Title: Domestic Inclinations Author: Gwinne E-mail: gwinne@yahoo.com Web site: http://www.dreamwater.org/xfileluv/Gwinne/Gwinne.html Archive: Gossamer, Spookys; otherwise, please ask Rating: PG-13 Keywords: MSR Spoilers: "Arcadia," "Emily," "Per Manum," "DeadAlive" Timeline: mostly late Season 6 Disclaimer: Yes, they still belong to the boys at 1013. DOMESTIC INCLINATIONS This is her routine. After the flight attendant brings their meal, after Mulder falls asleep, open-mouthed, across the aisle, she takes out something to read. There's a dog-eared copy of Benito Cereno in her bag, but she knows she's not going to read it. No, not today. Today, she pulls out Martha Stewart Living and Better Homes and Gardens. She also bought a copy of Working Mother from the newsstand while Mulder was in the bathroom, but she's not sure she's that brave. She's just looking at the pictures, idly flipping pages and trying to imagine a home. Sometimes, if she lets herself, she even imagines Mulder watching TV in the hypothetical den while the hypothetical baby sleeps in the nursery upstairs. This has been building in her for a long time. Since her remission and reckless decision to adopt a dying three-year-old. Since Mulder leaned in to kiss her. Since he held her hand in the hospital, trying hard to make her laugh, but not so hard that she would rip open her stitches. In this post-cancer, post-gunshot world, she's finally ready to play house. * * * When they get back from California, she schedules an appointment with a reproductive endocrinologist. He takes vials of her blood, tests for levels of estrogen and progesterone. To a woman who hasn't ovulated in years, he makes getting pregnant seem remarkably easy. Donor egg, donor sperm, lots of synthetic hormones, and bam, baby in a petri dish. Petrie. Of all names he could have chosen, why that one? Why couldn't he be serious for once? Her thirty-fifth birthday and she was horny as hell, and there's Mulder, cracking jokes. "Admit it," he said, "you just want to play house." And if the doorbell hadn't rung, she probably would have said, "you know, you're right, I do." They were back in San Diego, only miles from where her daughter's death was marked by an empty grave, where her nephew had just taken his first tentative steps across the kitchen floor. And if that wasn't bad enough, her period started a week early, a cramp-wracked reminder of her body's failure to conceive. So she threw a pair of gloves in his face and walked away. * * * "Hey, Scully," he says, swallowing an oversized bite of a turkey sub, "what do you know about beds?" "Excuse me?" she says so quickly she nearly chokes. Then she remembers the odd moment that morning when he eyed the Pottery Barn catalogue alongside their report in her laptop case. He must have been gearing up all day to make a smart remark. "You know. Rectangular, generally made of wood or metal. You sleep in them." She opts for the appropriate neutral, verging-on-sarcastic response. "You, however, do not." She sets down the paper cup of iced tea and raises an eyebrow for good measure. "Well, here's the thing." He puts his hand over his mouth to stifle a burp, and she can't help but think it's the right segue. "Since the waterbed sprung a leak, I've been sleeping on the couch. I'm too old for this, Scully. My back is killing me." She pouts a little. It's days like this she's grateful to be back in the basement, talking about psychic surgery and men who turn into dogs. "So you're going to buy a big boy bed?" she says and gives him a genuine smile. He nods once, cheeks puffed out like he did that day for Emily, pretending to be Mr. Potato Head. "And I thought maybe it would be a good idea if you came." He pauses at his choice of words, and she's sure she can see him blush. "Well, you are a doctor." "I'm a forensic pathologist, Mulder, not a chiropractor." "Yeah, I know, I just thought that it would be good to have someone who's actually slept in a bed for the bulk of her adult life with me when I make what will inevitably be a life-changing purchase." "Inevitably." Six years of partnership has come down to this. She's already picturing dark sheets on a pillow top mattress, the dip in the center as his body curves towards hers. "How about Saturday?" * * * All week acronyms swirl in her head. FSH, IVF, hCG. The one she likes best: GIFT. It seems appropriate, given what she's about to ask. * * * "Why are you smiling?" She's trying to explain the importance of thread counts when buying sheets, the difference between sateen and Egyptian cotton and silk blends, and stops mid-sentence. Mulder's smiling--grinning, actually--and she has no idea why. "You're good at this." "At?" "Mattresses, sheets, interior design." "And?" There's a bit of fear mixed with the frustration in her voice. "Don't take this the wrong way, Scully, but I just never saw this in you. You're not exactly domestically inclined." "I see." She bites the inside of her cheek. "No, no, Scully. I like it." He pauses, and she can tell by the set of his jaw that he thinks he'll regret what he's about to say. He'll say it anyway. He always does. "But after six years, you're still an enigma to me." What is this thing that stretches between them? She contemplates the space between their bodies, the shape it makes in the evening light of his apartment. She shrugs. "New hobby," she offers, which is as close to the truth she can tell him without actually telling him how she's been spending her days, what her hopes are. "After Arcadia, I decided to get some new furniture." "I'd think after Arcadia, the last thing you'd want is new furniture. Just be sure your apartment complex doesn't have any CC and Rs that pertain to the color of your couch." She shapes her mouth into something that resembles a smile and settles into the black leather. In the house of her dreams, his living room furniture stays in the den. * * * She's gone up and down the elevator three times already, rearranging words in her head like the wooden pieces of a Scrabble game. She's never felt so desperate, so reckless, so angry all at once. Totally hormonal, she thinks, though she's not sure which hormone is calling the shots. Since nine o'clock this morning, she has learned that Mulder kept her ova hidden like a family secret, vowed never to speak to her partner again, found out her eggs are, somehow, miraculously viable, and decided to ask her best friend to father her child. He has gone to the ends of the earth to save Scully's life, but will he give Dana the one thing that can save her soul? It's all too much. She knocks on his door with shaky hands. "Scully, come on in." His voice sounds like it did that night in Oregon when she knocked on his door in her robe. "Can I get you something? Coffee? Water?" He has too much energy and she doesn't have any, standing in his doorway with keys heavy in her hand. She thinks of sperm cells swimming, frantic against the solid mass of the egg. She wills herself to speak. "Got anything stronger?" He nods once, acknowledging that this isn't a casual get-together, one of their non-dates when they eat greasy pizza in casual clothes and talk about anything but work. "I've got some bourbon around here somewhere. How does that sound?" "Good. Thanks." She sits on the seldom-used chair in the corner of the room and listens to the sounds of Mulder in the kitchen, ice cubes clinking against glass. She catches herself taking an inventory of his possessions--the old posters, the cheap TV stand, the stacks of half-read books and magazines--that haven't changed since that first day they agreed to work at his apartment. He's still Mulder, the quintessential bachelor; how can she ask him to give that up? "Here you go." Their hands brush as he hands her the glass and she trembles. She hates that he can do this to her, and she's glad she's still Agent Scully in her black suit. It's Dana who wants him to trade the fish tank for a baby carriage, Dana who wants to have a child. She takes a sip, holding the alcohol in her mouth. When she swallows, she's sure he can hear it across the room. They're sitting in identical poses, shoulders tight, hunched over, jaws set. She sets the chunky glass on an old copy of the New York Times, the closest thing he has to a coaster. "Mulder," she finally says, "there's something I need, something I want. . . to ask. . . you, and I'm not sure how to say this. I've been thinking about it all day. . ." "Just spit it out, Scully." "Okay," she exhales. "I went to Zeus Genetics today. They're cutting edge, as far as fertility treatments go. I had them look at the specimen you gave me, and, the good thing is, it seems the ova are viable." She gives him a weak smile. This is the easy part, reciting facts the way she gives a report to Skinner. "That's wonderful," he says, the way he says, "that's a wonderful theory, Scully, but do you want to know what I think?" "But Dr. Parenti thinks it would be best if we got started right away." You're thirty-five, the doctor reminded her this morning; after thirty-five a woman's chances of conceiving drop considerably. My chances of conceiving even with medical intervention are already next to nothing, she wanted to say, so what's another month. "I know the timing is awful, Mulder, but I need to do this. I need to try." She's not sure when the tears started, but Mulder is on his knees in front of her, wiping her cheeks with his thumbs. "Mulder," her voice cracks, "Mulder, I was really angry this morning but I think I understand why you did what you did. And the fact that you kept my ova after all these years, even after the doctor said they weren't viable, that says a lot." She leans down until her forehead presses against his. "Mulder, I want to do this but I can't do it alone." He pulls away and cradles her chin in his hand. "Scully, whatever you decide to do, I will be there for you, you have to know that." "I know. It's just. . ." She pauses long enough to slow her heart. She can feel her pulse thrumming in her neck. "I always thought that when I had a child it would be with someone I loved." She places her hands against the cotton of his shirt. "I want my child to know more about her father than his donor number and the color of his eyes." She pauses, drawing feather-light circles on his chest with her index finger. "Mulder," she whispers, "will you help me?" "Oh, Scully," he says, never taking his hands from her face. "I don't. . . I don't know what to say." "I know it's a lot to ask. I know it would change everything. Please, Mulder, just think about it." * * * When she opens the door, she's not surprised to find Mulder sprawled on her new couch, feet up on the coffee table. She sets her keys on the console, one of those pieces that always looks right in a catalogue but seems awkward once you get it home. Mulder, on the other hand, looks like he belongs here. All he needs is a remote control and basketball on a big screen TV. "Well?" he asks impatiently as she hangs up her coat. "Well," Scully says, willing herself not to smile. She can't allow herself that indulgence, not yet, when so much is subject to change. She shoves a few overpriced throw pillows out of the way and sits down next to him. "It's still too early to say anything for sure, Mulder, but they took some blood to see what my hCG level is." "hCG?" he asks, as if he hasn't been reading up on invitro fertilization for weeks. "Human chorionic gonadotropin. It's the hormone that indicates pregnancy, Mulder. And," she takes a deep breath, "my hCG level seems to be rising." "It worked? You're. . .we're. . . ?" "Yeah." "Wow," he says, running his hands through his hair until it stands up. "Wow." "Yeah." She smiles and places her right hand against her belly, as flat now as it was when she was eighteen and ran five miles a day. "You feel okay?" He wraps his hand around hers, his thumb caressing her navel through the thin silk of her blouse. "I feel great, Mulder. Assuming everything's okay, I can probably look forward to feeling sick in a week or so." His hand is warm against hers, and, for a moment, she thinks about what it will be like for the next nine months, sharing the daily changes in her body with him. She sighs when he pulls his hand away, wiping his palm against his jeans. Already everything has changed. She fears there's regret in his silence, heavy as her wool coat on this lovely spring day. "Well, how about I take you to dinner? You know, to celebrate?" "That sounds nice. Just let me get changed, okay?" On her way to the bedroom, she squeezes him on the shoulder, a small reassurance that she's still who she was that afternoon, when she left him at work to itemize receipts. It's so strange, she thinks, a part of him is growing inside me and we've never even kissed. As she puts on fresh lipstick, she marvels that she doesn't look any different, this new life growing inside her. She touches the small lines at the corners of her eyes, trying to remember when they first appeared. She knows some of Dr. Parenti's patients are much older than her, but thirty-five suddenly seems too old to be a first time mother. "You'll need to slow down, Dana," he said less than an hour ago, "especially during the first trimester." When she comes back, Mulder is holding a small box in his hand, grinning like he does over a new case. "Mulder?" she says in her cautious Agent Scully voice. "Mulder, what's in the box?" He hands it to her and she weighs it in her hands. It's so light it feels empty, but it's the size of a box you'd put a ring box inside, just to make things difficult. She pulls the lid off, and there's a pair of tiny pink socks, the length of the foot no bigger than her thumb. They're as soft as the cashmere sweaters her mother used to wear when she was a girl. She fingers the tiny ruffles along the cuff. "Oh, Mulder," she breathes, "they're perfect." * * * Five days later, she's not surprised to find two half moons of blood on her underwear. A miracle, she remembers Mulder say, that was not meant to be. She's not sure how to tell him that the pregnancy is over before it really began, before the first tinge of nausea or fatigue. She's not sure how to tell him she doesn't know if she wants to do this again, like a child afraid to climb back on her two-wheeler after the first spill on the driveway. So she leaves a message on his voice mail and stays in her pajamas all day. He shows up at six o'clock, holding a take-out bag to his chest. "Hey," he says, as she shuffles back to the couch, stepping on the rolled cuffs of her pajamas. "You feeling okay?" "Just a little crampy." She folds her legs under her and pulls a chenille throw up to her chin. She knows if she took her temperature it would be lower than it has been in weeks. "Hungry? I got dumplings and that sauce you like." He's in the kitchen, rooting around for plates and silverware. When he looks to her for an answer, she shrugs. She doesn't want him to see her like this but she doesn't have the energy to play stoic Agent Scully right now. "Hey, Scully, what do you think of Hope?" he asks when he finally sits down. "Hope?" "For a girl." "Oh, Mulder." She fills her lungs all the way, a deep diaphragmatic breath, and exhales slowly. "There's not going to be any baby. Not this time." His response is a single nod, a gesture that could mean anything from "please continue" to complete disbelief. "It's called a chemical pregnancy. The body produces the right hormones but the embryo doesn't develop. Most women who have early miscarriages don't even know they were pregnant. I wouldn't have known if I weren't being monitored so closely." "You're sure, then." His palms, raised to his mouth, are pressed together as in prayer. "I took a home pregnancy test. Two, actually. Both were negative." She knows she'll crack like fine china if he lets himself cry, so she picks at invisible threads on the couch. If she'd gone to work, she might have been spared this conversation. "So that's it? The baby plan didn't work out so it's back to business as usual?" When she looks up, the first thing she sees is the hard set of his jaw. He's in fight mode, and she doesn't have the energy for this, not now, with her uterus tight as a clenched fist. "I didn't say that." "I mean, I'm sitting in a meeting writing baby names on a sheet of paper while you're having a miscarriage and you don't even think about calling me?" "It's not a real miscarriage, Mulder. There wasn't even a heartbeat." It's easier to tell him that, to tell herself that, than to think about the loss of the child that could have been. Mulder's daughter, Hope. "Thank you, Dr. Scully. I feel so much better." He laughs a small bitter laugh and crosses his arms against his chest. She knows this is just the beginning. "Mulder, can we please not do this? I don't have the energy to do this right now." Wedged between the couch cushions, there's a dime that must have fallen out of his pocket and a single used Kleenex. She swipes it deliberately under her eyes. "And when you do, you won't want to talk about it." She's been waiting all day for this, the moment he jumps up from the couch and paces frantically around the room, the moment he yells long enough and loud enough for her to let go. As he speaks, she shreds the tissue, bits of dust settling on her lap. "I'm good enough to jerk off into a cup so you can have one half of the necessary genetic material for a kid, but god forbid I ask you to talk about what you're feeling. I mean, what were you thinking, Scully? That I would disappear from your life the minute you got pregnant? We're *partners*. Does that mean anything to you?" "Of course it does! And how dare you insinuate that I don't care about you or want you in our child's life." The pronoun reverberates through her like a blow to the chest. What slipped out of her body today was their child. To her, loss is tangible as a wrapped maxi pad in the trashcan. To him, it's an idea that fits in a miniature pair of socks. She swipes her drippy nose on the sleeve of her sweatshirt. "I wanted this baby, Mulder. I wanted this baby from the minute I asked you to be her father." His body sags, and he pulls her against him when he sits down. "I know you did." He hands her a handkerchief from his inside pocket, a lingering habit from her cancer days. It smells like sunflower seeds when she lifts it to her face. "I'm so sorry, Scully." "I am too." There's not an apology big enough to hold a loss as small and weighty as their combined cells. They sit together as dusk turns to dark, bodies heavy against the couch cushions and each other. If this is domesticity, she's not sure she wants it. * * * When spring comes again, he asks her to go shopping. "Time to stop living like a frat boy," he says. "I mean, if I want my girlfriend to come over and watch a movie, I don't want to be embarrassed by the decor." "I see." This is all so new--sharing bad movies and popcorn--and she's not sure she likes being his "girlfriend." A year ago, they thought they were having a child together. And when she finally got up the nerve to ask, he admitted he'd almost given her a ring that day. It's taken a year for her to catch up, a year to realize that kissing, love, and baby carriages don't always follow the order of the child's rhyme. It's taken a year for her to realize that Mulder's her family, whether or not their DNA ever combines in her womb. "So what are we buying? A new couch?" "What's wrong with my couch? I'll have you know that this couch is a chick magnet." He relaxes into the black leather, his long arm wrapping around to squeeze her shoulder. "Well, Mulder, maybe you'd better find yourself a chick." She reaches up and runs her palm over the back of his hand. "You know I'm kidding, right? I have a lot of good memories on this couch." "Oh, you do, do you? Well, how about one more?" He waggles his eyebrows and cranes his neck around to kiss her. "Is this how you thought it would be?" she asks. She regrets it instantly, the question too heavy for a sun-streaked morning in May. She pulls his hand down from her shoulder to hold it, stroking his long fingers with her own. "What do you mean?" "You and me, together. Sitting on your couch on a Sunday morning, just drinking coffee and reading the newspaper." "Sure," he pauses, and she knows he's trying to decide whether or not to tell her something. She knows, if she waits, he will. "Last year," he clears his throat, "when we really got started. . ." "After the miscarriage?" "Yeah." He shifts her onto his lap, and she snuggles against him, burrowing her nose into his neck. "I used to think about what it would be like being a family with you. I imagined sitting here on this ratty old couch or your fancy new couch and watching you feed our kid." He fills the space between sentences with long strokes down her back. "Those few days when you were pregnant, Scully. . . I wanted that baby so much. But being here with you now, I wouldn't change it for anything." She kisses the salty place where neck curves into shoulder, feeling more at home than she has in a long time. "I love you, Mulder." * * * The next time she's pregnant is a lifetime away, after two more failed attempts at IVF, after Mulder has given her much more than semen in a cup. The next time she's pregnant, she's too busy burying her lover to worry about preparing a nursery or buying a layette. For most of three trimesters, catalogs from Pottery Barn Kids lie unread in the basket next to her coffee table. Now, with just three weeks to go, she maneuvers herself around the apartment carefully, pausing to fluff a decorative pillow or arrange a throw over the arm of the couch. Her four rooms are starting to resemble a home, a bassinet in the corner of the bedroom, a sinkful of dishes in the kitchen. She's no Martha Stewart, but she thinks she'd like to share her mother's recipe for scones with her son, to make a scrapbook of autumn leaves with her daughter. She's clearing out space in the dresser for Mulder, a drawer for a few pair of boxers and socks, an extra gray t-shirt, for those late nights he doesn't want to drive home. Since he's back from the dead and unemployed, he's been spending a lot of time at her place, the designated tall person to pull boxes from high shelves and assemble baby furniture, even though she's better with her hands than he. She's clearing out space for Mulder when she finds a small box shoved to the back of her underwear drawer, under some camisoles and satin nighties she hasn't worn in years. Inside, she finds the pair of baby pink socks Mulder gave her that first day they thought they might be a family. She turns them over in her hand a few times, thinking about the small feet she hopes to put in them some day. She hasn't told Mulder, but this time, at least, they're having a boy. Finally, she thinks, she has the home of her dreams. FIN Author's note: This story began as a humble attempt to explain Scully's ever-changing decor, the "furniture fic" I promised alanna. This story wouldn't be this story without her encouragement and her good advice. My gratitude and a pot of Lady Grey tea to Bonetree, for her friendship and for her enthusiastic beta on-the-spot.