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Dana Scully had always thought the mid-back was the hardest thing to apply suncream to.
Dana Scully was wrong.
Squirming children were the hardest thing to apply suncream to.
Melissa starting to toddle had been the end of both her and Mulder’s sanity, or what remained of it. They thought she had been everywhere with crawling, but they were wrong. Take your eyes off her for two seconds and she was gone, off exploring someplace she shouldn’t be. She didn’t sit still for five seconds. Even when they were watching a film or eating dinner she was bouncing in her seat or clambering over the landscape of her parents' and brother’s laps. And so, trying to get her to sit still long enough to apply suncream was a nearly impossible challenge.
That was until Mulder started painting funny faces with the stuff. It started on his face. And then on Melissa’s, causing squeals of delight. And then on Jackson’s as he walked through the kitchen to get a glass of orange juice, much to his ostensible distaste. And then, finally, he managed to catch Scully unawares, dabbing splodges onto her cheeks. ‘Mulder…’ She’d rolled her eyes, but the laughter of her children was a sound that she wouldn’t sacrifice for the world. And so she painted streaks of warpaint on her cheeks and stuck out her tongue and complained through chuckles at the click of Jackson’s phone camera.
He’d disappeared back off into his room, grin on his face as he rubbed the suncream into his cheeks, nodding at a shout of ‘don’t spend all day in there!’
And then Mulder was picking their daughter up and spinning her in the air, telling her that they would be going outside, and telling her that they were going to go and play out in the sun, and yes, yes, they were, and tickling her sides and laughing along with her and Scully had to smile because she had what she wanted. She had their truth, and it was stood right in front of her.
‘No, Baby, you have to keep the hat on. The sun’s too hot.’
‘Hot,’ it was her new word.
‘Yes, too hot.’
‘Hot. Blow,’ a chubby finger pointing up to the sky, before little lips purse to blow a raspberry, the same way she attempts to blow on hot food, mimicking her father's over-exaggerated puffs. ‘Not hot now. No hat,’ and with that she pulls the hat off, hands it to her crouching mother, and toddles off.
‘Melissa!’
‘She’s fine,’ Mulder sighs as he strolls over, offering a hand up which she takes gratefully.
‘She’s got such fair skin, though, and such light hair. Her scalp will burn,’ Scully watched as their daughter played in the grass and wildflowers up to her torso, babbling to herself and to the soft-toy alien and frog she dragged everywhere with her, as she wandered around. They followed at a short distance behind, arm in arm whilst keeping an eye on her.
‘Scully, give her five minutes playing in the sun, exploring the garden, and then we’ll go back and sit on the porch with her in the shade.’
‘Maybe we should get her a bonnet,’ she’d teased him about it before, threatened putting a bonnet on their child. It had become one of her favourite pastimes watching his reaction to the suggestion.
‘No. No bonnets. Scully, my daughter is not a member of some creepy incestuous pheromone cult. She will not be wearing a bonnet. No. Never.’
‘I was just thinking that with a bonnet we could actually tie it onto her head.’
Mulder snorts and shakes his head, ‘nah, she’d get out of it. That kid is the spirit of Houdini incarnate. She could escape Alcatraz.’
She pauses, dragging Mulder to a stop with her hand and turning to look up at him with a frown of concern that she was desperately trying to mask, ‘she’s okay, isn’t she?’
‘Of course, she is. She’s half you, half me.’
‘But…she shouldn’t be so good at unclipping things and unbuckling things and getting out of things, surely, what if…what if she’s…?’
His thumb comes up to rub her cheekbone, ‘hey, no what-ifs, she’s fine. She’s just clever, like her mother. An über–Scully. She’s perfect, okay? There’s nothing wrong with her, she’s just a toddler, like every other toddler in the world,’ he knew the fears had plagued her since she’d first found out about the pregnancy, the concerns that what if the alien DNA in her body affected the baby, what if she was just another experiment, by hidden forces that they thought they had defeated? What if, what if, what if?
He had thought about it, too. What if they were still targets? What if this was all just some elaborate scheme? What if their daughter would have to deal with all the dangers Jackson had had to deal with? What if they couldn’t protect her?
But he also knew that it didn’t matter. C.G.B. was gone. There were no more threats. Jackson was back with them, safe. Alive. Healthy. He understood her fears, but he was sure, deep down, that they had nothing to fear, ‘and, if she does start exhibiting any kind of power, well, she has Jackson to help her. She’ll be fine, okay?’ he presses a kiss to the crown of her head as she wraps her arms around him, burying her face in the soft cotton of his grey t-shirt, ‘aaand, she’s naked again.’
Scully looks over at the child in question, realising that Mulder was indeed right – their daughter runs stark naked, Alan the alien in one hand and Jemmy the frog in the other, a path littered with flattened grass and little clothes marking their way towards her. She laughs with a groan and drops her forehead to his chest as it rumbles with humour, ‘that kid gets naked more than you do, Mulder, and that’s saying something.’
‘Hey, I resent that! No one gets naked more than I do,’ she looks at him with a quirked eyebrow, ‘okay, maybe she does. Wanna play ‘find all the clothes’?’
‘What does the winner get?’
‘To not have to be the one to catch her and wrestle her back into them?’
‘Oh, you’re on,’ Scully laughs, darting ahead of him and grabbing t-shirt and sock. They adore her really, but she took a lot of energy, particularly when it came to clothing, and though Scully wasn’t too bothered about it in the house – her detestation of clothing meant fewer things for her to cover in food, at least – outside her fair skin would burn far too easily, even with the layers of sunblock on her, and Scully would not risk sunburn or the consequences of the sun’s harmful rays on her baby’s skin.
Mulder’s long arm reaches out and plucks a shoe from the floor in front of her just as she was going for it, and he skirts around her, managing to grasp the pinafore dress, diaper and second shoe before her, ‘I think that makes me the winner.’
‘We’re still missing a sock,’ she challenges, knowing that it was probably lost for good. Socks were not something the Scully-Mulder household was particularly good at keeping track of, no matter how fastidiously she tried to keep them in pairs. There was always an odd sock at the bottom of the laundry hamper, and socks went missing more often than the pencils that were usually found later falling to the floor.
‘Besides, even if you found the sock, I’d still have won.’
‘Only because you cheated,’ she grumbles half-heartedly, nudging him with her shoulder.
‘I did not cheat and you know it. Now go catch our daughter before she makes a bid for the state border.’
‘Can you give Mama a kiss? Do I get a kiss?’ the toddler stood on her knees, grasping her hands for balance, tilted forwards, smushing a wet raspberry onto Scully’s scrunched nose, ‘oh, that wasn’t a kiss Baby!’ she laughed, causing her daughter to laugh too, leaning backwards as her mother’s arms wrapped around her back, cradling her, ‘you’re just like your Daddy, you are. You know that? Just like your Daddy.’
She and Lissie were sat on a picnic blanket spread out on the porch, articles of toddler clothes scattered about them and a box of wooden blocks discarded to the side. Once she had caught Lissie and wrestled her back into her diaper, they had ambled their way back to the house, Mulder grabbing the blanket that had spent the summer hanging over the back of the porch swing and spreading it out on the wooden decking that he was still waiting for the perfect day to sand down. He had taken Melissa from her, asked what she wanted to do and grinned at her insistence of ‘b’o’ks’. He’d sat her down with a kiss, dropping a kiss to Scully’s lips as he passed, and ducked inside to grab the building blocks.
They had been building towers together, laughing every time Lissie would push them over, for about half an hour when she had murmured that it was so hot and he had turned to face her with a smile, moved a sticky strand of sweat-soaked hair from her forehead and nodded. And then his eyes had lit up, and he’d scrambled to standing and promised he’d be back soon, but he had an idea, a really great idea. The next thing she knew, he had Jackson with him and they were jogging towards the woods.
That had been an hour ago, and she was mildly wondering what trouble they had gotten themselves into when she heard her son’s laugh and her partner’s groan from behind the house. ‘I think I hear Daddy and Jackson,’ a kiss to soft, ginger hair, curling in the humidity.
‘Jack-Jack!’
‘Shall we go see where they’ve been?’
Babe on hip, she made her way down the stairs and around the house to find Mulder and Jackson and a tin bathtub. ‘Dare I even ask?’
Mulder beamed proudly, ‘it’s a bathtub, Scully!’
‘I can see that. But we have a bathtub, Mulder. One that’s not been sat out in the elements for the last seventy years and has God knows what growing in it.’
‘Yeah, but that bathtub is in the bathroom.’
Scully stared at him blankly, ‘yes. I’m not quite sure I understand the implied problem of the bath being in the bathroom.’
‘It’s a paddling pool,’ Jackson explained, ‘it was behind the outbuilding.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No, Mulder, I will not be letting my daughter into that,’ she lowered her voice to a hiss and tucked Lissie’s head against her shoulder, effectively covering the toddler’s ears, ‘someone was probably murdered in it.’
‘That’s highly improbable and you know it. It’s fine, we’re going to clean it and disinfect it and stuff, check it holds water.’
‘Mulder, that thing probably holds less water than one of your theories.’
He pouted, ‘and then you won’t have to worry. But if it is watertight, then we’ll have a paddling pool to keep Lissie cool.’
Three pairs of eyes turned to her, innocently pleading, and she huffed and shook her head, ‘no. No, I’m sorry Mulder, but no. You can use it, but the rest of us will not be dying of tetanus any time soon,’ and with that she turned on her heel, entering the house through the back door, murmuring about a crazy, crazy man.
He was sulking. He knew he was sulking. Scully knew he was sulking. But that didn’t excuse her heading out halfway through the day, not telling him where she was going, taking the baby and Jackson.
She’d been right, of course. The tub didn’t hold water. But he was sure that if it had it would have been great. It was a good idea.
And so, he was lying amongst the prickly dry grass of the yard, shirt off, arm slung over his face, trying to imagine he was on a soft, sandy beach, Scully in his arms, waves lapping the shore.
When he was less irritated, and she was home, he’d make it up to her. He’d figure out a better way to create a paddling pool for Lissie, one that wasn’t a health risk or gaudy plastic – Scully didn’t like gaudy plastic, and was sceptical of the safety of many plastics.
Crunching gravel stirred him, ears pricking at the return of Scully, and he heaved himself up, scrubbing dry grass from his hair and back. Footsteps rounding the house, he met them halfway. And stopped with a glare.
‘Scully?’
‘Look who we found on our travels.’
Mulder grit his teeth together. Ground out an ‘Agent Doggett.’
‘Just Doggett. Or John, even.’
‘To what do we owe the pleasure?’ he asked, disdain lacing his voice as Scully placed a squirming Melissa in his arms and hissed a warning to be nice. He wanted to retaliate and say he was always nice, but he would be lying and they both knew it.
‘We bumped into John whilst we were out and he offered the use of his car to transport our purchase home since we couldn’t get it into the back of our car,’ she smiled at Mulder, twinkling eyes holding something back. ‘You want to see what we got?’
He looked to his daughter and she nodded eagerly, ‘I guess that’s a yes.’
‘Well,’ Scully said, leading the way, ‘whilst you were sulking, I did some research. See, I figured that if we were going to have a paddling pool, it was not going to be something that just Melissa could use, it was going to be something we could all get value out of. And that got me thinking; when I was a kid, living in San Diego, there was this girl I went to school with, lived on some ranch an hour away. Anyway, I remember her dad turning one of the feed tanks into a paddling pool. It wasn’t as great as going down to the beach to cool off, but after school sometimes we’d go over and splash around a bit. Apparently, they’re all the rage now.’
‘And you just…bought a feed tank?’
‘Yup. It’ll do for now on its own, but I was thinking perhaps that we could build a deck out back, by the tree. Have a table, somewhere to eat in the evenings when it’s hot like this? John said he can help us with it if we like. I just thought you were so set on getting a paddling pool for Lissie, and…’ she shrugged, looking at him hopefully.
Mulder grinned, ‘you did all this for me?’
She shrugged again and blushed slightly, walking into his outstretched arm, ‘I do everything for you. Didn’t you know?’
He pressed a kiss to her temple, giving her a little pout as he pulled away, ‘sorry I was grumpy earlier.’
‘It’s okay. I’ve loved you long enough to understand the grumpiness.’
Jackson cleared his throat and they both turned to look at him and John, who stood awkwardly staring at either their feet or the horizon, ‘do you think you could save the make-up sex for when John’s gone and we’re in bed and don’t have to watch?’
‘Jackson,’ Scully scolded as John and Mulder both snorted quiet laughter.
‘I’m just saying. We all know it’s gonna happen, but we don’t need to bear witness to it. Can we get the pool set up now?’
‘Kid’s got a point there,’ Mulder murmured, squeezing her hip before moving from her side and nodding for Doggett to take the lead and show him the stock tank.
It didn’t take long for them to agree on the temporary placement of the tank, in the relative shade of the large tree that overhung the back yard, and for Jackson to start filling it with the hosepipe, Lissie hindering more than helping, squealing with laughter every time he sprayed her with it. In the meantime, Scully, Mulder and Doggett sat on the back porch sketching and resketching designs for the deck, with Scully’s laptop open for inspiration.
‘I think the pool should be sunken into the deck – make it easier to access. Will that make it harder to build the deck around it?’
‘No, shouldn’t do. We can put a small wooden bench at one end to help with getting in and out, too. And it will give somewhere to sit if you wanted it,’ Doggett said, sketching onto the sheet of paper his ideas and outlines. Since retiring from the Bureau, he’d spent a lot of time doing odd jobs for odd people, making whatever needed making, working with his hands.
‘Sounds good. What shape do we want the deck to be?’ Scully asked, scrolling through Pinterest, ‘hexagonal?’
‘We could go with an elongated octagon? That would give us some separation between a table and the pool.’
‘Uh-huh. What about a pergola over the top? We can train something like wisteria or honeysuckle to grow up it to provide shade.’
‘Yeah, I like that idea. We should probably think of some way of covering the pool to stop leaves and stuff from falling in.’
‘I could build a- scroll back up, Dana. There, see,’ John pointed at the screen, ‘I can build a wooden cover like that. Wait, wait, click on the link for it,’ the three of them stared at the page whilst Doggett reached over and scrolled down. ‘I could do that, you know. I don’t think it would be that tricky.’
‘No, John. We don’t need a firepit. Or a firepit that turns our child’s paddling pool into a hot tub.’
‘No, no, hear the man out,’ Mulder murmured, suddenly much more interested in the plans, ‘you said this wasn’t just for Lissie, after all.’
‘Mulder, it’s a bad idea.’
‘Why? It means we can use it all year round.’
‘I just don’t know how safe it is. Let me research first, okay.’
Mulder rolled his eyes and shook his head, casting John a look and mouthing ‘we’re doing the hot tub.’
Once the tank had been filled about halfway, Jackson had plopped his sister in the water before vaulting over the side himself, catching her as she slipped. The rest of the late afternoon had been spent with him chasing her around the pool under the water, roaring with laughter every time he caught a leg and she screamed. John had ended up staying for dinner, a mix of cold cuts and salads that they spread out on a picnic blanket in the dying sunlight of the day, with the kids wrapped in towels and dripping wet hair.
Lissie was put to bed halfway through dinner, when she started getting restless and grouchy, the heat of the day finally tiring her out, and as the sun set Mulder, Scully and Doggett sat in the garden surrounded by citronella candles regaling Jackson with stories of the X Files and the FBI.
At the first few twinkles of stars, John said his goodbyes, promising to be over next weekend to start on the deck. Jackson gave an exaggerated yawn, cracked his neck and made a sarcastic comment about remembering to use protection before he retreated to his room, leaving his parents in the lingering heat of the evening, accompanied by the singing of cicadas.
‘Wanna go for a dip?’
‘Seems a shame not to.’
‘Only problem is, my suit’s upstairs.’
‘So’s mine,’ Scully murmured, biting her lip and giving him a wicked look before pulling her tank top over her head and dropping it to the ground, quickly followed by her bra.
‘Skinny dipping it is then,’ he smirked and followed her lead, stripping off and tailing her to the tank as she stepped out of her shorts. Still, after all these years, the silhouette of her naked body was something he couldn’t help but marvel at and he took a moment to admire her before she turned to face him, a question in her gaze, ‘you’re so goddamn beautiful. You know that?’
‘Hmm, you might have mentioned it once or twice,’ she crooked her finger and he obeyed, standing so he towered over her. With a smile she pulled him down and gave him a sweet kiss, before backing up to the pool and climbing in, ‘come on in, the water’s fine,’ she sank down so she was crouching and the water covered her shoulders.
He would follow her to the ends of the earth, do anything for her – especially when she wore that look on her face – and so he climbed in after, yelping and gasping at the cold, ‘Christ, woman!’
She chuckled, taking his wrist and pulling him down to her height, ‘it’s not particularly warm, is it?’
‘How are you not shivering right now?’
She shrugged, ‘I’ve been naked in Antarctica. Pretty much nothing else is going to beat that for cold levels.’
‘Hmm, that’s true.’
‘I guess we can consider that fire-pit hot tub combination.’
‘Only consider it?’
‘I’ll research the practicalities more tomorrow.’
‘I love you.’
She smiled at his out-of-the-blue comment, waded into his arms and twisted so her back was against his stomach. He leaned back, resting his head on the rim of the tub, and let the water take most of their weights as they looked up at the star-scattered sky, ‘wasn’t such a bad idea, after all.’