Don't Speak by ValZ EMAIL: valz1013@hotmail.com DISTRIBUTION: I would be honored, just let me know first. RATING: R (language, sexual situations) CATEGORY: SR KEYWORDS: MSR, Angst SPOILERS: IWTB, Emily, Per Manum, William, Requiem (how about if I say everything is fair game?) SUMMARY: Mulder and Scully introspectively muse about children. Disclaimer: X-Files characters belong to FOX Corporation and 1013. Author's Notes: Yes, I appropriated the title from an old-school No Doubt song. The bed scene from IWTB got me thinking. Despite many years together, they are still not up to par when it comes time to verbally expressing their emotions. Even though I've been a fan of the show and fanfiction since FTF, this is my first story ever completed and posted. I would love feedback. Be gentle :) There are only a handful of subjects that they do not speak about, after all, they are not known for their emotional speak. Give them an obscure topic such as Lacan's phallocentricism or psychic transcendentalism and they will spin a linguistic yarn so long and wide it'll make your head spin. Children, on the other hand, are quite a different story. Their children, their lost children is topic non-grata. Emily is a sore subject. Mulder never ever mentions her. Scully never mentions her. She thinks of Emily every Christmas, feeling guilty that only the holidays really make her yearn for that precious golden-haired angel. She decided many years ago, even before she had her son, that she could not dwell on Emily. Not because she was heartless or cold, but because she couldn't bare the loss of the little girl she couldn't save. So, like her sister and her dad, Emily was a long-lost ghost that would occasionally visit her in her dreams. William is a painful subject. Scully never mentions him. Mulder rarely mentions him. He fears opening the wounds that have taken so many years to mend, or better said, scab over. She fears that Mulder secretly blames her for giving him away. He fears that Scully secretly blames him for leaving after he was born. They both think of him often. Mulder wonders if he plays sports, if he looks like Scully. Scully wonders if he is doing well in school, if he looks like Mulder. William the baby that was never supposed to be. The son conceived so easily, so unexpectedly. It turns out that having unprotected sex on a regular basis results in pregnancy. They should have known better. She should've known better she went to medical school. It had previously happened when they conceived William. Back then, both had gone from no sex in years, to semi-regular (when work or work-related trauma allowed) sex. The weekends they spent holed away in her apartment moving from the bed, to the sofa, to accidentally on the living room floor in front of her sofa, to the bathtub; the few weekdays they would surprisingly end up tangled and sticking to his leather couch; the very rare times they found themselves hot and heavy in hotel or motel beds (sometimes plush like in Hollywood, sometimes not-so-plush if they were on the road), but they never really entertained the possibility of pregnancy. She couldn't have children, her doctor told her, the failed IVF proved that. Granted, when the doctor said she couldn't have children she wasn't having sex (at all) and couldn't really prove otherwise. The truth of the matter is that, the second time around, she didn't (or perhaps wouldn't) diagnose her own pregnancy. Mulder contemplated the shift in her mood, tender breasts, and nausea when he would bring take-out to their latest shitty motel hideaway and began to think just maybe. In her mind, Scully would explain it as on-the-road-in-hiding-had-to-leave-everything-behind-stress. When she would shiver and break out into cold sweats in the evening and even in her sleep, he knew. The Bellefleur night he spent helping her "get warm" not far from his mind. Now, he was surreptitiously proud (in an entirely non-macho way, of course), but he was simultaneously scared out of his damn mind. Scully was pregnant. He figured it out the fifth month they were on the road. It had been a terrible time of unspoken terror and uncertainty. Countless nameless motel rooms, guns hidden in night stands, disguises fabricated from thrift store romps; the only thing that was real and safe was each other. They'd find respite in each other's bodies those first four months in hiding. Their breath, sweat, moans, and whispers mingling in the dark stale air of the motel room effectively blocking them from their reality. Mulder could spend hours cradled in between her legs, staring into her eyes, his fingers tangled in her damp hair, kissing her like he hadn't truly kissed her in years. His second favorite activity was running the tip of his tongue slowly along the inside of her lips that would set her heart rate up exponentially; he could feel it right through her chest. Not that she would admit it aloud, but she would take great comfort that he was there to protect her. She had felt scattered and afraid when they were apart (she knew that young FBI freshly recruited Dana Scully would have scuffed at the new raw emotional Scully). She would most certainly feel his protection as he pressed his palm on the back of her thigh, he would tighten his grip trying to push and pull himself deeper into her, as if that were possible. They never used protection. She thought it unnecessary. Once in a chain pharmacy in Roswell (3 days after their exile began) as she was contemplating which box of L'oreal of Paris Superior Preference would least likely offend her senses, Mulder pointed at a box of condoms. He didn't say a word. He just pointed and looked into her eyes, partially shielded by a baseball cap. She had shaken her head. Then lo and behold, one morning, four months after Roswell, she woke up, rolled over him, and ran to the bathroom and threw up just like that, out of the blue. It wasn't a tremendous cause of alarm, but he knew that Scully never just got sick. Day by day the symptoms would mound unavoidably. For her part, Scully pretended nothing was different. Despite everything, she was skeptical to core. She wouldn't entertain the possibility because she truly believed her son had been a miracle. After he went on his morning jog on a chilly Tuesday morning in a town he can't recall the name of, Mulder stopped at the local grocery store (if you could call it that, it only had 3 rows of products). The clerk made small talk with him about Monday night football as he rang up a bag of sunflower seeds, two oranges, a box of chocolates a pregnancy test. He looked up at Mulder in that oh-shit-dude-good-luck method only a teenage male could give you. Mulder felt like slapping the poor bastard. Apparently, teenage boys weren't the only ones subject to an overabundance of hormones. When Scully woke up later that morning she saw Mulder's familiar note on his pillow (he would always leave a note if he left, his way of letting her know he wasn't dragged off by a super soldier or government henchman). "I'm craving chocolate chip pancakes I'm sure they have something for you too." She smiled, how he would justify eating an entire stack of chocolaty sweet mess by jogging was beyond her. When she walked into the tiny motel bathroom, she saw the pregnancy test box under her toothbrush. Another note, "Should I pick up pickles and ice cream? I'll be waiting outside by the pool when you need me." When she opened the door half an hour later, dressed too lightly for the cold air, Mulder wore his panic face to the thousandth degree. His jogging pants were rolled up; his bare feet were dangling in the icy pool water; a cold sweat broken across his forehead. He somehow managed to smile when he saw her. He didn't need the confirmation to know she was pregnant. He had passed the stage of berating himself for knocking his girl up again and was at the what-the-fuck-are-we-gonna-do stage. She looked around to see if he went to the diner down the road to pick up breakfast, their unmistakable "Good Eats" paper sack was nowhere in sight. Placing her hand on his shoulder, she carefully lowered herself next to him. She took a deep breath before attempting to speak. "Mulder " upon hearing the crack in her voice he promised, "We are in this together." He would not accept her having to fear another thing in the world, especially not this. He took her hand and squeezed it tight. Neither of them acknowledged the tears streaming down her freckled face and their comingled clammy palms. "Hey, let's go get those pancakes," she whispered as she nudged him to get up. The visit to the local Planned Parenthood a couple of days later was more confirmation then they needed. Amongst the running toddlers and tiny squawking babies they began to fearfully see their future. As they were leaving the office Mulder assured, "We aren't always going to be on the run. We could do this." Another visit to yet another Planned Parenthood, not quite a month later confirmed, this time, what she already knew. Scully lost the baby. They cried that night. He held her as she threw up her breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She was more upset with herself for getting pregnant in the first place. What were they thinking? They didn't even have a roof over their heads for more than a week straight. Yet, despite that, she craved motherhood as much as he craved the unexplained. Neither of them spoke of that pregnancy again. Years later, after they had settled in Virginia, Mulder broached the subject one evening as she was dozing off beside him on the sofa. "You know Scully, I would be a kick-ass Mr. Mom," he said as David Letterman wise-cracked. "What?" she titled her head up to look at him. "You heard me." "What are you saying? Why? How?" "Geeze Doctor Scully, I hope you know how," he could feel her body wiggle against him as she silently chuckled. "I don't know, Scully. I'm just happy. Work is going well for you. I'm home." "Mulder we're middle-aged," she said, her interest somewhat piqued. "Well, pardon me; let me show you what this middle-aged stud can do," he startled her by jumping up and over her and roughly pulling her off the couch and lifting her in a fireman's carry up the stairs to their bedroom. That night they stopped using birth control. Granted they failed to produce a son or daughter, Mulder fondly looks back on 2006 as the best year of his entire life, hands down. He would come up with crazy names ala big wrestling extravaganzas for the year they spent having so much sex that he would almost get tired of it. He came close to crying uncle that one weekend in late November after Thanksgiving when he had overindulged in apple pie. When she give the little "I'm ovulating come and come inside me" look he almost said, no almost. Characteristically, Scully took to trying to conceive as methodically and thoughtfully as she did everything in her life. She took vitamins, ate even healthier than usual (if that was possible), kept schedules, ovulation tests...the works. They wouldn't overtly talk about it. Talking, not being the operative and important action. Perhaps they would come to the realization that bringing a baby into this quasi-fugitive-under-the-radar existence wasn't the brightest idea. Regardless, he looks at 2006 as "The Year of the Nasty," "Fuckfest 2006," "Sexapalooza 06." If he would have openly verbalized these appellations, Scully would have definitely kicked his ass. Sure, they were crude, but what can you do. He has to joke about it now. He has no other choice. She didn't get pregnant. The irony struck them both. It would have been laughable, if it weren't happening to them. The two times they purposely tried to get pregnant...nada, nothing. The two times that pregnancy hadn't even been a blip in their radar and...boom...knocked up. Mid 2007, before the madness the FBI/Father Joe whirlwind brought back into their lives, they had their one and only real heart-to-heart about children, if you could call it that. "Mulder, I think I'm getting too old to have a baby." She said this after they spent all morning working in the yard. Her joints and muscles were screaming for a soak in the tub. She had spied Mulder trying to play off the fact that he was limping as they were climbing up onto the porch. "Scully, you make my life complete, you make me a whole person" he says this grabbing her hand and pressing it to his lips. She tries to hide the blush making its way across her cheeks. Words fail her. She tries to pull her hand away from his mouth, but he tugs her closer, encircling his other arm around her waist. "And for the record, we are not too old. Middle age is just a state of mind. Besides, that doesn't mean we can't recreate Naked Pretzel Mania." He said this while wagging his eyebrows, taking her finger into his mouth. "Mulder, it's not just a state of mind, it's a physical fact," she smiles, giving him a once-over, albeit skeptically, "Anyways, if you try to throw me over your shoulder I'm going to scream." "It's a good thing we live in the middle of nowhere." Unfortunately for him, she pushed past him and ran inside faster then his limp would allow him to follow. He chuckled a moment later as he heard her calling him to come upstairs. And that was it. The topic was broached; it wasn't sealed off forever...William was still out there somewhere, but this was enough for now.