Chapter Text
In an ideal world, Fox Mulder would have been rewriting his European socialism paper like the promising, diligent student he was. As a matter of fact, if he lived in an ideal world he wouldn’t even be retaking the stupid essay. But, unfortunately for him, real life turned out to be… Well, kind of a mess.
Hence why the paper had been left amid the rest of his unfinished reassignments and he was sprawled out on his bed in only a pair of boxer shorts, fighting against the oppressive heat of the dying September summer to fall asleep. He laid on his back, limbs sprawled carelessly across the mattress, his mouth gaping open wide and emitting low snores occasionally. Yet when an overwhelming surge of heat washed over him and he found himself doused in another sheen of sweat he would toss, turn and roll over to no end, as though he was never truly asleep in the first place.
The sound of the moving van crunching along the gravel of next door’s driveway made his ears prick a little, but it wasn’t enough to raise him from his half-slumber. Not physically, at least. Somewhere in the depths of his half-conscious state of mind he vaguely remembered that his new neighbours were moving in that day. A tiny fragment of his stream of consciousness wondered what they looked like – was it a family unit? A couple?
It was at that point he decided the thought was too exhausting and resolved to think about it later. His face relaxed again, and he felt his body grow heavy. It was like he was sinking into his bed, beyond the sheets, beyond the mattress, down, down, down into a warm abyss…
“Missy, stop it!”
His eyelids twitched. Once again he had been dragged away from sleep (or the closest he could get, at least) by the new neighbours. But now he knew they had a daughter. Two daughters, if it was Missy giggling along to what the first girl had said. The urge to roll out of bed and shut the window nagged at him like a fly hovering around his ear, but he ignored it. His arms were too heavy, his legs weighed down to the bed. It was simply not worth the effort.
That being said, no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t go back to sleep. Instead he focused on the nasally quality of the first daughter’s voice – it was more of an undertone than anything, nothing unpleasant. In fact, her voice was light and perhaps even kind, if that was possible. It was a voice of innocence. Perhaps if he had been fully awake he might have smiled at the sound, but he really wasn’t. With one sluggish movement he wiped the drool from his mouth and dropped his arm back to its original place.
Footsteps stomped on the gravel next door. The sound of a car door slamming shut made Mulder’s eye twitch. From somewhere in his new neighbours’ garden the sound of obnoxious laughing reached his ears.
“Mom! Bill’s got my Walkman again!”
“You’re such a little snitch, Charlie.” Mulder presumed this was the boy – if you could call him a boy – who had been laughing. His voice was deep and harsh, a voice accustomed to shouting. Vaguely, Mulder recalled associating it with a spoilt brat. He seemed like the kind of kid who got everything he wanted until his siblings came along.
“Pack it in, you two.” And there was the mother, surely. What had been the start of an argument came to a halt and the two boys mumbled insincere apologies under their breaths. “Now come on, we’ve got to get everything inside. You can’t let your sisters do all the work, it’s unfair.” With that, the boys stopped quarrelling for good and seemed to do as they were told; Mulder didn’t hear another word from them after that. “Honey, could you take this box in for me please.”
“My pleasure.” And there was the dad. It really was the wholesome family unit. They’d fit in with the rest of the street – the smug housewives, the stupid breadwinning men of the house, the silly giggling high-school girls and thuggish sons. Yeah, they would fit right in around here. It was a community of fakers and liars, people too afraid to be themselves, to scared to reveal the tiniest shred of individuality. Conformity was a tough bitch to fight, but the whole damn road was obsessed with whose garden looked best and whose children were the loveliest and how often the grass was mowed. It was a pile of shit, in Mulder’s humble opinion. None of them cared about the important stuff.
A comma of sweat dribbled down his neck. Restless, he kicked his comforter away and sat up on the bed, grimacing as his body unstuck from the sheets. The cool relief he received from his chilled bedroom walls wasn’t enough to prevent a faint outline of his body on the bed; he curled his lip and shook his head as he stared down at it. After a couple of seconds which seemed to stretch on for years he stumbled to his feet and grabbed an old t-shirt from the pile of dirty washing in the corner. He hadn’t worn it in ages, and there was a ketchup stain down the front, but that wasn’t important. After all, he wasn’t going anywhere, and both his parents were at work. Pants were unnecessary; his legs were already sticky and damp without extra layers being added on top. When he ran a hand through his hair it all stuck up where he had left it. He grunted, his face contorted into a disgusted scowl, and rubbed his hands against the soft, lint-covered fabric of his shirt.
“I really need a shower,” he muttered to himself, rubbing his eyes. It wasn’t unusual for Mulder to speak to himself – it’s not like he had anybody else to talk to.
Despite making this promise to get up and wash, he blundered over to his desk and flopped down into his chair. The cold surface made him shiver. European socialism had been completely forgotten, naturally. But, against his better judgement, he decided to see what else he could discover about his new neighbours. Nosy? Yes. Pointless? Incredibly. People do stupid things when they’re bored, as he was all too aware. Mulder tilted his head to look up at the ceiling; a faint smile crossed his lips as he looked at all the indents and ugly gray smudges on the surface. Pencil javelin was a personal favorite of his – it was a good boredom-buster for about five minutes or so. His parents wouldn’t let him have a dart-board, so he had to make do; he had a sneaking suspicion that they’d banned them because they thought he would put pictures of them on it.
He peered out the window. If any members of the new family had looked up they might have laughed at him – his stuck-up hair and animated profile gave him the comic look of a cartoon character. They didn’t, however, giving him a perfect vantage point.
The mom of the house wasn’t quite what Mulder expected. She was short, with brown feathery hair and a warm smiling face. His eyebrows twitched upward as he watched her pick up a box labelled ‘CHINA’ in black marker pen and walk indoors. Truth be told, he hadn’t expected her to look so… Friendly? Welcoming? He couldn’t place his finger on the right word. But she seemed different somehow – at least, in comparison to the other housewives of the street. There was something homely about her. She was like a real mother - almost like her children were more than just trophies.
Even if the rest of the new family on the block fitted the mold of the neighbourhood, at least the mom wasn’t so bad. That was better than nothing.
With little else to do Fox got to his feet and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He mulled over the new family as he headed for the shower; though he didn’t want to get his hopes up, he entertained the idea that perhaps they wouldn’t be so bad after all.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“Are you sure you want me to go, Mom?” Dana picked at the remaining vegetables on her plate under the watchful eyes of both parents. She didn’t look up as she added, “I mean, if Melissa’s doing the dishes tonight and Bill’s dropping into the house on the right, why can’t Charlie stop by the house on the left? He isn’t doing anything.”
Charlie opened his mouth in protestation, revealing an unappealing blend of chicken and veggies. Melissa and Dana made similar noises of disgust; their mom swatted at him with a napkin.
“Well, Starbuck, what would you be doing?” Her dad’s voice was light and teasing. His eyes twinkled as he smiled at her – it was a knowing smile, one that gave her the sinking suspicion that she had already lost the argument.
“Uhhh…” By the time she had thought of an excuse she knew that her parents weren’t going to pay it any mind. “Well, I’ve still got to unpack some of my things, so, um…”
“Honey, you really don’t have to go if you want to,” her mom said. Dana could already hear the build-up to the ‘but’ in Maggie’s voice and felt herself internally deflating. “But Charlie’s room needs a lot more work than yours. In fact, when I walked past your bedroom it looked fine, sweetheart. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Her parents didn’t need to say ‘that’s final’. The subtext was already there. Charlie grinned smugly from across the dinner table and winked at her in the irritating manner that siblings do when they get their own way. She kicked him under the table and smiled as a grunt escaped his lips. He didn’t snitch, though – he rarely ever snitched on her.
“I’ll head over there now.” Her chair scraped against the floor as she got to her feet. She gathered her plate, and then Bill’s after he shoved his over to her. “Thank you for the dinner, mom. It was delicious.”
She dumped the plates and cutlery into the sink and ran up to her room. It wasn’t particularly impressive – Melissa had called dibs on the biggest, of course - but Dana had narrowly escaped being assigned the box room. Still, between the powder-blue walls to the gray carpet, it wasn’t very inviting or grown-up. Her parents had promised her that it would be redecorated, but that would take months. Not the kind of room a seventeen-year-old girl should have, she thought as she glanced around. Still, she would get used to it. She always did.
Dana knelt down and started to rummage through a box labelled ‘CLOTHES’ at the end of her bed. As her parents frequently told her, first impressions were everything, and she was already at a disadvantage in that respect. She currently donned her oldest pair of jeans, faded and patched at the knees, and a ratty yellow t-shirt with a peeling picture of Yogi Bear on it. She couldn’t remember how long she’d had the shirt, but she was pretty young when her Aunt Jean bought it for her. It was one of those things that she just couldn’t bring herself to throw away, no matter how hard she tried.
After she had shrugged off her moving-in clothes and replaced them with a plain t-shirt and cropped jeans, Dana quickly worked on combing through her hair with her fingers. The heat had frizzed her hair; she didn’t trust herself to use a brush in case it turned it into an embarrassing puff of red. That was a sure fire way to make the neighbors stay far away from her family.
“I won’t be long,” she called down the hall as she tugged her shoes on.
“Alright, sweetie. Have fun!”
“I won’t,” Dana said under her breath as she closed the front door behind her. Naturally, no one heard what she said, but the act of saying such a thing made her heart thump in her chest.
She took her time walking down the path from her house to the street, thinking of what she was supposed to say. First impressions count, first impressions count, first impressions count… But why did it matter? All their old neighbors had been the same: friendly, nosy, just a little patronizing – especially to Dana and Charlie. And being nice and kissing up to people never amounted to anything, because her family always moved away before they could get invited to the street barbecues and garden parties. None of that would change, even now. It was your average idyllic suburban street, full of snobs and gossips.
Still, it was a pretty street. The sunset cast a silhouette of houses on her eyes whilst a blend of pink and orange painted the sky. It was beautiful. There was a chirping of crickets in the air, accompanied by the low hum of television in houses. The sound escaped from open windows that were supposed to clear the heat from the homes and failed. It was still warm, but a gentle breeze would pass occasionally and blow Dana’s heat-frazzled hair away from her face. There was an element of tranquillity about it that seeped into the image of the sunset beyond the houses. For the first time since arriving at the house, she smiled.
As she approached the house on the left, Dana was sure she could hear music. In fact, she was certain she could. It was coming from the house. That’s great, Dana thought. She smirked. If they’re listening to music they might not hear me knock the door, and if they don’t hear me they won’t answer, and if they don’t answer I won’t have to talk to them!
She walked up the steps to the door and reached up for the knocker. The song from inside was familiar; she recognized it as ‘Come and Get Your Love’, but she could not remember for the life of her who had sung it. It was one of her mom’s favorites – she associated it with the home they lived in when she was only eight years old. Her, Missy and her mother used to dance around the living room as they did the chores to that song. She wondered if her mom still had the record packed away somewhere, and if she’d brought it with her.
Stop holding off. You’ve got to knock the door eventually.
With a deep breath and one swift movement, she rapped the knocker and waited for a response… Or even better, no response at all. While she stood there she fussed with her hair and attempted to tame down the frizz; it wasn’t as naturally curly as her sister’s, but it was wavy, and when the heat got to it, it went wild.
The door opened. Dana’s eyes widened just the slightest and she struggled to keep her jaw from hitting the floor.
“Oh.”
In front of her stood a tall, almost gangly boy whose face reflected the same shock and embarrassment she felt and tried so hard to cover up. She kept her eyes fixed on his face – a poor attempt to ignore his naked torso and the towel which hung loose around his hips. It dipped dangerously low. She blinked, and with an unconscious effort tilted her head upwards so she couldn’t look down.
He had a funny sort of face: serious watchful eyes, a large nose, and a very full, very pink bottom lip that looked as though it was constantly fixed into a gentle pout. He looked… Soft.
She couldn’t believe she had just thought that.
“Uhm, I’m sorry.” The words tumbled out of his mouth, rushed and unsteady. He hid behind the door and covered himself up, looking at anything but her face. If the whole situation hadn’t been so weird, the way his eyes darted about would have probably been funny. Dana stood at the doorstep still, her hands wringing together behind her back, dumbstruck. She’d never seen a boy without a shirt on before, apart from her brothers – who definitely did not count. This was a boy – a real boy – a complete stranger, standing in front of her. Shirtless. But he was also incredibly cute, in a ‘tall, dark and handsome nerd’ kind of way. “I, uh… Though you were my mom.”
What? Ew!
Before she could speak he had shut the door in her face. Practically slammed it, in fact.
Dana turned on her heel and walked back to her house as briskly as she possibly could without making it obvious she was running away. Running away from perhaps the most strange and embarrassing incident of her entire life. She covered her face with her hands and groaned quietly, feeling heat creeping up her neck and flushing her cheeks pink.
God damn it.