Chapter Text
When he called his mother, there was no intent to go see her, it hadn’t even occurred to him. His mother wasn’t exactly warm with him, but he just needed to call someone. Normally his someone was Scully, but now that was impossible.
His mother picked up on the third ring. “Hello?” She answered dryly.
“Hi Mom,” Mulder whispered.
“Fox?” There it was, his dreaded first name. Her tone suddenly became confused. Before her stroke, Mulder called once a month, he called more often now, but truth be told he didn’t usually call more than once a week, and he already called her the day before. “Did something happen?” But he knew she was saying “Why are you calling me?” It wasn’t her fault, in a way, he had chosen to distance himself from her, but she hadn’t exactly given him a reason to stay close to her as well.
“You were 20 when I was born, weren’t you?” He sat back in his seat, watching the people enter and leave the hospital. His eyes went to an elderly couple, the man was around a foot taller than the woman. The woman used a cane and the man used a walker, he wondered if they had any children.
“Yes, I was,” she paused. It never occurred to him how young his mother was when he was born until now. When he was 20 the thought did run through his head that he would be unfit for parenthood, but that was it. And college-aged Fox Mulder was not afraid of parenthood like he was right now. His mother must’ve been terrified. “Why? Did something happen in one of your cases, again?” She must’ve been thinking about John Lee Roche, Mulder realized. It hadn’t been long at all since that happened.
How could he be a father with men like that out in the world?
“No,” Mulder replied, shaking his head at the same time. It would’ve been easier if something did, then he could talk to Scully. But in a cruel twist of fate, she was the one person he couldn’t be in the presence of. “No, nothing happened. Why don’t I come up and see you?” he suggested, without even thinking. The words almost fell out of his mouth; the dam that he constructed over years and years suddenly burst.
“Fox, are you sure?”
“Yeah, I am.” He was surprised by how sure he sounded. A year ago he would’ve been nervous at the idea of spending more than a few hours with his mother, but he needed to be home, it was as if he was being called there. For once, the homing device in his heart wasn’t calling him to Scully. It was highly unlikely that Mulder would get the typical warm mother welcome, but he needed to see her anyway. His mother usually never asked much about his life anyway, at her home, he would be able to divulge whatever information he saw fit at his own pace.
“Okay, drive safe Fox, but this is very short notice.” For a long time, he resented his mother for her coldness, this time, he just felt pity. Still, the siren call driving him towards her was still echoing out, and a little coldness wasn’t going to stop him now.
“I know, Mom, I just need to see you. Talk to you in person.”
He expected her to hang up, but after a moment of silence, she spoke again. “I’ll see you soon, Fox. I’m currently at the house in Connecticut, it’s not as far of a drive from your apartment.” It was around 4 hours shorter.
“I’ll call when I get on the road, Mom.”
This time, her mother did hang up, but he noticed the shift in her. It hadn’t been so long since her stroke, was she feeling all right? Mulder started his car, and put his phone to his ear, this time calling Skinner’s office.
“Assistant Director Skinner’s office, how may I help you?” Skinner’s assistant answered.
“This is Agent Mulder,” he announced, pulling onto the road. “I’m calling because I’m taking vacation time, effective immediately, and until the end of the week.”
“Let me direct you to Director Skinner,” she said seriously. “One moment,” and a few seconds later Mulder heard a click on the phone and Skinner’s voice came through the phone.
“Are you finally taking a vacation, Mulder?”
“Just a few days off,” he requested.
“Hell, take a full week. Don’t even think about coming to work, Mulder. You need a vacation before my superiors take you off field agent duty.” Ever since his vacation was cut short so he could see Scully, Skinner hadn’t been subtle about wanting him to take more days off.
And that was that. Mulder was on his way to his mother’s house, four hours away. Every so often his mind would drift off the drive and right back toward Scully.
They had been so careful, they used protection every time. He knew birth control wasn’t always effective but it somehow never occurred to him that he and Scully could be people on the receiving end of that talk. And if he took himself out of the picture, there was no way that Scully would work on the X-Files pregnant. She was only recently abducted and almost lobotomized, there was no way she could safely work without stepping back, and there was no way Mulder could pretend that a child with half of his DNA didn’t exist. If anyone found out that they were sleeping together and he got her pregnant? They were an HR nightmare.
Mulder didn’t even want to think about what this would do to her reputation, just because everyone thought they’d been sleeping together since 1993 didn’t mean that it wouldn’t hurt Scully if the truth did come out. Rumors were one thing, truth was another.
When he arrived at his mother’s house, he saw her standing in the doorway waiting for him. Her brows were furrowed and her arms crossed. Maybe he should’ve turned around before she saw him. Now there was no turning back. He pulled into the driveway and put the car into park.
As he got out of the car, he realized maybe he should’ve packed some clothes before he left, instead of just driving to his mother’s home. Worst case scenario he kept having to wash his clothes over this little break, he supposed.
“Hi, Mom,” he said as he approached her, planting a kiss on the top of her head. “How are you?”
She waved her hand in front of her face, dismissively. “My landscaper is on vacation so my grass is overgrown, and the weeds have come back. I think his son is graduating high school, but I don’t remember. My neighbor’s grandchildren have been visiting as well, driving around at night with the radio too loud. Oh, and Cheryl fell down the stairs and broke her hip. I saw her yesterday.”
Mulder stepped into his mother’s home, letting her shut the door behind them.
“Mom, is anyone listening right now?” He asked, with a hushed voice.
Her eyes widened for a moment, and she shook her head. For years, his mother tried to pretend that everything was normal, no alien conspiracies and cabals of scheming protestant men. After her stroke and miraculous recovery, she had become a little bit more forthcoming; except about Samantha, never about Samantha. Mulder suspected it was too much for her.
“I don’t know, Fox.” She walked further into her house, on a skinny red carpet leading to the living room. “I’ve been left alone for quite a while, but I’m not sure.”
“Mom, I need to know that I can trust you with what I’m about to say. You can’t tell anyone. Not even your friends.” Mulder followed her to the living room, where he could see a pitcher of filtered water on the coffee table, and an orange bottle of pills stood off to the side.
His mother’s face went solemn, looking at him with serious eyes. “What is it?”
Mulder sunk into one of his mother’s armchairs, the cushion was weak, so his kneecaps were around the height of the top of his stomach. His breath shook as he prepared to tell his mother the reason for his visit. Maybe in another life, he would’ve felt like a teenager again, but he never had that relationship with her before.
“Scully’s pregnant,” he said, simply.
“And you’re the father.” There was no question in her tone, she knew immediately that it was fact. His mother sat down on the sofa adjacent to him.
“I always knew there was something going on between you two, ever since she showed up to your father’s funeral I was certain of it.” He knew that his mother wasn’t entirely fond of Scully, due to the incident with the clone Samantha. Instead of blaming him for losing Samantha’s clone, she blamed Scully.
“We haven’t been together very long, Mom. I,” he paused. “I’m not sure I can do it. Be a father.” His stomach churned at the admission. What if he fucked it up? What if he irreparably hurt his child and Scully? What if everything in his life came crashing down? “And we can’t be a family and still work on the X-Files together.” The words left his mouth before he could even think about what he said.
“Fox, you and I both know you don’t have to have a family in order to be a father.”
His own family was proof enough of that, even before Samantha was taken, Mulder doubted they were ever a family in the first place. His father was always gone, leaving his mother behind to take care of two rambunctious kids when she was only in her 20s herself.
“Is that what you want?” His mother asked. “Do you want a family, Fox?”
Well yes, he did, but could he actually have one?
“It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Do you love your partner?” His mother had never probed his life before, never asked for every explicit detail. One of the reasons he came to her home was because he thought she was the person who would ask the least questions.
Mulder opened his mouth to speak, but found the words dying in his throat. He wanted to deny it, deny how strong his feelings were for her, after all, they had only been together for a couple of weeks, wasn’t it too soon for him to know?
But he did, and he was certain of it now.
“Of course I do,” he eventually said, looking at his hands. It was the only thing he was truly sure about. As much as he was sure that he had been falling in love with her ever since she stepped foot into the basement. Maybe even before he met her, maybe he started falling when he picked up her senior thesis and found that when she was a brave 22-year-old she chose to rewrite Einstein.
“Then it’s simple.”
“The life Scully and I lead,” he paused, all the times he had nearly lost Scully came flooding back. Her abduction, when she got hurt on the job, and her frequent kidnappings. Mulder sighed and continued. “It’s dangerous, love isn’t always enough.”
“Fox, I have watched you throw your entire life into your work, even before the X-Files, what do you expect will happen next? Is your end goal to work until you die? I know that’s not the life you always wanted.”
Somehow, his mother being the one to say that stung. After Samantha’s abduction, it was like she didn’t know him at all. How did she know what he wanted out of life? Half the time she wasn’t even there. Locked inside her own world, drinking in the day and spending hours at the country club, just trying to forget about what happened in her own life.
“I have to work on the X-Files, Mom,” he insisted. “I help people, we help people.”
“But how has your crusade helped you? All I see is it making you miserable.”
His mother was not the first person to tell him that, and he suspected it wouldn’t be the last. Before he could protest, his mother continued on, emotion peppering her words.
“What happens after you find your sister?”
Mulder paled, and his heart hammered in her chest, the wound even rawer than usual. The Roche incident only being a few weeks ago. And for his mother to mention his sister like that? She must’ve truly found it necessary to mention.
“If you find your sister’s body, you may have closure, but what comes next? You’ll be alone, and what will you do then? I will never get over the loss of my baby. When I look back on my life, I’m not proud. I couldn’t take care of you, and I don’t want you to feel the same way. Learn from my mistakes and find something more out of life than loss.” By the end of her speech, his mother was crying. Mulder sat on the sofa beside her, hugging her tightly and trying to soothe her.
“I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t come here to upset you.” Unease settled throughout Mulder’s body. At the fact that he made his mother cry, and at the idea that she might’ve been right. But the X-Files were important, the only department in the FBI that was able to handle unexplained cases, and the only one looking into the wide-reaching cover-up about the truth of aliens. The only ones who could do it were him and Scully. Or at least they were the only ones willing to do it. Quitting the X-Files was exactly what that cigarette-smoking son of a bitch wanted him to do.
Mulder stilled for a moment, was she telling him to quit though?
His mother raised her hands.
“I know you didn’t.” She sank back and Mulder’s arms resumed their place at the sides of his body. “And I know you don’t actually value my opinion much—” If only she knew how wrong she was. “—but I think you will make an excellent father.”
When the dust settled, Mulder knew that by the end of this, he would be a father. He just knew.
As Mulder sat on the guest bed in his mother’s house, his mind drifted back to Scully. As much as he said he needed time to think, it was more time to process. There was no way he could ever leave Scully and their baby by themselves, or not acknowledge the life he helped create. That just wasn’t in his nature, he couldn’t do it. Even though the future was going in the opposite direction of what he expected, maybe it would be all right. If he managed to convince Scully he wasn’t a total deadbeat.
The next day, his mother did something to surprise him. When he woke up and went into his mother’s kitchen, things were displayed for him on the table. A photo album, and a large, pale brown shoe box. He grabbed the lid of the shoebox and shimmied it off the body. There it was, an old stuffed doll. A creepy little thing that belonged to him and Samantha when they were kids. Still, Samantha loved it, carried it around everywhere until she was around five and a half. When asked about her sudden lack of interest in the doll, she said, “I’m a big girl now, I don’t need her anymore.”
“You should give that to your partner,” his mom said from behind him, causing him to nearly jump out of his skin. “I still have some of Samantha’s baby clothes, maybe your child should have them too.”
“We don’t even know if the baby will be a boy or a girl,” Mulder replied, turning around and hugging his mom in greeting. even though Scully wasn't there, it felt natural to refer to them as we, after all, he had been doing that for four years already.
“Someone else should use them,” she added softly.
Part of him was still uncomfortable with the plea. Mulder was haunted enough by the loss of his sister, he didn’t need his child to be haunted as well. But he couldn’t just leave his mom hanging, she had been through enough recently.
“I’ll ask Scully about it, after we work things out,” he added, trying to placate her.
“Okay.”
He still didn’t feel right returning to Scully, his emotional state was still too volatile. Even though he knew he wanted to raise the baby with her, and to love that baby, and to love her, his mind still raced at the thought. And when he thought about it too hard he lost his ability to breathe. He took several more days off work, and overnight decided he would remain at his mother’s house until he could face Scully without crying like a baby. And what if he said the wrong thing and Scully decided she no longer wanted him around at all? No, he needed to be perfect for her, that would save their family before it even began.
His mother moved to the table and opened the photo album. The first photo on the page was him and his mother, with a newly born Samantha on her chest. He almost didn’t recognize himself, Mulder didn’t have a lot of pictures of himself as a child, and for a long time, he didn’t want them either. His childhood self looked so enchanted with the newborn, staring at her like she was the most important thing in the world. Samantha had a pink hat on, and her eyes were closed. Only a few hours old and she was tired.
Samantha was a sweet baby, when Mulder looked back on it he realized how truly sweet she was. At the time he thought she was loud and smelly, even though he loved her, sometimes he forgot when she cried in the room next to him when his four-year-old self was trying to sleep. Mulder snickered for a moment, thinking about having a son wearing some of Samantha’s old clothes. Clothes didn’t have a gender, he believed that, but the idea of his son in outdated 1960s baby clothes did make him smile.
When he finally returned home with a clear head Mulder knew he needed to see Scully as soon as he could. But he knew he couldn’t just show up out of nowhere after not speaking for a few days. That hadn’t happened in a long time, even when they weren’t partners anymore, they still found ways to communicate. They almost never went dark on each other like that. And Scully usually found her way into being involved in his solo cases, so they had an excuse to speak to each other that wasn’t through code or covert locations. If it was him who was the recipient of his treatment he would’ve been furious. Mad didn’t begin the cover it, and because Scully was pregnant, it would be even worse.
That was how he found himself at a florist shop. The woman at the counter was around 60 and wore red glasses that hung around her neck by a chain. She hadn’t stopped staring at him since he entered the shop. Maybe she thought he was going to steal. Mulder wandered around the store for a few minutes, looking at different premade bouquets. Almost all of them were roses, and he knew that wasn’t what he had in mind. They just weren’t right, he couldn’t explain it.
Eventually, the woman stalked angrily toward him, almost as if he was prey to be caught. Maybe he was, since he was a paying customer.
“Wife?” She said, without preamble, her voice was slightly gruff as if she used to smoke, but not anymore.
“What?” Mulder asked in shock.
“Who is this for? Mother, sister, wife?” She was even shorter than Scully, but her personality was just as strong. “I’m guessing wife, considering how long you’ve been standing around looking lost.”
“Girlfriend,” Mulder admitted, softly. It felt wrong to say it out loud since their relationship was so much deeper than just boyfriend and girlfriend, they were partners. But he didn’t think the woman helping him find flowers was the person he needed to explain that to.
The woman from the counter nodded, humming like she always knew. “I take it you screwed up?”
“You could say that.”
“I have just the flower for you,” she said, walking to the front of the store, where a bouquet of little white flowers laid wrapped behind a refrigerator shelf. “Lily of the Valley is best for apologies. I prefer saving roses for happier times, makes them more of a romantic flower that way.” Mulder prepared to accept the flowers as she walked back toward him, but she suddenly stopped. “What did you do?”
Mulder’s mouth opened to answer, but a flood of embarrassment filled him from head to toe.
“She’s pregnant—”
The woman’s face soured. “You should’ve said so already, Lily of the Valley is poisonous, it’s not advised to be around pregnant women.” She turned around, practically marching away into the back room. “I’ll make you a bouquet.”
“You don’t have to,” he protested, but there was no stopping this woman. Mulder had no choice but to follow her towards the counter, she closed the door behind her so he couldn’t go into the back room so he stood awkwardly by the counter. His fingers trailed along the edge of the glass counter, tapping on it when she didn’t immediately return. Thankfully the shop was empty, or else he would’ve felt bad, holding up the store like that.
Finally, after what felt like forever, the woman came out, with red and pink carnations, wrapped in pale yellow paper.
“Red for love and pink for gratitude.” She frowned at the bouquet for a moment and reached for a bouquet that had already been prepared by the cash register. The woman picked up all of the little white flowers out of the bouquet and set them in between the gaps in the flowers. “And baby’s breath,” she added, not elaborating on what they meant. He would have to search it up on his own time. After being handed the bouquet and paying, he thanked her on the way out.
“Just buy a bouquet from me when the baby is born.”
After making up in the usual way couples did after a fight, the pair laid in bed together, their naked limbs intertwined. Scully’s head was tucked under his chin, and curled into his side. Mulder wanted to cry with how much he adored the intimacy between them, or maybe sex made him weepy.
“Do you have any names?” Scully whispered, conspiratorially.
Mulder pecked the top of her head. “If it’s a boy, Luke,” he said gently.
“Luke’s a good name,” she agreed.
“And if it’s a girl, Leia.”
Scully scoffed, but Mulder could’ve sworn she was smiling. “Oh, so that’s where you got that from.” She pulled away from him for a moment, reaching for her glasses, which were usually stored in her nightstand drawer. At the sound of a shunk, Scully turned back around, adorned with those circular frames that drove him crazy.
“Or maybe,” he said, sitting up and leaning against the wooden headboard. “For a boy.” He grinned at her. “Jean-Luc, is that better?”
“Mulder—“
Mulder leaned forward and cut her off with a kiss. “James, Geordi, Harry, Spock—” Scully snorted, and he reached for her, pulling her close, where she belonged. “Beverly,” he kissed her again, and this time he could even feel the grin on her face. Maybe it was because he stroked her ego with the red-headed doctor mention. “Christine.” Another kiss, this time to her right cheek. “Deanna.” A kiss on her left cheek. She pushed him onto the bed, a playful smirk on her face. Oh, he missed her so much.
“Okay, Trekkie that’s enough out of you.” Her forefinger and thumb went to her chin. “Though, I like William.”