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FBI Deputy Director Fox Mulder pulled up in front of his
house. He had made it. The traffic had been a bitch, and he was
glad to be home. He paused for a moment before getting out of
the car.
Home.
The house was large and attractive: Two stories, a white
picket fence, and two big, well-tended yards, both in the front
and back of the house. The lawn service did a nice job, he
reflected; but, God, they were really, really expensive. He
never had time to do much in the yard himself, which was why
they'd had to hire a lawn service. Money, he thought. Maybe he
should quit the FBI and start a lawn service. There was an idea.
Then he could really make some money. He always needed money; he
was a family man now, and it was expensive to raise a family
these days. Really expensive. He got out of the car and walked
up the driveway, swinging his briefcase.
"Hi, Daddy!" A cheerful young blond boy of about
five ran down the walk to meet him.
"Hey, buddy!" said Mulder. "High five!"
He extended his palm and the child slapped it.
Ow, winced Mulder, shaking his hand gingerly. The kid really
had some arm there. He'd be a pitcher one day, Mulder was sure
of it.
Yes, William Hunter Archer Mulder, his firstborn. He was
quite the kid. Mulder watched him fondly as the child frolicked
in the yard with their dog, Chipper Jr. They were playing
Frisbee, and Mulder paused to watch as Will threw the toy to
Chipper Jr. who did three somersaults in the air, caught the
Frisbee with his hind legs, and barked a musical scale. Wow!
thought Mulder. Will was really great with the dog; he taught
him all sorts of neat tricks. A boy and his dog. There was a
real meeting of the minds there, he thought. He hadn't been able
to teach his own childhood pet very much. Chipper the First, a
black Labrador retriever, had been a great dog, but a sort of
generic, kid-type dog who panted a lot and rolled on dead
things. Of course, Labs were really overbred, and Chipper Jr.
was a purebred flat- coated retriever that had cost a lot of
money. Even the dogs seemed smarter these days. It really was a
brave new world.
Yeah, having kids was really great. He hadn't been sure at
first; in fact, he'd been pretty worried. Scully's pregnancy had
been "difficult," as they put it. Actually, it had
been a nightmare. She'd been really moody, but he'd been
prepared for that. And even for the bizarre food cravings that
had sent him scouring the all-night supermarkets of D.C. But the
other cravings ... that had freaked him out. For she had
developed strange desires for odd things, like aluminum foil.
That one had gotten so bad that he, Mulder, had had to lock the
Reynolds Wrap in the trunk of the car at night. Scully said it
was called "pica," a craving for strange, non-food
items. And she ought to know, being that she was a medical
doctor and all, but it had been unnerving nonetheless. But then
Will was born, and everything turned out great. In fact, better
than great. Two perfect APGAR scores at birth. The kid was off
the charts in every area--height, weight, strength. He hit every
infant milestone way before he was supposed to--their
pediatrician had even written a journal article about Will. And
he was smart. Very, very smart. They had gone through nearly
every preschool in D.C. trying to find one that was a challenge
for Will. Well, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, Mulder
thought complacently.
Yes, early to walk, early to talk, early to potty-train--Will
had been a super child. Scully had named Will. Mulder had been
worried about the two middle names; he'd heard sometimes women
who didn't really plan on having a second child gave their kid
all the baby names they liked, and he didn't want his little boy
to be an only child. Will had been named after his two
grandfathers, and it was also Mulder's own middle name, but as
for the other two he hadn't known where Scully had come up with
them. She said she just liked them, that she'd had a really
strong feeling about what the baby should be called. "You
can name the next one, Mulder," she said generously, and so
he had let her, for he was anxious to keep the peace with
Scully. Ah, yes, the peace with Scully, he thought.
He walked into the kitchen. There she was, FBI Special Agent
Dana Scully, his wife, and the mother of his children. God, she
was so beautiful. She was trying to get dinner on the table,
hampered, no doubt, by the presence of their second child, the
three-year-old, Fox Jr., who had stuck a flexible straw up his
nose and was crying.
"Hey, buddy," Mulder said to the child. The little
boy ran over to him and hugged him around the leg. "High
five," he said and extended his palm. Fox Jr. swatted at
him, missing his hand completely. Hmm, thought Mulder. Fox Jr.'s
motor skills didn't seem that great. He'd shared these concerns
with Scully who had reassured him that all children developed at
different rates, and that just because Will had been able to
shuffle a deck of cards at the age of four months, it didn't
mean that there was anything wrong with little Fox.
"Hi, Mulder," she smiled at him sweetly. "How
was your day?"
"Ehh," he replied. Work was pretty stressful,
because although no one could have foreseen it, Mulder had risen
high in the ranks of the FBI. He was now a Deputy Director, just
one step away from being the Director of the entire FBI. Some
people thought he would be the Director one day, he had risen so
high and so quickly. But he tried not to think about it. Screw
it, Mulder thought. It was all so political.
Secretly he had been very surprised by his success, and he
thought that Scully had been, too, although she'd never said it
in so many words. He sighed. Sometimes he longed for the old
days, when it was just him and Scully, working the X-Files
together. The X-files had become a large division now under his
direction, with many, many agents. It was great; he had the
jurisdiction to authorize investigations on pretty much anything
he wanted, and he did. Except for things like people who saw an
image of the Virgin Mary in a tortilla or something. He avoided
the religious ones; he did *not* need the ACLU on his ass.
Scully still worked in the X-Files division, as did her former
partners, John Doggett and Monica Reyes. Scully was now director
of the science division. Mulder had been a little worried about
a perceived conflict of interest, seeing as how Scully made a
lot of money, although she had worked in government for a long
time. Get over it, boys, he thought, she's a GS-21. They were
always short of money; those preschools that could challenge
Will were pretty spendy, and Mulder had to keep his nose to the
grindstone.
But how had he started his rise to the top? Mulder thought it
had begun when Will was about three. He'd taken his little son
to work with him a couple of times, and all of a sudden things
had started to change. They'd been in a meeting with Skinner,
who still had a thing for Scully. Skinner had sent Mulder on all
sorts of terrible assignments when he and Scully had first been
married. Khartoum in the spring, thought Mulder; that had been a
bad one. Anyway, little Will had lisped, "I want my Daddy
home more," and just like that, he stopped getting crap
assignments. Then other things had started going his way, and
before you knew it, people were kowtowing to him like you
couldn't believe. He guessed it was because he was a family man
now, they trusted him with a lot more. Practically every time he
made a suggestion people agreed with him, saying, "Yes, and
that's a good thing." Jesus, he thought, it was like
working with Martha fucking Stewart.
Which reminded him of another thing about kids. You really
had to watch what you said around them. Scully had really been
on him about his language after one of the early daycare
directors told them that Will had quite a "potty
mouth," and that he wasn't picking it up from the nonverbal
one-year-olds at the center. Mulder had been surprised; he
thought that he had really cleaned up around home. He never used
swear words or vulgar language around the kids. Of course, he
still *thought* them. Quite a bit, actually.
"Mulder," said Scully, "will you take the boys
out in the back yard and watch them? I really need to get dinner
ready. Will and Fox have swimming lessons tonight," she
said archly.
He cheered up considerably. Yeah, it was Wednesday, swimming
lesson night, and one of the neighborhood moms would pick up
Will and Fox Jr. and take them to the Y. Then he and Scully
would have some "alone time." He walked over to where
she stood by the sink and pressed up against her, sliding his
hands around her waist. He bent down and kissed her neck. God,
she was beautiful. "So, Scully," he murmured,
"how would you like to--"
"Daddy!" It was Will.
"Hey, buddy," Mulder said unenthusiastically. Yeah,
people had been right about one thing: Kids really messed up
your sex life. It had always been that way, even when Will was a
baby. It was like the kid just *knew*, like he had sixth sense
or something. Mulder had put in a lot of overtime to pay for
babysitters and hotels, because he and Scully were still in love
and their sex life was still great. But for a while he had been
able to count on one hand the number of times he'd had sex with
her in his own house after they'd had the baby. Then he had
discovered something, something very unusual. He'd been making
love to Scully, thinking about baseball, wondering how many of
the old stadiums from his childhood were still standing, when it
had come into his mind: brick wall.
Brick wall.
And it was the damnedest thing: For the first time, no
interruption from the kid! It was a technique he used more and
more, and even if it didn't work as well as thinking about
baseball, at least he was getting some.
"Mulder, could you open this jar of pickles for me,
please?" Scully said.
They were all in the kitchen now, all four of them, and the
dog. Christ, what a circus, thought Mulder. "Unnh," he
said. The jar lid was on really tight. He tried a couple of more
times to open it.
"Run some hot water over it, Mulder," she said.
"I did," he said. "It's on really tight. I'll
go get the pliers." He rummaged around in the junk drawer.
"Here, Mommy!" Will was holding the jar of pickles,
now open, up to Scully.
"Thanks, sweetie," she beamed down at him.
"You're my strong little guy, aren't you?" she ruffled
his hair affectionately.
"I loosened it up, for Chrissakes," Mulder
muttered.
"Mulder," Scully said, tapping her lips with her
fingers. "Mouth," she added, looking meaningfully at
Will.
"Mom, can I feed Chipper Jr.?" asked Will.
"Sure, honey, have Daddy help you with the dog food
can," she said.
Mulder got a beer out of the fridge. "So, Scully, did I
tell you what happened with that case at work, the one with that
guy who was--" He nearly stepped on the dog. Will was
putting some food in the pet dish. "The one who--"
Scully was looking around. "Mulder, could you find the
metal pop-top from the dog food can? I don't want the boys
getting cut on it."
He took a drink of beer and looked around the kitchen.
"I don't see it, Scully." He picked up the can.
"I don't think it had a pop- top."
"Of course it had a pop-top, Mulder," she said,
annoyed. "*Will* opened it. What do you think he used, his
bare hands?"
He sighed. "Come on, guys, let's get out of the kitchen
and leave Mom alone." He grabbed another beer and picked up
Fox Jr., who had hit himself in the face with the flyswatter and
was crying.
He settled down in a lawn chair on the deck and finished his
beer. The boys were playing in the yard. Fox Jr. was crying
again; his ball had rolled under the car for about the tenth
time. "I'll get it for you, buddy," Mulder said,
hauling himself out of his chair. He retrieved the ball, then
knelt down next to his son. "See, if you roll the ball this
way, it won't go under Daddy's car," Mulder explained
gently. Fox Jr. looked up at him blankly.
Oh, boy, he thought. I sure as hell hope Scully knows what
she's talking about.
He went back to the deck and twisted the cap off his second
beer. He watched the boys at play. For brothers, they weren't
very much alike, in behavior or appearance. Will was extremely
fair, while Fox Jr. was the image of himself, and there were all
sorts of fond looks and "wink-wink, nudge-nudge"
whenever someone asked Fox Jr., "Whose little boy are
you?" Not that Fox Jr. ever responded, of course. Will
didn't look like him, or Scully, or really anybody in either of
their families. His mother had blond hair, and Scully was a
redhead, so he knew the drill about recessive genes, as did
Scully, being that she was a medical doctor and all, but Will
seemed, well, just so *unlike* them ... so ... what was the
word? ... he just couldn't think of it....
Will was trying to show Fox Jr. how to swing the plastic bat
they'd gotten him for his birthday. He was really good to his
younger brother, Mulder thought. Mulder had been the one who had
pushed for a second child; he wanted Will to have a sibling,
preferably one who wouldn't be abducted by ... what was the
word? ... he just couldn't think of it.... God, that second beer
had really hit him. Fox Jr. was crying again. His ball had
rolled under the car for ... what ... the twentieth time? Mulder
held the cold beer bottle against his forehead. "Jesus, not
again...." He leaned forward in his chair.
"I'll get it for him, Daddy," Will called out.
Mulder knew he should go get the ball; Scully didn't like for
the boys to be in the driveway, but what the hell, that Will was
one competent kid. He glanced over at the car; the ball was
really under there.
"Need some help, guys?" he called out. Fox Jr. came
running over to him with the ball.
"Will liff caw," he lisped. Mulder closed his eyes.
Speech therapy. How much was that going to set him back? Will
came up on the deck.
"Hey, good job on getting that ball," said Mulder.
"Bet you had to crawl under there pretty far, huh? Don't
tell Mommy, okay, buddy?"
"I lifted it up, Daddy."
"Sure you did, honey," he said. "How about
getting Daddy another beer? Here, you can put this empty one in
the recycling bin. Here's the bottle cap." Will took the
beer bottle and aluminum bottle cap and ran into the garage.
"And, Will," called Mulder. "Make sure you put
the bottle cap in the aluminum bin. Don't put it in your pocket
and forget about it." The kid was always hoarding bottle
caps, and one of them had seriously fucked up the vacuum
cleaner. Scully had been furious over that one. Speaking of
Scully, here she was, starting to bring dinner out onto the
deck. He looked at his watch. How long until the boys left for
swimming lessons? He looked over at her; their eyes met, and she
parted her lips slightly and gave him "The Look." God,
would 7:00 o'clock never come?
Will ran over with the beer. "Here, Daddy. One, two,
three...." He counted with his little fingers. "That's
three beers, right, Dad?"
Mulder frowned at him.
Scully raised her eyebrows. "You sure you want that
third beer, Mulder?"
"Yeah," he said, standing up and walking over to
her. "But that's not all I want...." he slipped his
hand around her waist.
"Play with us, Daddy! Play with us!" shouted Will,
tugging at Mulder.
Scully smiled up at him. "Just until I get dinner out
here. They'll be gone soon, okay?"
"Okay," he said, leaning down to kiss her. "OWW!
Will, do *not* hit Daddy with a baseball bat, I don't care if it
*is* plastic! You know the rules!" Great, thought Mulder,
now he'd have a great big red welt for "swimming lesson
night." That kid had some power in his swing. He limped
over to the lawn chair and drank part of his beer. See, there it
was again, he thought. Like the kid *knew* what he was thinking.
Scully didn't seem to have that problem with Will, just him. But
then she was his mother, and things were different with mothers
and sons; they didn't have that powerful father-son bond thing.
And in this one respect Will was exactly like him: Will, too,
had the intuiting thing that he, Mulder, had--had it big time,
in fact.
"Watch me, Daddy!" Will called out.
"I'm watching, buddy!"
Mulder knew he should play more with the boys, but frankly,
so many kids' games were really boring. Like Go Fish. He had
never, ever won a game of Go Fish with Will. Will just had this
uncanny ability to guess what was in Mulder's hand. And
Candyland was worse. "Bet you got a green one, Dad! Bet you
got a yellow one, Dad! I'll bet that's a red one, Dad,"
whenever it was Mulder's turn to draw a card. He was always
right. It was annoying. Yeah, Will was really good at games like
that. Mulder took another swig of beer. Who did that remind him
of?
"Hey, Scully," he called to her. "What was the
name of that kid?"
"What kid?" she said, bringing out a plate of
hamburgers.
"You know, that little mind-reading kid ... the one that
ended up in a nuclear reactor in Arizona...." But she
didn't answer him. Fox Jr. had soaked himself with the garden
hose and was crying.
He took another swig of beer. What *was* that kid's name,
anyway?
"Gibson Praise," said Scully, carrying Fox Jr. into
the house. "His name was Gibson Praise."
Right. Gibson Praise, that was the name. He finished his
beer. I wonder whatever happened to that kid? he mused. Poor
little freak.
Scully had mopped up Fox Jr. and they all sat down to dinner.
The phone rang and Scully went to answer it, leaving Mulder with
the unenviable job of making sure there were no forks or other
sharp pointy objects within reach of his younger son. Scully
came back and she didn't look pleased.
She knelt down beside his chair, leaning close to him.
"Mulder, I've got some bad news. Will's coach wants to talk
to one of us about the situation with his swimming, so you'll
have to take the boys to their lessons instead of letting them
go with Tommy's mother."
Mulder stared at her in disbelief. "Scully ... come
on!" he protested. "Why can't Timmy's mother talk to
the coach and then tell us what he said?"
"*Tommy's* mother." She put her hand on his thigh.
"Mulder, you know one of us has to talk to the coach. But
tell you what: while you're gone I'll call my mom and see if she
can come over and babysit for us for a few hours tonight. What
do you say?" she stroked his leg.
"I suppose," he said sullenly. He stood up.
"Well, guess I'll try to sober up a little bit before I
drive your sons all over Washington, D.C., Scully."
"Mulder, don't be that way," she said silkily.
"I'll make it up to you, I promise."
He stomped off into the house.
*****************
He stood leaning against the wall of the pool area, waiting
for Will's coach. He had to admit it, Will really was talented
in the pool. But why not? He, Mulder, had performed pretty well
in his red Speedo, back in the day. He was sure additional
swimming lessons were going to cost bucks. God.
"Mr. Mulder?" A tall man wearing swim trunks with a
whistle around his neck approached Mulder, smiling and extending
his hand.
"Hi." Mulder straightened up and shook the man's
hand.
"Hi, there, I'm Jim Iverson, Will's coach. I just wanted
to talk to you about some plans we might want to make for this
boy of yours. We might have a little Olympian on our
hands," he smiled broadly at Mulder.
Olympian? *BIG* bucks.
He was trying to take it all in when he noticed Fox Jr. by
the pool, gnawing on a rubber bathing cap. He ran over and
scooped him up. Fox Jr. didn't look so good; he had swallowed a
lot of pool water during his lesson, but then, he always did.
Scully said not to worry, all kids did that--well, not Will, of
course. He hoped she was right about Fox Jr. He had to trust
someone, and he wanted to believe. His cell phone rang.
"Mulder."
"Mulder, it's me. You'd better get home right
away."
"Your mom's coming over?"
"Mulder, it's someone from the Bureau, from the X-Files.
They called here trying to reach you. Apparently there's
something big happening over at Goddard regarding radio
transmissions from deep space; it's some kind of new signal
about a thousand times more powerful than the WOW signal,
actually."
"Your mom *is* coming over, right, Scully?"
"We'll see when you get home, Mulder." She hung up.
More powerful than the WOW signal? Could this be what he had
waited for all his life, proof of the existence of
extraterrestrial beings? "Come on, guys, let's get ready
and go," he called to Will, who was still in the pool.
Mulder blinked. From this angle it almost looked like the kid
was walking on the water. Probably some new expensive water
wings for his feet. He and Scully were really going to have to
sit down and talk.
****************
Friday night, clear and beautiful, all the stars were out.
It had been a thrilling two days. The new signal was proving
to be an exciting discovery, just as he'd hoped. WHAM--that was
the name the scientific community had given to the signal, based
on the position of the radio waves from deep space, between the
constellations of Orion and Sagittarius.
"Scully, let's get the kids and go for a walk around the
block *before they go to bed*," he said meaningfully.
"Sounds good." She smiled slowly at him. "And
when we get back," she said softly, running her hands down
his chest, "I'll tell you about a great, big, hard brick
wall ... really, *really* hard ... filled with hot, soft,
mortar...." She gave him "The Look."
Mulder grinned at her. "Oh, *baby*...."
"Daddy! Let's go for our walk!" Will was pulling at
him. They got their jackets and went out the front door. It was
a great night for stargazing.
Scully was holding Fox Jr.'s hand while he and Will were
walking ahead of them. Mulder knelt down beside his son and
pointed to the night sky. "See that star, Will? That big
one over there?"
"That blue giant binary star in the Gamma Regulus
quadrant, Daddy?"
"Uh ... yeah. Well," Mulder continued, "the
people at Daddy's work think that one of the planets going
around that star might have life on it. Isn't that
wonderful?"
Will looked at him. "On one of those planets? No,
Daddy." The child looked back at the stars. He pointed to a
star directly to the right of the source of the WHAM signal.
"It's that one." He dropped Mulder's hand and ran to
the edge of the sidewalk. Scully caught up to them; Fox Jr. was
asleep on her shoulder.
"Come on, Mulder, let's get the boys to bed."
Mulder rested his hand on the back of Scully's neck.
"Look," he whispered. "He's doing it again."
Will was in front of them, spinning around and around.
Scully smiled patiently. "Relax, Mulder. They all do
it."
"They do?"
"Yeah. I'm a medical doctor, I should know. Now come
on."
"Come on, Will," Mulder called to the child. Scully
was probably right. Why did he worry so? Strong, smart, healthy,
bright--that was his son: William Hunter Archer Mulder. What a
great kid.
Mulder liked being a family man.
It was a good thing.
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