Chapter Text
Mulder stretched awake, turning his face to the pillow, trying to chase a few more minutes of sleep. Scully had been up an hour ago, which meant he had an hour before she’d be up again. He supposed they should get used to it, sleeping in two hour increments, given what was coming in another two months. Scully, more pragmatic, had told him he could sleep on the couch or she could sleep on the couch if she woke him up too often during the night. “Hell no,” he’d said, emphatic. He’d begun to do that again, state things emphatically the way he used to. She transparently liked it. He added more. “We’re a team, you and me.” That earned him a kiss until he mumbled against her and intermissioned the kiss to fight a bad yawn. The yawn won, only briefly. “We can still be a practical team,” Scully said then, and he shook his head, nope, when she finally laid his head back down on the pillow. “Since when are we practical?” he asked her sincerely, and tucked her new, heavy body next to his own.
That had been weeks ago. He had adjusted quite well, his old insomniac habits giving him years of experience. He only grumbled when it served him well to echo her grumbles. “You try to get comfortable,” she’d say, moving around, “when you have a bladder the size of a teaspoon.” If he was annoyed, he’d commiserate with her. More often than not, though, he’d say something ridiculous, like, “Oh my God, Scully, that’s so hot, come here,” because then she would laugh or give him a shove or put a pillow over his face, but then return from the bathroom to curl up against him, resting her head and her belly like he was her pillow, and he’d try to recall something else in his life that made him feel more necessary than that.
Those were his favorite times, lately. The dark, in-between hours. It had been a long time since those hours contained peace. If Scully fell asleep quickly, her eyes closing almost before she laid her head down, sometimes he’d crawl down, lay his palm on her belly, whisper hello, kiddo, and hold long conversations with the tiny creature who had its own heartbeat, who kicked and fluttered sometimes at the sound of his voice. One night, last week, Scully had woken, and he hadn’t realized she heard him until he crawled back up to the pillow and found it wet with her tears, her face streaked when she pulled him into her arms. Usually, though, both of them lay awake, even just for a few moments, feeling fierce and protective, slightly awed at this thing they cradled between them, barely as large as his hand and already exerting a mind of its own.
He felt ready for this. He remembered, years ago, the hot, sticky panic he’d felt, unprepared and so certain he’d do everything wrong. And then things went so wrong he’d barely had the chance to do anything. This time, he felt none of that panic. He was ready. They were ready. Scully, too, would admit it felt surreal. Theoretically, this was the pregnancy that was far more impossible, carried the far greater risk. The doctor had been unsparing, detailing what could go wrong. But no hot, sticky panic closed up his lungs like asthma. Scully’s hand had squeezed his, warm and fearless, unfazed, sitting there facing the doctor. Her pulse perfectly steady.
They both knew. They just knew. They had been through too much, lost too much, feared too much— this would be the one thing they could not lose or fear. Everything would go right. Nothing in their lives indicated the universe worked that way, and yet nonetheless, they could not shake their certainty. “I don’t know, I just know,” Scully would whisper, and nothing else made more sense. He felt it just like she did, bone-deep and real. The way, he supposed, they had known twenty-five years ago the first time they laid eyes on each other.
Here, now, Mulder stirred. Dawn had started to break. He had another half hour before Scully would groan at her internal alarm, haul herself up out of bed. That gave him some time to open the quiet house, put on some coffee. Pick up the paper. Watch the sunrise out over the water, like he had swapped his own life with that of a stranger, some deeply unlucky stranger who’d gained freedom and solitude while Mulder gained everything else.
That’s where Scully found him, nearly an hour later. He sat on the weathered front steps, nursing his second coffee, the sun up in the sky behind a patch of gray clouds. He folded the paper and set it aside when he heard her footsteps behind him, the squeak of the screen door that needed some oil.
“Morning,” she said, her face practically buried in the steam from her coffee, still not awake.
Mulder turned to look up. They had ten weeks to go yet, give or take exactly, and her pajamas had stopped straining their buttons long ago. She wore his t-shirts to sleep, and her robe had stopped tying around those shirts too, and it was his favorite sight every morning.
“How are my girls doing?” he asked her, since his life would be short if he was going to stop saying things like that any time soon.
“I won’t point fingers,” Scully said, pointing down to the swollen Knicks logo, “but one of us girls inherited her father’s legs.”
Mulder looked down at his legs. One knee bounced on its own from the early dose of caffeine and his own pent-up energy. He forced it to stop, the same time Scully gripped it for balance to ease herself down beside him.
“Exactly,” she said.
He patted her basketball, sticking out past her robe. “What’s she doing in there? Shooting free throws?”
“Trying to hatch an escape.”
Mulder leaned down to tell her, “Knock it off in there, all right, kiddo? We’re on your side.”
“You can break that habit too,” Scully said, always blunt before breakfast. But he caught the edge of her smile in spite of herself.
“What habit?”
“‘Kiddo.’”
“Do you have a whole list of these things I should do?”
“Yes,” Scully said.
“Good. I’m unemployed now, I need some new hobbies.”
She leaned against him to rest her chin on his shoulder. He had lived with grief long enough to learn you did not ignore happiness whenever it came. He laid his arm on her knees, and they sat there a long time, Scully sipping her coffee, just watching the morning. The sun broke through a cloud, glimmering across the water. A gull swooped and dove. Maryland turned hot in June, but this time of day was still cool, a breeze tossing small waves in the wake of a boat out in the Chesapeake Bay.
Scully’s chin turned on his shoulder to watch the side of his face. He watched the gull snatch up breakfast.
“What would you like to do?” she asked.
The day stretched before them. A daisy-chain of days like it, each threaded into the next. “Today?” he asked. “Tomorrow? For the next twenty years?”
“Yes,” she said.
Mulder smiled. The house was still unfinished. Boxes stacked in the kitchen; none of his office unpacked. He didn’t feel a rush to do any of it. They had the big bed upstairs, and down the hall from that bed, another small bed, beneath stars stuck on the ceiling, the kind that glowed in the dark. He felt pretty close to having all that he needed.
He squeezed her knee, drank more coffee. A neighbor walked past, a black lab on a leash. They both waved when she waved.
“Let’s get a dog,” Mulder said.
“Let’s do one thing at a time.” Scully rubbed the old t-shirt around on her belly, shifting to get more comfortable. He moved his hand up too, feeling his way until he found the small kick.
She took his hand, drew it up toward her ribcage. He felt the kick stronger.
“Wow,” he said. “She’s really—”
“I know,” Scully said.
“She’s feisty today.”
“She’s got your feet and your patience.”
“Hey,” Mulder said.
Scully traded cups with him. She had emptied her own.
“Uh-uh,” he said, lifting his cup out of her hands on the way to her mouth. “It has nothing to do with you mainlining caffeine?”
She reached for his cup again. He pulled it out of her reach. “Just one more sip,” Scully bargained.
“You’re allowed one cup per day.”
“I’m a doctor,” she said.
Mulder knocked his head back, draining the last of the coffee. “There,” he said, generous, and gave the empty cup back.
Scully stared at it forlornly. “I hate you,” she pouted.
“You love me.” He kissed her.
“Mmm,” Scully said, and kissed him again, holding the kiss a long time until he opened his mouth and let her all the way in. When she pulled back, her eyes shone like the sun on the water. She kissed him one more time, saying “Coffee,” and licking the taste off his lips.
Mulder rolled his eyes and laughed at her and brushed off his jeans as he got to his feet. “C’mon,” he said, ready to go in, the sun hot in the sky and his stomach growling for breakfast and his back aching from the uncomfortable perch. He pulled her up to her feet, not letting go of her hand as he led the way up the steps. “Ooh,” Scully said, “wait,” and he turned back to look.
“Nope. C’mon,” Mulder said. A guy jogged down the street shirtless. Crewcut, muscled, tattooed.
“I want him,” she said when Mulder pulled her along.
“You want anybody that moves. And you’ve got me right here.” He reached over her head to hold the screen door open.
Scully stopped beneath his arm. She appraised him up and down, licking and biting her lip. “Yeah, okay,” she said finally, the opposite of reluctant.
“That’s the spirit.” He grinned. “Stop ogling the neighbors.”
“Stop knocking me up. You can’t handle the hormones.”
“I’ll show you ‘can’t handle.’” He pointed upstairs.
Her face brightened so quickly that even she had to laugh. Mulder was shaking his head.
“You’ll be the death of me yet, one way or another,” he said under his breath, making sure that she heard him.
“Just last ten more weeks, I’m gonna need you around,” Scully said over her shoulder, her turn to pull him along.