Title: Unveiling

By: Aloysia Virgata

Rating: PG

Category: MSR

Timeline: Post-Ghouli

Notes: For @perplexistan , who wanted them discussing the gas station prank in bed, and for my anon who wondered what would happened if Scully wasn’t so sure about her feelings for her son.





She has her hair pulled back with a Lycra band as she wipes at her makeup with cotton balls. Mulder is in bed during these ablutions, his own beauty regimen limited to a shower after his workouts. The bathroom is fogged and piney with his soap.



Scully had let him run alone, though she wanted to come too. Instead, she’d done squats and arm curls in the basement until her muscles screamed. Sometimes punishing the body releases the mind.

Her night cream is open, and the under-eye one too, little jars of emulsified defiance. She makes a moue in the glass and decides she looks near her age, but well-maintained. Scully squints at her reflection like she had at the St. Rachel.

A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.

She blinks the thought loose, wiping the cleansing foam away with cool water, sponging with toner. Dabs of various ointments and tinctures before shaking out her hair and switching off the light.

Mulder, bare-chested and spiky-headed, is propped up on the pillows, reading Paul Stamets.

“That thing again?” Scully asks, climbing in next to him. Her pajamas glide over the sheets. ”Mushroom internets?”

He peers owlishly at her over his glasses. “Hey, you asked what would happen if we lost our jobs. Well, here it is. We’re going to become guerilla mycologists and save the world from anthrax and oil spills and hackers.”

She cuddles against him, the pine aroma stronger. She sniffs at his neck. “You do smell sort of outdoorsy, Mulder. Mountain Frost body wash?”

“It’s just my natural manly musk, baby.” He flexes his pectorals beneath her head.

It would be delightful to do this all night, to talk in cozy circles around the shock they’ve had, but experience has taught her better. “Mulder,” she says, and her pitch signals the change in topic.

Mulder marks the page before setting the book on his night stand. He turns his attention back to the bed, arranging Scully on the pillows, tucking her against his chest with his arm behind her.

“At last,” he says, “you may proceed.”

She clears her throat. “Well. I feel all self conscious now.”

“That’s because you’re overdressed,” he says, tugging at her collar.

She smiles, squeezes his hand. “I want to go to the funeral,” she tells him, planning flowers. Chrysanthemums and lilies. Maybe peonies. Nothing will be enough.

He chews his lip, thoughtful.“The Van de Kamps?”

“I think we should. I think we have to, for William. Jackson. Whatever, our son.” She lets go of his hand, smoothes her hair from her damp face.

“Scully….”

She plows ahead. “I’ll try and get details, but it’ll probably be a week at least. I just… I feel like we owe them so much, Mulder. They kept him safe for us.”

“Yeah,” he says slowly, his brow furrowed. “I suppose we should go.”

She replies with a sharp nod, fingers twisting at the sheets. Claws skitter across the hardwood and Daggoo launches himself into the bed.

“Down!” Scully yelps as he licks at her cheek. “Ugh, Mulder, get him!”

“That’s probably a fifty dollar slurp,” Mulder chides, drawing the dog to his chest. “Don’t lick Scully’s face stuff.”

Daggoo wriggles happily, then calms with Mulder’s gentle shushing. He burrows between the two of them, making soft yipping sounds as he chews on a knotted rope toy.

Scully scratches his ears. “I have to tell you though, there are some….questions, maybe, about his upbringing.”

Mulder glances at her sidelong. “Bri and Sarah?” he asks.

She blushes. “Am I that predictable?”

He shrugs. “Can’t say I was too impressed with The Pickup Artist myself. Kinda douchey.”

“Kinda douchey,” she echoes, rueful.

Mulder tugs at the rope toy, eliciting low growls from Daggoo. “But then, we can’t exactly blame him for being devastating to the ladies, can we?”

Scully assumes an air of innocent confusion. “Why? Am I devastating to the ladies?”

He gives her an appraising look. “You making an offer?”

She snorts. “Anyway, I don’t know. I just, I only knew him as an infant of course, but I like to think I would have-“ Scully bites the end of her sentence off, annoyed at herself. She has tried to stop with the might-have-beens.

Mulder rubs her arm. “It’s hard, and we have no context. The Ghouli trick with the girls, that was pretty messed up. It’s a hard way to get to know someone.”

It had made her queasy, her sweet chubby-cheeked baby boy pitting other children in a death match because…why, exactly?

“It was awful,” she murmurs, squeezing her eyes shut until colors swim behind the lids. Daggoo whimpers, licks her wrist. She looks down to scratch his chin.

“We both know about prefrontal cortex development, ventral striatum activation. Teenaged boys are notoriously stupid. Case in point over here, I assure you. Plus he’s on psychiatric medications. Those can have all kinds of behavioral side effects.”

Scully looks at Mulder fondly, imagines he was a pedantic Holden Caulfield pain in the ass, all knees and elbows and dry one-liners. “I know all that,” she concedes. “But.”

“But.”

“He was the sweetest baby,” Scully says, remembering that he’s been an eternal newborn to Mulder. His attachment has been only genetic; he never heard their son’s gleeful belly laugh, never saw him clap the fat pink stars of his hands. She massages the dog’s rough toe pads, musing.

“I liked that hat he had, with the little ears,” Mulder says, his voice low. “You had a lot of pictures with that one.”

“I’m being silly, I know. The Van de Kamps did exactly what I wanted for him. They gave him an ordinary life and let him become an ordinary boy. Young man, I guess, now.” She huffs a strand of hair out of her face, frustrated.

“At the same time, you thought he could somehow transcend that ordinariness,” Mulder suggests.

She looks at him in surprise, realizing it’s true. “I guess I did,” she murmurs, embarrassed. “I mean, everyone thinks their child is special, it’s normal.”

“It’s perfectly normal,” Mulder assures her, and Scully guesses she must have sounded defensive.

“So many people,” she breathes. “There were so many people who told me what he was or would be or could be. And I just wanted him to be ordinary. I must sound so ungrateful now.” Scully presses her hands to her face, to her sore, dry eyes.

Mulder pulls her hands away. “Scully, no,” he says. Daggoo tries to squirm between their arms, but finds himself moved aside. He rests his nose on his paws, alert.

“Scully, listen to me,” Mulder continues, kissing the backs of her hands. “You don’t sound ungrateful. You sound sound completely ordinary, which is okay to want for yourself as well.” He lets her hands go.

She strokes the offended dog. “Seeing him on that slab, Mulder… I didn’t think I could survive it.”

He swallows hard. “I know.”

Scully looks at him, her eyes soft. “ I know you were being stoic for me,” she says. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I did,” he replies. “It’s what gets me through.”

She sets that aside for later. “He just lay there, listening to everything I said, just listening and he never even reacted. How? What kind of person can do that?”

Daggoo nudges her thigh, his nose cold and wet through her pajamas.

Mulder pets the dog. “We don’t know how he reacted. Remember, he controlled our perceptions of the experience. What we saw, what we heard.”

“Like Modell,” Scully murmurs, a cold knot low in her belly, in the place where William was.

“Not like Modell, because he’s trying to do the right thing.” Mulder’s voice is raised now, startling the dog, startling his partner. “Because he didn’t turn those DoD guys on each other, or run the cops off a cliff, or rob a bank. Because he came back, Scully. How’d you know about that gas station?”

She stares at him, sees the windmill. “I just knew,” she whispers.

“You just knew.”

They smile at each other, a little breathless. Daggoo offers Mulder the rope toy.

“I know what you’re doing,” Mulder adds, as he plays tug-of-war. “It’s another way to blame yourself. If you had kept him, he’d be perfect. He’d have one girlfriend, no Pickup Artist, he’d never fake his own death, no DoD hacking, he wouldn’t summon people to gas stations…”

Scully laughs, but also thinks he may be on to something. “I don’t need you and Jackson both in my head,” she warns. Jackson. She dislikes the name, too choppy-sounding and trendy. Can she train herself to it? She would like the opportunity.

“Psychoanalysis is just one of many services I offer,” Mulder says.

“I believe I have sampled your full product line.” Scully takes the other end of the toy from Mulder, pulls at her feisty little dog.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve picked up a few new things on the Internet.” He steals the rope back.

“The mushroom internet?”

“Yeah. ‘Cause I’m a fun guy, Scully. Get it? A fungi?” He’s beaming.

She scowls. “The g is supposed to be soft, Mulder.”

“This G ain’t never soft, baby.”

She groans, laughing in spite of herself. “You’re disgusting.”

He rolls Daggoo onto his side, scratches his pink belly. “At least I don’t run around naked and lick my own ass.”

“Well thank goodness for your hominid spine.” She taps the dog on his nose. He chews delicately at her finger.

“I’m worried about him out there,” Mulder says, with a confessional air. “Should we be, I don’t know, tracking him somehow? We’ve got the tag number.”

Scully sighs. “I’m worried too. But he’s just lost his -“ she swallows “- his parents and I think he needs some space.”

Mulder nods. “Can you two, uh, contact each other?” He waggles his fingers for dramatic emphasis, and Daggoo licks them.

She nods, oddly shy. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Cool,” Mulder says, clearly pleased by his small, strange, telepathic family.

Scully snuggles back against him, gathers the dog in her arms. “That was pretty slick at the gas station, wasn’t it?” She feels a surge of pride at her son’s cleverness.

“It surely was. He knew a good thing when he saw it, Sculls.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Stop calling me that.”

“I will never stop calling you that.” He kisses her temple.

“It’s hard, being a teenager. Probably worse with meds and superpowers.”

“One can assume.” He kisses her temple again.

“He knew we looked through his room. He knew I’d recognize the picture. He…he found a windmill.” Scully thinks she may have just forgiven herself for sixteen years of anguish, but isn’t sure what it would feel like. She hugs the dog, nuzzles his wiry head.

“A plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel,” Mulder quotes. “I would expect nothing less from our kid.”

Scully looks at him, presses a finger to Mulder’s lip. He nibbles at it. “He is our kid, isn’t he?” she says, with a fierce joy.

“Wanna watch the video again?”

“Of course.”

Mulder pulls his phone out and hits play. Their heads meet before it, watching their son pull off his gentle charade, watching him head out into the world.

Scully knows, in the way she knows things now, that he will be back to her soon. She leans against Mulder, drowsing. She imagines all the highways that head west, ribboning out to the clear blue waters of the Pacific, to her childhood. She sends thoughts along them to her boy, so that he will not be alone as he follows them with the sun.