up here with her head on his shoulder is the closest she's felt to peaceful since before he left for Oregon. The world will continue to move around them, but they can stubbornly stay right here for a long while and refuse to be moved.

"No double feature tonight," she decides. One bad movie is bad enough. But in its way it's a counter come-on-- because after this she plans to let him take her to bed, and while it's probably not the best way to be subtle about William's parentage, she's determined to spend as many nights together as they can get away with, for the foreseeable future.

"But I could fall asleep watching it some other time," she teases.

"I bet," he agrees, his attention having shifted entirely away from comedy interstitials featuring the crew of the Satellite of Love. The movie's background noise, an excuse to hold Scully and mumble stupid conversations and maybe kiss her. "Let's hope William inherits your ability to fall asleep. It's going to be a rough time otherwise."

Will he even have to deal with that? Imagine Scully with an insomniac baby, woken repeatedly out of a dead sleep by cries of boredom - and Mulder living half an hour away, unaware that his late-night restlessness is playing havoc in a new generation. Moving closer wouldn't help. Moving in would blow their cover.

It's a strange feeling, to realize just how much distance comes with the title of Secret Father Of A Child.

"I think it was a defense mechanism. We moved around so much, and there were so many of us..." Three kids, then four, in little base housing; and she was always busy, a trait she's never been able to shake. Finding moments to rest in between activities, fights, trips-- it was a necessity. William, she hopes, will have a little more peace.

But Mulder isn't wrong; it'll be harder to deal with, on her own, if he's not a good sleeper. She doesn't really care-- no matter what, she'll love him, she'll manage-- but it's strange to imagine single motherhood in this latest set of changed circumstances. When he's close, but kept at arm's length.

"Tomorrow," she hazards, "you can come see the sonograms. If you want. I have them at home."

"Any port in a storm." That's the thing about sailors, they're supposed to be able to sleep anywhere - and Mr. Scully was a Navy man. Maybe Scully picked it up from him; maybe the baby will pick it up from her.

Maybe his absence at night, his inability to walk through her door and stay, won't make that big a difference.

"I'd like that." He's cautiously hopeful. All of those ultrasounds look the same, as far as he can tell - it's a scratchy shape in the darkness, vaguely baby-shaped - but maybe this one will be different. Knowing it's the first snapshot of someone who belongs to them, the only other person alive who shares any meaningful DNA with him...that seems like it'll matter. The longer he thinks about William, about what he could be to them both, the more consequential everything seems. "You can give me a baby anatomy lesson. The last time I saw one of those things, I wasn't sure which way was up."

It's hard to guess how they're going to make this work. She doesn't want him to be a stranger to their son, but she doesn't want to endanger them-- or the work-- or the boy. Maybe from time to time he can stay, at least. She's not sure she can bear the thought of being completely without him.

But there's time-- plenty of time- in the future for worrying, and they've got more than their share of challenges. She's got no interest in that right now: not when she has so many beautiful, wonderful things to share with him.

"The earlier ones can be hard to tell. Now-- he looks like a little person. Fingers and toes and everything," she says, unable to keep the joy out of her voice as she absently sets a hand on the swell of her belly. It's not as if she's lacked support, or worried about taking care of William on her own-- but it's different, to have Mulder back. No one else in the world could have his perspective.

"Oh, good. I was hoping for those," he jokes. None of those little black and white images are going to really capture him, the fact that he is a little person (or will be, anyway), but he's kind of fascinated by the idea. A hand raised, feet tucked together, a bulbous head - it's possible to imagine, especially since every sonogram he's ever seen has looked like the baby in Eraserhead to him. Generic, but with room for him to imagine Scully's little mouth, maybe his nose. Anything's possible right now.

And beyond this part, the visual, there's so much more to know. "What's it like? Having him in there?"

"Uncomfortable," she says immediately, but with a sort of beaming pride that takes any sting out of the answer. She reaches for his hand to drag it down with hers, so they can sit with hands clasped over the miracle they've made together.

"It's... strange. For the longest time it felt almost theoretical-- knowing he was there but being unable to feel it, or see much change. When he got big enough to move around..." She frowns faintly, looking for words; but there's just nothing that does it justice.

"At first it was-- startling. It's hard not to feel like there's something wrong when it's sudden, but. After a while-- he made me feel less alone."

He's not about to quibble over whether it ought to be comfortable to haul several extra pounds of baby around with her, let alone feel bad about it. Even if he was gone, something of him remained - delighting her on some occasions, probably driving her crazy on others. Exactly what Mulder would have done, more likely than not, if in a (very slightly) less intimate way.

William moves under their hands, shifting like he's trying to figure out how to get comfortable, and Mulder can't help but feel a swell of pride. The longer they're here, the more he sits with the idea of fatherhood, the more it feels like it could be a part of his life. For the first time since his return, he feels something like hope.

"Not so theoretical now," he murmurs, his gaze still on their hands. "And not so alone. What's his middle name?"

Even the discomfort is, in its odd way, a triumph. She remembers trying to swallow back bitter jealousy when Tara was pregnant and grousing about stretch marks-- knowing her sister-in-law was in the midst of something she couldn't have. The truth is she'd always wanted children in a vague, unhurried way-- until it stopped being an option. That had been the worst time to try and grieve possibility, when she should have been overjoyed for her brother. (And she was, truly. Scully has always been good at compartmentalizing. But, God, there had been some difficult nights.)

William shifts and settles, and she feels her eyes well up again-- happy tears she doesn't shed, just a product of the overwhelming sense of being home, here in Mulder's arms.

"I hadn't decided," she admits. "Couldn't exactly call him William William to honor both sides of his heritage."

"Oh, I don't know about that," he says lightly, fingertips tapping against what he's chosen to assume is William's head. "It seems to work for Billy Dee Williams."

William William Scully, though, might be a little much. William William Mulder Scully? It couldn't be on the birth certificate, he assumes, but it'll be there.

At this angle he can't see the way her face scrunches up, but surely he can guess. The dubious little hum certainly gives it away.

"But-- now that you're back..." she bites her lip, a smile in her voice. She's so grateful she could burst. "We can decide on something together."

He huffs out a little laugh. Okay, no William William. Her next suggestion, though - he likes that one. "I've never really thought about it. It didn't seem -"

Like something that would ever be relevant to their lives, after their first effort.

"Probable," he finishes. One more reason to wonder at the flesh beneath his hand, the fact that there's another life, another consciousness in there. "A girl would be easy, but a boy? Huh."

After the IVF failed, she'd had every reason to resign herself to never having this moment. She could have tried again, with a donor egg-- or adopted-- but after she'd asked him, while they were trying, it had been impossible not to get attached to the idea of a baby that was a little piece of each of them, something that was theirs and no one else's. He'd told her not to give up on miracles, but she'd never expected one, either.

At the time it hadn't felt possible to ask Mulder how he felt about it-- what he'd wanted from it. The way he's warming to the idea now makes her think, one way or another, they'd have figured it out.

"We have a little time to think on it." Not... that much, in the long run, but still. She's certainly ruminated on it-- trying to decide who else they might want to honor, coming up with nothing but restless uncertainty.

Secretly, he'd been glad she didn't keep trying. Scully would have been good to any child - if Emily hadn't been related to her at all, she still would have been a great mother to her - but but egg donors and adoption and all the other choices out there still came with the possibility of hurting her. Someone changes their mind and wants the kid back. The kid grows up and wants to find its "real" mom. And it's not like her - their - luck had been anything but bad so far. Seeing her devastated, over and over, in pursuit of a family to love would have killed him.

Maybe this is how it was supposed to be, in the end. Letting go of the possibility made it happen.

"If we can't come up with anything else, we'll call him William Bernard," he says, as though this is the obvious choice, some elephant in the room they've both simply been ignoring.

It had been a turning point, if nothing else. A closed path that made her stop and consider her choices, her next steps. A change in their relationship, if not their circumstances. Her inclination has always been to soldier on through everything- this had forced her to stop, to grieve and heal.

She's quiet a moment, trying to figure out where he's gone with that.

"Bernard?"

"King," he supplies, seeing the uncertainty in her. "One of the greatest basketball players of all time. The fact that they haven't retired the number 30 is a crying shame, Scully, I'm telling you."

"Mulder!"

The scolding is not particularly convincing because she's laughing, swatting lightly at his arm.

"I guess it's better than Melvin."

Exactly the response he'd been hoping for. Mulder grins, shifting a little so he can make a show of rubbing at his arm where she smacked him. "If we name the kid after Frohike, we'll never hear the end of it."

Scully is remorseless. He deserved it, obviously.

"We couldn't do that. And going for three middle names is too much." Worse than William William.

In a deathly serious voice, he intones, "William Ringo Melvin John Fitzgerald Mulder Scully."

Absolutely not, and they both know it. But it does bring up the problem of the fact that there isn't really anyone else in his life worth naming a kid after. At that point, they're back to what sounds good, and Mulder's not really sure. Something boring, he guesses - Frank or George or Bill or Tom, anything but Sue.

[ 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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I could swear I already tagged this oops

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