Chapter Text
It wasn’t a big store, not by any means. Three aisles of dusty commodities and a rotting picnic table out front. But it sold the essentials, and that was all anyone needed in Farrs Corner. Coffee, bread, milk, sugar. Refrigerated units along the back wall held drinks and butter and frozen waffles. If you wanted something more substantial, or more exotic, you drove across the river to Manassas or up to Fairfield Station, went to one of the supermarkets there. But most people didn’t bother. Most people kept their own chickens, grew their own vegetables. The store sufficed, as did the paycheck.
It wasn’t much, but it made him feel less guilty as he transferred a third of each month’s pay to his parents’ joint account (thank God for mobile banking: he was positive neither of them would accept the money if he told them) to help them cover food and as a sort of rent. They weren’t strapped for cash, but they had a baby to worry about and they had both been working from home as consultants in their various fields since Lissie, and he knew that didn’t bring in as much money as they would be making if they were going in to work.
He put most of the other two thirds away into a savings account that Scully had handed him the paperwork to when he’d been with them for a couple of weeks. ‘It’s not much’ – she had said, not looking at him as she shuffled from foot to foot, fingers turning one of his sister’s rattles in her hands – ‘but it’s yours. Your grandmother put $250 in there when you were born, same as she did for your cousins, and, uh, your Uncle Charlie put $100 in, and I think Bill and Tara put $100 in too. And, uh…there was some money from the FBI, they do this whip-round pool thing sometimes where people go round and gather money for various members of staff for various occasions. I think Skinner organised it with Doggett. They meant it for us because I was on my own with you, but, uh, I figured it would be better if I put it away for you, ‘cause I had enough for the two of us. I put some in each month, too. For when you were old enough to go to college or buy a car, or a house. Not that- I mean, not that you have to do any of those things with it if you don’t want, and there’s probably not enough in there…I haven’t checked it since Mulder and I left. It should have accrued some interest, though.’ The baby had cried and she’d dodged his shy smile and murmured thanks with tears wiped discretely on shoulders as she’d hurried upstairs to the nursery. She’d been right, there wasn’t enough for college. But he was rectifying that now.
What was left went towards art supplies and books mostly, though the shelves and stairs and tables and windowsills of the house provided a fairly well-stocked library on subjects he found interesting enough. Mulder’s psychology books proved insightful and interesting, particularly as he contemplated what he wanted to study.
Jackson had been living with them three months when he’d popped to the store for a loaf of bread – they hadn’t quite figured out the right amount of bread to buy with a teenager in the house: toast was a staple of his diet – to find the sign pasted up outside, a request for someone to work the tills and stock the shelves, COMPETITIVE PAY! Ask inside today!
The old man behind the counter had looked at him sceptically as he clutched the piece of paper in his hand, analysing it as if it hadn’t been him himself who had posted the advert two days ago, ‘you from ‘round here?’
‘I, uh, I just started living with my parents, um, we’re at Wallis Road, 227700? They’ve been there a few years now, but I’ve just moved in with them.’
Another studious look, ‘you adopted?’
The hackles on the back of Jackson’s neck rose, ‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything.’
‘I’ve got nothing against it, Son. My granddaughter’s adopted. Good as gold, that lassie is.’
‘I…they’re my biological parents. My adoptive parents died.’
A challenging look met pursed lips. ‘They’ve just had another, haven’t they, your parents? Your dad was coming in here all hours looking for the weirdest of things. Cravings,’ he gave a knowing nod, the dismissive tone saying women’s business more succinctly than his words ever could. ‘I thought she’d left him, you know? Your mom, I mean. Couple of years I saw hide nor hair of either of them. Then she’s back smiling like you wouldn’t believe and a couple months later she’s doing a pretty bad job of hiding a bump as she buys pickles and chocolate ice cream. That why they’ve sent you out to get a job? ‘Cause they can’t afford you and the kiddo?’
‘No. They don’t know. But I’m saving for college’ – it hadn’t occurred to him that that was what he was doing until he said it, but it hit him that it was what he actually, really wanted.
‘You got experience?’
‘Uh…no. But I worked in a diner for just under a year. And I’m pretty good at picking things up.’
As interviews went, it wasn’t the most conventional. But, to his surprise, the old man removed his apron and slid it across the counter. ‘You’re part-time, you understand? Can’t justify more than five hours a day. You get a lunch break and fifteen minutes in the morning. I’ll show you the ropes, but mostly you’ll be on your own.’ And then he was proffering a weathered hand, calloused and cracked, but firm in its handshake.
He’d told his parents that night during dinner, an off-handed comment that had his mother knocking her chair over in the process of getting around the table to hug him, raining kisses on his head like he had discovered the answer to life, the universe and everything, and his father smiling proudly at him and shaking his hand. He wondered as he stared up at his ceiling that night how they would react to him telling them he was going to college if that is how proud they had been of him getting a job. The thought warmed him, and rather than try to sleep, he grabbed his beat-up old laptop and started researching colleges and courses.