TITLE: The Way Things Are
AUTHOR: Sukie Tawdry
EMAIL: sukie_tawdry@hotmail.com
<mailto:sukie_tawdry@hotmail.com>
RATING: NC-17
SPOLIERS: Season 1
CATEGORY: Guess you could call it AU. Diverges
from canon some time during season 1.
KEYWORDS: Story, M/S (some elements of M/other)
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me.
Sniff
SUMMARY: One night and their whole lives
were changed
forever.
FEEDBACK: Good or not so good--go ahead. I can
take it. I'm a big girl.
ARCHIVE: Again, go ahead.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Thanks go to Sybils
for wonderful beta and support.
And a big thank you to Foxymulderluver
for giving
this story a home on her website:
<http://www.oocities.org/foxymulderluver>
Part 6 -
Armistice
With the
blessed end of the first trimester, the nausea had abated.
Scully gained
seven pounds in three weeks, making her doctor very
happy. The recuperative powers of the human
body amazed Scully.
Relationships
were a little harder to mend, but she and Mulder
did their best and settled into a pattern.
They studiously
ignored her pregnancy.
They continued
to work well together, maintaining an enviable
solve rate. He made the leaps and she proved
him right.
They achieved
an armistice in the painful war they'd fought.
Mulder
had been subdued, almost as if he was grieving. He no
longer showed up rumpled in the mornings. He
was neatly dressed
each day, but he looked as if he wasn't
sleeping well. His
face seemed thinner, the cheekbones and jaw
in sharper relief.
The phone calls
from assorted women had ceased, as far as she
could tell. No breathlessly generic 'Is Fox
there?' queries.
It had been a
long time since she'd overheard Mulder brushing
last
night's date off.
There was a
yearning quality to Mulder these days. He always
seemed to be on the verge of asking her
something. She would
catch him reaching out to touch her, only to
see him force
his hand back to his side. His eyes always
seemed to track
her movements.
She tried not
to read too much into Mulder's silent surveillance.
After all, he'd
always been a little territorial. So perhaps
now he carried her suitcase when they were traveling,
or dropped her off at the door instead of
letting her walk
through the parking lot. Well, nice guys did
that
kind of thing. And Mulder
had always been considerate.
And if he
called her more often in the evenings, well, friends
talked on the phone. She reminded herself that
it really didn't
mean anything. It was confusing, though,
this kindness without
commitment.
She made an appointment
to speak with Skinner. Mulder offered
to go with her, but she needed to do that
alone. No need to
engage Skinner's suspicions any more than she
had to. Mulder
would have fidgeted in his seat, giving off
"it's me" rays.
She marched up
to the fourth floor and announced herself to the
AD's
assistant. Straightening her suit, she prayed the changes
to her body weren't too obvious yet. The
skirt's waistband
was finally getting tight. Soon, she'd have
to start holding it
together with a safety pin. Thank goodness the
jacket to this
suit was long.
Skinner's admin
answered her phone, speaking in a low voice.
"The
assistant director will see you now," she announced.
"Agent
Scully."
Skinner looked up from the stack of paper on
his desk. His white shirt was perfectly
pressed, the creases
on the sleeves knife sharp.
"Thank you
for seeing me, sir," she said, entering the office and
moving to a chair opposite her boss's desk.
"What is
this about, Agent Scully?" Skinner asked, as he sat down
and gestured for her to do the same.
"Are you having a problem
with Agent Mulder?"
"No,
sir. This has
nothing to do with Agent Mulder. I do have
something that I need to tell you, though. I'm
pregnant."
She rather
enjoyed watching Skinner's face as she delivered her
news. In the second before his expression
returned to stern and
businesslike, she caught surprise and curiosity. And
he couldn't
legally ask her any of the questions that must
be rattling
around in his head. His eyes strayed briefly
to the chair Mulder
usually occupied before returning to her face.
Scully had
never trusted this man completely. He'd never given her
any reason to doubt him in the short time
he'd supervised the X-Files
team, but there had always been something
off kilter. There always
seemed to be the stink of cigarettes in the
office, and she knew the
AD didn't
smoke. She remembered the strange man who had hung
back in the shadows of the office amidst a
cloud of smoke, silently
observing. The same man had been present the
first time she met with
Chief
Blevins, upon her assignment to the X-Files. Though she'd
never heard him speak, the man had always
seemed ominous.
Skinner cleared
his throat and leveled a careful look at her.
"Have you
shared this news with Agent Mulder?"
Scully glanced
over at the sofa against the wall. The heavy glass
ashtray on the end table contained several
cigarette butts, a thin
twist of smoke still drifting up from one.
"Yes,
sir. Agent Mulder is aware of my condition."
"I
see," Skinner said, gruffly. "You'll inform me if your doctor
makes any changes in your work status."
"Certainly,
sir. I'll let you
get back to work," she said as
she left the office.
Standing in the
hall, she pondered AD Skinner's inscrutable
connection with the man responsible for the
cigarette butts.
Mulder
had talked about obstacles put in the path of his work.
Was this man
the source of those obstacles?
She returned to
the basement office to find Mulder standing at the
worktable she used as a desk. He held the black
and white
ultrasound photo she'd brought back from her
appointment the day
before. There were tears in his eyes and an
expression of such
longing on his face. She froze in the doorway,
unable to look away.
The ultrasound
appointment had been an awkward situation. Scully
told Mulder she
had to leave the office early, but with all
pregnancy-related subjects out of bounds, she hadn't told
him why.
So, her mother
had gone with her, watching with Scully as the
image of the baby appeared on the monitor. It
had been a
bittersweet experience, seeing her child for the
first time
and realizing how much she wanted to share
it with the child's
father.
She'd left the
picture in plain sight, not as a rebuke or
tease, but as an opportunity. Holding the
photo with a trembling
hand, he gasped as if someone had struck
him, seeming to crumble
internally. Something broke apart in her at the
sight of
Mulder obviously in pain.
She cleared her
throat, and Mulder hurriedly replaced the
picture on the desk. "I'm sorry.
I...uh...the picture was
out, and I thought it might be evidence
from the Bielman case."
She smiled at
his fib, crossing the room and picking up the
picture. "It's all right. You can look at
it," she said,
pointing. "You can see the head here and
the way the arm is
bent--see, she's sucking her thumb."
"She?"
"That's
what the technician thought. I don't know if I'd be
painting the nursery pink on that evidence
alone, but I am
starting to think of the baby as 'she'."
He looked at
her midsection, shaking his head. "Amazing."
"It is
pretty amazing. Seeing her appear on the monitor just
about blew me away. I guess I hadn't really
thought beyond
the initial shock of being pregnant. But
there is a baby here,"
she said, resting her hand on the small
mound of her belly.
"A
whole new little person."
She took his
hand in hers, gently placing it where his child
lay within her. He closed his eyes, gasping
slightly before
he drew his hand away.
"I can't.
I...I wish it wasn't like this. Scully, it isn't
safe for me to be involved."
"Is this
about your sister?"
Mulder
sighed. "At some point, everything comes back to
Samantha."
"Are you
afraid this baby will be abducted, too? Or is it
that you'll get distracted? That you'll stop
looking for
Samantha? What
exactly are you afraid of, Mulder? I don't
understand."
"There are
things I can't tell you. It's just too dangerous.
If I had any
sense at all, I'd ask Skinner to reassign you."
She stared at
him for a long time. "Well, I certainly appreciate
having decisions taken out of my hands, Mulder," she said
sarcastically. "Reassignment.
Is that what you want?"
"No! Not
at all, but it isn't about what I want. You'd be a lot
safer if you weren't connected to me in any
way. Both of you."
<><><><>
They were called
to consult on a case in
next few days. Too close to justify
overnight accommodations, they'd
made the hourlong
drive each day. The ghostly visions of Confederate
soldiers had turned out to be film school
students making a very low
budget horror film. She and Mulder drove back to DC after wrapping
up the case.
"It's
almost
She smiled in
the darkened car. For a man who routinely forgot to
eat when he was working, Mulder had been vigilant about mealtime on
this case. He obviously didn't want a repeat
of the
debacle. "Okay."
They stopped at
a Crackerbarrel in Dumphries.
Mulder seemed
to pick at his food, all the while
watching her carefully as
she ate her dinner. She could swear he
counted each forkful.
The line for
the register was long, so she wandered the gift
shop while he waited to pay their bill. She
looked at the
old-time dolls, china tea sets and hand-painted
jumpers,
shaking her head at the inflated prices.
A display of
baby paraphernalia caught her eye. She knew she
should stay away, but she found herself
holding a sweet, pale
yellow sweater, tenderly embroidered with
apples and pears.
"So
tiny," Mulder said. She hadn't heard him
approach, and
now he stood at her elbow.
"Yeah,"
she agreed. She moved to replace the sweater on the
display shelf, when Mulder
took it out of her hand. He moved
around another shopper, returning to the
cashier line.
"You don't
have to do that, Mulder," she said, catching up
to
him.
"I want
to. Please, let me do this one admittedly inadequate
little thing."
She nodded,
tears in her eyes as he took out his wallet and
paid for his purchase. How ridiculous, she
thought; it was
only a trinket from a gift shop chain. But
somehow it touched
her. Mulder
smiled, his fingers brushing hers as he handed her
the brown paper bag.
They rode the
rest of the way home in silence. She held the
brown bag over the rise in her belly, as if
to say, "Here baby,
your daddy bought you something. He just may
never be able to
let you love him."
He guided the
car to a stop in front of her apartment. He'd
insisted on picking her up each day for the
drive to
her arm.
"I'll call
you later," he said. "I mean, if that's all right."
Mulder's
face was tender in the muted light from a streetlamp.
She was seized
by a wave of attraction, shocked at the power of
it after all that had happened.
She loved this
man. What had begun as infatuation had deepened
and transmuted into something she could no
longer deny. It
wasn't sensible; it would only bring her pain.
Scully had repeated
the phrases over and over, a mantra of
caution and sensibility.
But in the end,
all the words in the world couldn't change one
unmistakable fact: she loved him.
Scully tried to
keep her eyes on the misty street beyond the
windshield, but her gaze strayed to the man next
to her.
Mulder's
eyes were trained on his hands, locked tightly
on the steering wheel as if he were afraid
it might fly away.
As if resisting
a powerful force, his gaze drifted around
the car before locking onto her face. There
was a hunger in
his expression, an ache so deep it took her
breath away.
The air between
then seemed magnetized. Mulder leaned closer, his
breath whispering against her face. She
remembered another night
when she'd turned her head to find Mulder this near. They'd
been propelled that night by lust and
intoxication. Tonight,
there was something much stronger at work.
His lips were
warm as they brushed against hers. Had they
been this soft that night? She tilted her
head slightly and
deepened the kiss. Her fingers rose to cradle
his cheek before
slipping into the silky hair at the back of his
head. He
pulled her into his arms, tenderness becoming
passion. Surely,
he hadn't kissed her like this months ago.
No one had ever
kissed her with this much emotion.
He pulled away,
gasping for air and visibly shaken.
She shook her
head, hoping to clear it. Would things ever be
easy between them? "I'd better
go," she murmured, reaching for
the door handle.
Mulder
touched her lips with his thumb. "I...uh...I'll call you
later," he said, his voice trembling a
bit.
"Good
night, Mulder."
She turned as
she reached the door of her building, dazed by
what had happened. She caught Mulder's eye as he watched her
from the car, his expression unreadable.
When was this fucking
rollercoaster going to stop? Her heart couldn't take
any more
sharp corners and sudden dips.
As she arrived
at her apartment door, she realized she'd left the
baby sweater in the car. Well, she -had-
been distracted. She'd
ask Mulder to
bring it to work when he called her later.
She unlocked
her apartment door, and pushed it open. Her
last conscious thought as hands grabbed her
and a strange
smelling cloth was pressed to her mouth, was of
the little
yellow sweater and the man who bought it.
<><><><>