Chapter 1
"Mrs. Prescott?" a female voice asked when I answered the phone.
"This is Dana Scully, may I ask who's calling?"
"I'm sorry, I must have dialed the wrong number," she apologized.
"No, this is the Prescott residence," I assured her quickly.
"Oh," she paused briefly. "This is Mrs. Bothwell from the Fairfax Academy."
"Fairfax Academy?" I was confused.
"Yes, Lisa Prescott enrolled her son Jordan in our preschool program last spring. He was supposed to begin on the 11th."
"I had no idea. I'm Jordan's legal guardian," I explained.
"Legal guardian?" Mrs. Bothwell's voice rose in surprise.
"Yes," I paused. There was never a good way to break this news, so I decided to be blunt. "Chris and Lisa Prescott were killed in a car accident last June."
"Oh, my...I'm so sorry," she stuttered.
"That's all right, you had no way of knowing." I didn't want to dwell on the subject, so I ploughed ahead. "If Lisa enrolled Jordan in preschool, I think he should go."
"Do you not want him to?" Mrs. Bothwell sounded concerned.
"I honestly hadn't even thought about it," I assured her. "I'd like to discuss it with my husband, but I'm sure he'll want to respect the Prescotts' wishes as well."
"Since you are now legal guardians, you and Mr. Scully will have to come down and fill out some paperwork."
"My husband's name is Fox Mulder and just name a time -- we'll be there."
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have assumed," she apologized again.
After assuring her it was quite all right, we agreed that I should take a couple of days to prepare Jordan and on Monday, September 18th, he would start school. Mrs. Bothwell told me there was no rush for the paperwork, and if Mulder was free on the 18th, we could fill everything out then.
When Mulder called at 11, I told him about the call. He agreed immediately that if Chris and Lisa had wanted Jordan to attend, then we should honor their wishes.
"And how do you feel about it?" Mulder could read me like a book, even over the phone.
"I don't know," I sighed. "At first I thought he wasn't ready, but then I began to wonder if it was actually me that wasn't ready."
"I think it will take some adjusting for everyone, Scully, but I think it's a good idea for Jordan to get some socialization."
"I know," I heaved another sigh.
"Give it some time, see how Jordan adjusts. If it's not working, we can always pull him out," Mulder's tone was gentle. "What does Jordan think?"
"I haven't mentioned it to him yet. I was waiting until I talked to you. I'll talk to him at lunch time."
I decided to make Jordan's favorite, grilled cheese sandwiches, in case he didn't take to the idea very well. I'm not sure who I thought the food would calm down more, him or me. For Megan I cooked some peas. She loved to eat them by picking them up one at a time with her chubby little fingers. For the main part of her meal, I heated up some chicken soup. Originally I'd thought soups and stews would be too difficult to make, but after spending about 15 minutes on the internet I'd discovered it was really very easy. Since then I'd made all of Megan's food myself. Soup was the kind of food I was *allowed* to feed to her. If I tried to give her the peas, she would turn her face away, her little mouth firmly shut.
While Megan was happily feeding herself, I broached the subject of school with Jordan.
"Do you remember going to visit a school?"
He furrowed his brow thoughtfully while he chewed.
"Yes, my mom said I would be going there in the fall. Is it fall?" He was very matter of fact.
I'd been worried that discussing it with Jordan would bring up some bad memories, but he seemed unconcerned.
"Yes, it is," I smiled.
"Do I start today?" his eyes lit up.
"No, not today," I laughed. "Not until Monday. Tomorrow we should go and get you some new clothes and a backpack."
"And a lunch pail?" he added eagerly.
"You won't be staying for lunch, Jordan. You'll only be going for the morning," I explained.
"Okay," he shrugged and took another bite of his sandwich. He was obviously more comfortable with the whole idea than I was.
While we were talking Megan had been busy with her peas. When she finished them she began to coo to herself. I had just finished talking to Jordan when I heard a distinctive 'maa' from her. When I turned to look at her, she was holding her plastic dish upside down.
"Finished are you?" I chuckled as I reached for her soup.
Jordan was still calling us Mulder and Dana, but whenever we talked to Megan we called ourselves mommy and daddy. Megan tended to babble a lot, but I couldn't help wondering if she'd purposely tried to get my attention.
Once the lunch dishes were done and both kids were down for their naps, I went to the study to do some work. When Mulder had first gone back to work, the reams of paperwork had quickly gotten the better of him. I'd always done the majority of it and to top it off, he was having to do more of the legwork in the investigations. When he told me he was going to have to start working at night and on the weekends to catch up and then keep up, I'd quickly offered to help. I'd put in two full days one weekend to catch him up and by putting in a couple of hours every afternoon, and a couple on the weekend, I was able to keep up with the load.
Since our marriage, Mulder had only gone out of town twice. The first case had only been overnight, so that hadn't been too bad. But the second had been three nights. Even though we talked every night, I was beside myself with loneliness. Megan and Jordan had kept me very busy during the day, but once they were in bed, the house seemed huge and empty. I couldn't figure out how my mother had survived months at a time; after two days I was ready to pack up the kids and fly out to Nevada to be with Mulder.
"Don't do all of your work during the day," my mother had suggested when I'd called to moan. "I always did the laundry at night. And contrary to what you kids thought, you weren't wearing handmade sweaters due a lack of funds -- I had to do something to keep myself busy."
I'd felt a little less sorry for myself after talking to my mother, but not much. When Mulder came home late in the evening on the fourth day, he'd tackled me in the foyer. The first words we'd spoken were each other's names as we'd made love up against the archway that led into the living room.
"Welcome home," I'd chuckled breathlessly, my body still quivering from my tremendous orgasm.
"Mmm," he'd breathed as he nuzzled my neck. "Have a mentioned how happy I am that the kids are sound sleepers?"
"I seem to remember you telling me that at least one other time," I'd grinned.
"I have a vague recollection," he'd tried to keep his voice serious.
"You just want me to remind you later," I'd accused.
"Would I be that transparent?"
The loudest we'd ever been when having sex was the first time I'd given Mulder a blowjob. He'd bellowed my name so loud when he came, I'd been half expecting the neighbors to call the police on us. The kids, however, had slept peacefully through Mulder's vocalization.
"Yeah, you would," I'd affirmed while exploring the underside of his jaw with my lips.
"Does that mean you won't remind me later?"
"I didn't say that," I'd lowered my voice.
"Wow," he'd drawn in a shaky breath. "I like this coming home thing, but even though the sex was fantastic, I don't ever want to be away from you this long again."
"Everyone was impressed with how quickly you solved this case, Mulder. Skinner called to tell me." My legs were still wrapped around his waist.
"Incentive," he'd waggled his eyebrows at me. "And it wasn't an X-File. There was nothing unusual about this serial killer, except for his brutality. It was actually you who helped me put all the pieces together, Scully -- after you looked at the autopsy reports. I don't understand why no one else saw it."
"I had some incentive of my own," I'd confessed as I nibbled on his neck. "I think the coroner was daunted by the condition of the bodies. It took fresh eyes to see the killer was making his true intent with all of that post-mortem brutality."
"Once you told me the ring finger had been removed pre-mortem, it all fell into place. All of that carnage because of infidelity," he'd shaken his head.
"I think it went deeper than that, Mulder," I'd contradicted. "This man must have had a long history of being hurt by women. His wife's affair was just the last straw. Didn't the fact that he was one of the team throw you off?"
"It helped actually. He'd been asking me a lot of questions about our marriage and if I trusted you to be by yourself."
"So the ring finger was the last piece of the puzzle," I'd nodded. "Did you find why it escalated beyond his wife?"
"It had become almost like a crusade to him. At first it was women he knew were being unfaithful, then he only had to suspect and he suspected pretty much every woman," Mulder had explained as he set me down.
That had been two weeks ago and Mulder was still receiving pats on the back. VICAP was trying to woo him, but Mulder still preferred to investigate the cases everyone else discarded. I was beginning to wonder if VICAP was pretending their cases had paranormal leanings just to get Mulder's help, but I kept that thought to myself.
My cue to wrap up my work was Megan's voice on the monitor. Once the kids had their afternoon snack, I had an hour or so to play with them before Mulder got home. Megan was always the first to hear the car pull into the driveway; laughing and clapping her hands. The kids knew that I always got the first kiss, but then Mulder was all theirs.
Regardless of what had happened at work, Mulder always left it at the door. While they played, I would get supper. Initially I worried that the wrestling matches were too much for Megan, but she was feisty and held her own. She'd invited herself into the rough play. At first she'd just watched and laughed as Mulder and Jordan wrestled, but then one day she'd crawled into the breech and smacked Mulder on the head with her rattle. His reaction of "Hey!" had only made her laugh uproariously.
Jordan understood that he had to be gentle with Megan, even if she was a little rough. After she'd brought him to tears once by hitting him on the head with a toy, she'd never done it again. Seemingly, she'd learned quickly what was acceptable and what wasn't. She was never rough with me and only played that way in the hour before dinner.
I'd been afraid that she might play rough with other kids at the park, but she'd always been as gentle as a lamb. In fact, one day she'd been playing with another little girl nicely at the beach when the little girl had decided to swat Megan over her head with her shovel. Megan hadn't cried or retaliated, she'd just looked up at me with a very puzzled look on her face. It was almost as if she'd been saying, "Doesn't she know it isn't rough play time?"
Megan, however, had become quite concerned when the little girl had her hands slapped by her mother. When the little girl began to cry, Megan had looked up at me in horror, tears welling up in her own eyes.
Now that Megan was crawling and pulling herself up, I'd occasionally had to speak to her sternly about touching things. She would obey me immediately, but more often than not she would try the same thing with Mulder, to see what his reaction would be. She would watch him intently and as soon as his eyebrows shot up, she would stop what she was doing, grin at him and then move on to something she knew she was allowed to touch.
Jordan was a breeze to discipline. He couldn't stand the idea of either Mulder or me being angry with him. Once I'd had to speak with him about not coming in from the backyard when he was called. He'd broken down into tears and had been exceptionally well-behaved for the rest of the day, continually looking for my approval. I'd had a sneaking suspicion about what had been bothering him, so when I tucked him in that night I assured him that no matter what happened, Mulder and I were staying.
"But you could get...hurt in a car accident, too," his bottom lip began to quiver.
"That's true, Jordan, but we would never choose to leave, and neither did your parents. I don't want you to think that I might leave because I'm angry with you. And you must never think that you had anything to do with what happened to your parents." The tears that had been gathering in his eyes began to spill onto his cheeks.
"I was mad at them for leaving me with a babysitter," his little voice had trembled as he spoke.
I'd gathered him into my arms quickly, assuring him that most kids didn't like being left with a sitter and his behavior had nothing to do with what had happened.
After that Jordan was still extremely well-behaved, and I'd worried that Mulder and I might need some help in dealing with his fears. I'd finally decided to ask my mother what she thought.
"You were always eager to please, too, Dana, and you seemed to turn out okay," she'd chuckled.
"Some of the things I did when I was teenager might surprise you," I'd contradicted.
"What? Like stealing my cigarettes?" Amusement was evident in her voice.
"You knew about that?" I was astonished.
"I'm not stupid, dear. I knew how many cigarettes I'd smoked."
"Then why didn't you say anything?"
"You were growing up, spreading your wings. I trusted you to make the right decision about smoking and you did. If I'd jumped all over you, you might have kept smoking just to spite me."
"I had no idea," I'd shook my head in wonder.
"Melissa was an entirely different story," she'd sighed. "You two were like night and day."
"I'm already seeing that with Jordan and Megan."
After talking with my mother, I'd decided that Jordan was only going through a reasonable stage in his grief and I should give him some more time.
I'd been making supper while I'd been thinking about my fears. I realized that considering how parenthood had been thrust upon us, Mulder and I were handling things fairly well.
Over supper, Jordan told Mulder about school and how we were planning to do some shopping the following morning.
"So you're looking forward to going to school?" Mulder smiled.
"Yes," Jordan nodded solemnly. "Will I get to go on a school bus?"
"Not this year, Jordan," I tried to smile. "I'll be taking you."
"Maybe in a couple of years," Mulder promised. "And then a few years after that you can take the car."
The way Jordan's face lit up at Mulder's joke made us both laugh, and after that I was much more relaxed. I loved that Mulder knew instinctively when to make me smile. Clean-up after supper was quick, thanks to the dishwasher, and the evening passed quickly. By 8:30 both of the kids were sound asleep.
This part of the day was the only time Mulder and I had to ourselves and we guarded it jealously. I missed the conversations we'd had at the office, so I always looked forward to 'our time'.
"Anything new at work?" I almost always asked.
"Well," Mulder answered hesitatingly.
That was not his usual response, so my curiosity was piqued. I was leaning on him, my head on his shoulder, his arm around me. I lifted my head up to look at him, waiting for him to explain.
"Something has been going on for about a week."
"A week, and you're just telling me now?"
"I was hoping nothing would come of it. I fought tooth and nail, but to no avail," he sighed.
"What?" I couldn't decide if I was mad at him for holding out on me or dying to know what was going on.
"They've assigned someone else to the X-Files."
"They've what? Who? Why? Where does that leave me?" I straightened up in shock.
"You aren't being replaced, Scully," Mulder assured me gently, pulling back against him. "That was never the intent. It's only a temporary assignment, but I've thought the X-Files were *ours* for a long time. Anyone else working on them is nothing more than an interloper."
Mulder and I rarely spoke of the time that we'd been taken off of the X-Files. Despite everything we'd been through we both thought of it as our darkest hour.
"Why did they decide you needed help all of a sudden?"
"In case I have to go out of town. Skinner pointed out that even when you're back, we both won't be able to leave."
"Have they told you who they're giving you?"
"Some kid who's barely out of the academy. I met him today. Apparently, he asked for this assignment. I'm supposed to be mentoring him, Scully, but it'll be more like babysitting."
"What's he like?"
"He's like a younger, clean-shaven Byers, but I gather from talking to him that he thinks the government is above reproach."
"And he asked for this assignment?" I chuckled.
"He is a strong believer in paranormal phenomena, but I doubt I'll ever be able to convince him that our duly elected government has anything but his best interests at heart," Mulder sighed.
"I'm sure you and the Gunmen will tarnish his rose-colored glasses soon enough. It certainly took you no time to convince me."
"We'll see," Mulder sounded skeptical. "I don't want to think about it anymore. How was your day?"
"Aside from the call from the preschool, it was quiet."
"Are you still upset about that, Scully?"
"A little," I admitted.
"I know you're worried about him, Scully, but I think this will be good for him. Honestly, I'd be more worried if he hadn't been affected by his parents' deaths. I think coddling him will only make matters worse."
"I know," I couldn't hide the dejection in my voice.
"If he'd been reluctant, Scully, I wouldn't have forced him, but I think he'll love school. You've created a loving, stable home for him, Scully. Now it's time to let him start exploring the outside world."
"We've created a loving home, Mulder, not just me," I contradicted.
"I couldn't have done this without you, Scully. I knew that even if you didn't love me, I'd never be able to find a better mother for those kids."
"I wonder how long it would have taken us to realize how we felt about each other if this hadn't happened," I could barely remember what it was like before Mulder and I had admitted our feelings for each other.
"I can't even bear to think about what it was like before I could hold you like this," Mulder lowered his voice and pulled me onto his lap. "Or what it was like when I couldn't kiss you whenever I wanted to."
I opened my mouth to him and melted against his chest when he began to plunge his tongue into my mouth. No matter how many times Mulder kissed or touched me, my reaction was always the same -- my desire overwhelmed me immediately. I loved the way his hands felt as they slid under my shirt. When he nipped at the tender flesh on my shoulder, I couldn't help moaning.
"I don't want to remember the times I wasn't allowed to squeeze your breasts," he breathed as he unclasped my bra.
"You were always allowed to, Mulder -- always," I pressed my hips against his growing erection.
"Before I knew I was allowed to," he corrected himself.
As I leaned in to plunder his mouth with my tongue, I was mildly surprised to feel his hands slide out from under my shirt until I felt him lift his hips to push off his pants. Soon his hands were working on my clothes and before long we were naked on the couch.
"Look at you," Mulder breathed, leaning back to see me better. You are so beautiful," he reached up to stroke my cheek. "I love you," he whispered as he pulled me into another kiss.
While our tongues explored, I lifted my hips. I felt Mulder reach to position himself, and I couldn't stop myself from groaning when I felt his cock pressing against me. Mulder's words, kisses and caresses had me more than ready for him. He slid inside of me easily. At first I kept the pace slow, savoring each stroke.
"Mulder," I was breathing fairly hard even though we were moving slowly.
"Mmm?" his voice rumbled in his chest.
"You tell me I'm beautiful all the time."
"You are beautiful, Scully."
"I don't think I've told you how beautiful you are."
"Men aren't beautiful."
"You are beautiful, Mulder. Everything about you is beautiful. Your eyes amaze me, so soft at times, and other times they practically burn." We had stopped moving and Mulder was watching me intently as I spoke. "Your mouth, Mulder, sometimes the most incredible things come out of your mouth and other times you *do* the most incredible things with your mouth. A few of your words can put me at ease and all I have to do is touch my lips to yours and I'm overcome with desire for you." I brushed my mouth softly against his, tugging slightly on his full lower lip.
"Your hands are amazing, so big and yet you touch me with such tenderness," I lifted his hand to press a kiss against his palm. "But I think the most beautiful thing about you is your heart. It never ceases to amaze me that you can love me as much as you do -- as much as I love you." I realized that as I'd been talking, I'd begun to slowly rotate my hips.
"Scully," Mulder groaned.
The slow pace was suddenly no longer enough for me. When I began to speed up, Mulder dropped his hands to my hips and began to thrust into me. I was able to match his rhythm easily. In no time at all I felt my orgasm beginning to swell. It burst through me in a hot tingling wave. Mulder was pulsing inside of me, and that feeling was as good as, if not better, than the feeling of my own orgasm. Knowing that he'd come filled me with more satisfaction than my own climax had.
I was still leaning against his chest catching my breath, when Mulder hugged me so hard it surprised me.
"What was that all about?" he asked quietly.
"You tell me I'm beautiful and that you love me all the time. I thought I should tell you how I feel. I don't think I tell you enough," I explained.
"Oh, Scully," he kissed my forehead softly. "You tell me all the time." He stood up with me in his arms and began to walk toward the stairs. "Every time you smile at me, or kiss me back, or sigh when I touch you -- those things tell me that you love me more than any words could convey."
Once we were upstairs, Mulder kissed me softly again as he laid me on our bed. "But any time you want to tell me like that again, Scully..."
Without intending to, I'm sure, Mulder had once again shown me how deeply he loved me, making me love him even more. I'd heard people say their love had grown stronger with every passing day, but until now I had thought it was merely a foolish sentiment. I'd never been so happy to be wrong.
end of part 1