Chapter Text
She wasn’t sure how else to say it, so she whispered it into his skin, while they were laying together.
“What?” He asked, moving his head to face her, still mostly pressed into the pillow.
She looked into his eyes, moss-green and concerned, a year ago she would’ve assumed being together like this was impossible, but he surprised her. After a case in Home, they had tipsy desperate sex in his hotel room that went unmentioned the next day. The next time she was allowed to take control, after the Temple of the Seven Stars, but again it went unmentioned.
It wasn’t until Mulder’s trip to Russia and her arrest for contempt of Congress that the pair of FBI agents admitted that something was happening between them.
(He kissed her lips, trying to convey all his affection and gratitude without words. “You let them lock you away, charge you with contempt of Congress, you—” he couldn’t finish his sentence, he had too much to say.
“It was the only option,” she replied, reaching for the buttons of his shirt.
“Doesn’t matter.” No one had ever risked themselves for him like that before. He wasn’t ready to say the words aloud, or admit them to himself, but he loved her so much, and had for years. )
There still wasn’t a word for their relationship, if they could even call it that, but it was better than preceded it. When she was having doubts and went to Philadelphia, they finally had a conversation about what they wanted.
("Do you have a date?” He asked over the phone, incredulously.
“Mulder, you never said I couldn’t see other people.” She hadn’t intended to take Ed Jerse up on his offer, but maybe she would.
“I–”
“Maybe that’s because you’ve refused to talk about this at all, what do you want me to do Mulder?” She protested, the distance between them making her feel powerful. She could hang up on him if she wanted. “As much as it feels like I can, I can’t read your mind.”
“Scully,” he said quietly. “I can’t do this over the phone. Will you wait for me? Please.”
She kept silent for a moment before sighing. “Okay.”)
They weren’t dating, it wasn’t as simple as that, but they were together, lovers in secret. If they went public with their relationship Scully could ruin her career and they would lose the X-Files.
“What?” Mulder asked again, more alert than before.
But now something so much worse was on the horizon, Scully could feel it, something growing deep inside her, ready to kill.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I think I’m dying.” Just then, perfectly timed, blood slipped from her nostril. Scully turned away from him, reaching for tissues on her bedside table. The box was almost empty and she grabbed two instead of one, but it didn’t matter. She pressed the tissues to her nose.
“How long has this been going on?” Mulder asked, sitting up behind her. She still couldn’t face him.
“Leonard Betts said I had something he needed.”
Mulder’s arms wrapped around her shoulders, his chest to her back, saying nothing.
“I have an appointment with my doctor tomorrow, I think I know what she’s going to say, but I need to be sure.”
He still couldn’t speak, and Scully was grateful for the silence, since she didn’t have anything to say either. Finally, the bleeding stopped and Scully stepped away from the comforting warmth of her lover, depositing the soiled tissue in the trash can of her bathroom. And when she returned, Mulder planted kisses across her skin, anywhere he could touch.
Mulder’s eyes were glued to his cell phone, waiting for a call from Scully. She went in to meet with her doctor over an hour ago, and he had been impatiently waiting for news ever since.
Finally, his cell phone rang and Mulder answered it on the first ring.
“Mulder,” he rested the phone on his shoulder and pressed it into his ear, already moving to the door.
“Mulder it’s me,” Scully said, her voice half nervous and half exhausted. She fell asleep before him the night before, and he spent most of the night watching the rise and fall of her chest.
“D-do I need to meet you at the oncology department?” Mulder asked, walking down the steps of his apartment building.
“Actually no,” she said quickly. “Just meet me in the waiting room, I can’t say it over the phone.”
A pit sank in his stomach. “Okay,” he acknowledged, before hanging up. Throughout the whole drive, Mulder could feel a nervous churning in his stomach. Was it cancer, or something else? He could barely even remember the drive towards Scully if he was being honest, he was there in a flash.
He rushed to find her in the waiting room, where she stood near the door.
She looked like all the blood had drained from her face.
“Hey,” he said breathlessly, his hands reaching toward her shoulders.
“Hi,” she replied, leaning into his touch. “I have something I need to share with you, will you come back with me?”
Mulder nodded and she grabbed his hand, practically squeezing it, tugging him back to gynecology, which he did not expect. She led him into a room, with several different machines.
“Mulder,” Scully let go of his hand and reached for a dark photograph off of the counter, and handed it to him. “It’s not cancer, I’m pregnant.” Mulder looked down at the photo. It was a small ultrasound image, with a tiny little dot in the center.
He didn’t know what to say.
When Scully met with her doctor, an old friend from college, who went to a different medical school than her, she thought she knew how it was going to go.
“Hi Dana,” Dr. Bex Davis walked in. She had short dark hair and olive skin. She was probably as tall as Mulder, which was something of contention between the two of them in college when Scully looked like a kid standing next to her.
“Hi, Bex. I already have an idea of what I have, I just need you to order the tests,” Scully said, straight to the point.
Dr. Davis nodded but had a slightly different approach. “Dana, many of your symptoms do fit with cancer, but as you know, we always run pregnancy tests on women when they come in, just as a precaution and well, yours was positive.”
“What?” Scully’s eyes widened. She didn’t believe it for a second, all of the women who had been abducted and removed their chips had cancer.
“I know this isn’t the best news for you, Dana.” Bex’s eyes flickered to the cross hanging above her collarbone. “But you’re not dying and you have options if you don’t want to continue this pregnancy.”
Scully was too stunned to speak. Her eyes shot down to her belly, still the same as it was yesterday.
“I don’t believe you,” Scully finally said. “Pregnancy tests can be wrong, I’d like a blood test.”
And after the blood test came back positive, Scully requested a sonogram.
She did not believe she was pregnant until she physically saw the embryo with her own two eyes. A small little thing right in front of her.
“But the nosebleeds,” Scully protested, needing to fight this until the very end. She had come to terms with her diagnosis days ago, so for it to turn out completely different, well. Scully was just too shocked. She hadn’t even thought of pregnancy, which was unlike her, but it was true. Her periods had been irregular since her abduction, so for her to miss one practically went unnoticed.
And Mulder, how was Mulder going to react? They had only been sleeping together for a couple of months, and by the size of the embryo, she had gotten pregnant before their talk of exclusivity, they hadn’t been officially together for more than two weeks.
“Hormone changes,” Dr. Davis answered, though they both knew it.
“I need to call Mulder,” she whispered aloud to herself.
“Your work partner is the father?” Dr. Davis asked, unable to hide her shock.
Scully nodded. Though she took some time to call him, needing time to think for herself.
Mulder examined Scully, trying to notice any difference in her, finding none he needed to sit down before his feet gave out from under him. He had pipe dreams where they were married and got away from the X-Files before, but that was all they were, pipe dreams, reality was very different.
What were they going to do?
He could feel they were on the brink of something very important. And this threw a wrench in their plans like never before. How could they raise a child? Bring a baby into this world while they risked their lives every day to make the world safer and find his sister. And there was no way Scully would be able to continue on at work as she did before.
And even though they had been partners for years at this point, could they even raise a child together successfully? He wasn’t sure. And if the FBI found out he was the father, well Scully would lose her career in a second.
“Mulder?” Scully’s voice brought him back to reality. She rested her hand on his shoulder and he looked into her eyes. To someone who didn’t know her, she was calm and collected, but he knew she was terrified. However, Mulder felt, Scully felt 100% worse. And he couldn’t add to her stress. That wasn’t the type of man he was, that was the type of man his father was.
“Scully,” he stood up. “I need some time, I’m sorry.” There he was, 35 years old and running out on his lover, partner, and best friend. Not one of his best moments. But at that point, he didn’t see any positives to having a baby with Scully (at that moment in time at least) and he didn’t want to project any of his fears onto Scully.
And he did something a scared boy would do, he called his mother.
Scully wasn’t sure what to do after Mulder left her at the hospital, so she found herself back at her apartment.
Having a baby was quite different from having a cancer diagnosis, both life-changing in different ways. Just six hours ago Scully accepted that she was going to have to fight for her life, but now she was actually responsible for another’s. And she wasn’t sure what to do.
She really got pregnant at the worst time. Yes, she had a background of respect and friendship with Mulder, but could she raise a child with him? Did he want a child? Scully had seen him with kids before, he was wonderful with the children they met on cases. But being good with kids did not equal wanting to be a parent. And how would this affect their work?
And being pregnant just made her miss her sister.
(“One day,” Melissa said to her, when they were babysitting their youngest cousin, a little boy named George who was just under a year old. They were around 18 and 16, just before Missy left the house. “You’re going to have the cutest babies and I’ll get to be their favorite aunt.”
“How do you know you won’t have your own kids?” Scully asked. She had every confidence that Melissa would be an excellent mother if she wanted.
“I just can’t see myself having kids, but you,” Melissa motioned to how effortlessly Scully held George. “You’re going to have kids. A daughter and a son, at least.”
“Well,” Scully said, gently bouncing George. “As long as you’re there.”)
A tear fell from her eyes and Scully sunk onto the couch, before screaming into her hand. She never thought she’d be a parent without her sister by her side. But, she also realized something. She wanted to have a baby, she was about to turn 33, that seemed like the right age, even if Mulder didn’t want to be involved (hopefully he would). Having a baby wouldn’t bring her sister back, but somehow it made her feel close.
Mulder wasn’t at the office (basement) the next day, and when Scully inquired about his whereabouts to Skinner, he seemed shocked.
“Agent Mulder requested a few days off, and considering he cut his last vacation short, I wasn’t one to question it. Did he not tell you?”
Scully shook her head. “Must’ve just slipped my mind,” she told him.
It stung, him not being around, and especially not telling her he would be gone. And then she really started to feel sick. The scent of coffee would make her heave, which meant in the morning there were many places she couldn’t go, in order to keep her pregnancy as secret as possible.
Even if she took Mulder’s absence out of the equation, her having a baby (their baby) was of interest to the people working against them, the people who abducted her. Scully knew she needed to keep it as private as possible for as long as she could. Especially in the first twelve weeks. She hoped Mulder would do the same.
Three days later, Thursday night, Scully opened the door at the sound of a knock, finding Mulder looking down at her, with flowers, pink and red carnations, with baby's breath.
“I-uh, I took these from your neighbor, they were waiting outside her apartment, so—“
“Get in here,” Scully cut him off, exhausted, tugging him into her apartment and taking the flowers. It had been many years since she was captivated with the language of flowers, but she was able to tell that the bouquet Mulder had with him was chosen intentionally, and specifically for her. He was an idiot, probably, hopefully, her idiot.
Mulder stood stiffly near the door, standing up straight as a board.
She felt like they were on the opposite ends of a piece of string being pulled as taut as possible, if the tension wasn’t relieved soon it would snap.
“You probably wondered where I’ve been,” he said sheepishly, looking past her to her sofa, where she had been laying previously.
“Yeah,” Scully replied. “You could say that.” She grabbed the flowers from Mulder’s hands and gently laid them down on her counter. Somehow putting them in water was more important.
“I need you to know I wasn’t just screwing around,” he insisted to her back.
Scully ducked below her counter and grabbed a clear vase, around the size of her forearm. She rifled through a drawer above it, finding her good scissors. While holding the stems by the middle, she practically sawed off the end of the stems. She sucked on her teeth while filling up the vase with tap water.
“What were you doing?” She finally asked, her voice raised slightly to be heard over the streaming sound of the water. Suddenly, facing him seemed impossible. What could he be doing that was more important than figuring this out with her? Before they were lovers they were partners, in sync and extensions of each other. Before she even loved him she went to the ends of the Earth to protect him, did he not feel the same way? When they were in bed together, she thought he had, that they were the same, but maybe they weren’t.
“I went to see my mother.”
Her head whipped back to face him, with wide eyes, nearly dropping the vase into the sink. Mulder jumped into action, taking the vase from her hands and setting it to the side. The indecipherable color of his eyes shone gray in the light of her apartment. His glance met hers. She knew that his relationship with his mother was tenuous and distant at best, both hurt nearly irrevocably by the disappearance of Samantha over 20 years ago.
“She was just as shocked as you,” Mulder whispered, gathering the flowers in his hands and putting them in their proper place.
“I’m not shocked,” Scully protested, leaning her back against the sink. It was in a child’s nature to seek comfort in their parents.
“I was shocked too,” he told her, pushing the vase closer to the wall.
“So you ran away?” Scully asked, trying to hurt him, and make him understand exactly how he made her feel.
Mulder shut his eyes, flinching, and nodded. “I didn’t mean it like that, but yes.”
“How did you mean it then? How was you leaving the state without so much as a word not running away?”
“I wanted to protect you,” he said simply.
“Protect me?” Scully couldn’t help but scoff, Mulder always did that, martyred himself and made her out to be a pure victim, instead of the person she was, a woman with agency.
“From myself,” he added, looking down at his hands. “I’m not trying to excuse my behavior, I should’ve told you where I was going instead of disappearing, but I need you to understand why.” His tone was imploring, and when he still couldn’t look at her, Scully reached her hand towards him, and grasped his hand.
“Okay,” she whispered, soft and gentle. Her anger had lapsed into curiosity, maybe her anger would return again, but for now, she was surprisingly calm. “So tell me.”
Mulder finally faced her again, his eyes wide, weary, and gray. “What I’m going to say sounds horrible, but I don’t feel that way anymore.”
Scully’s breath hitched in her throat and anxiety bloomed in her chest. This time, Mulder’s thumb rubbed circles onto the back of her hand. He was so good at making her feel at ease when he really tried.
“For the longest time, the X-Files was the most important thing in my life, then it was you, but I didn’t have to choose. A baby will complicate things, in order for us to be a family you’ll have to leave the X-Files and I don’t know if I can do it alone.”
Her heart thumped in her chest, the sound echoing up into her ears. Every word twisted her stomach in knots.
“And we’re so close to finding the Truth I can feel it. On top of that, I don’t know how to be a father, my own father was distant even before Samantha was abducted then he basically disappeared from my life after the divorce.” His voice grew shaky, just for a moment. “And the thought of someone trying to hurt our child because they were ours, I don’t know if I could handle losing them.”
She inched closer to him and leaned her head on his shoulder, his skin cool against her warmth. Even after a period of separation they still fit together like a puzzle.
“I couldn’t even see the positives to having a baby with you, it was all fear. I couldn’t let that affect you. This is your choice, Scully.”
She pulled back, looking into his eyes. “I’ve had a lot of time to myself over the last few days to think about it.” Mulder stiffened, awaiting her reaction. “There’s never going to be a right time for us to ‘settle down’ and have kids. Ever. But I want this baby.” Her hand reached to her stomach, settling it over her belly button. “We’re barely even a couple, and you don’t have to be involved, but that’s my decision.” To say those words hurt her, deep in her core. Even before they were sleeping together, they felt like two halves of the same whole. Dulling their relationship down to beginning at the very moment they put words on it felt overly simplistic, and wrong to an extent.
Despite her words, she hoped and prayed that Mulder would decide he would stay with her, and their child. Mulder stared down at her, solemnly, not able to speak.
“Mulder,” Scully paused. “You’re making this about me, and your fears, but you haven’t told me what you want.” His eyes widened, as if he was looking at her with a whole new perspective. “You’re so selfless, you can’t just remove yourself from this decision, take out your personal feelings. You’re a profiler, you know that’s not how it works.”
Mulder gave her a watery smile and took her in his arms again.
“I’m afraid that if I tell you what I want, I won’t be able to have it.”
“Tell me anyway.”
His chin rested on top of her head. “I want to be with you, forever,” Mulder confessed, sending waves of love throughout Scully’s body. “And I want to give this child the best life possible.”
“So then that’s what we’ll do,” Scully affirmed, blinking back tears, she never thought they would get to this point. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll find a way.”