1. Scully drives home in a daze. Mulder had asked her if she wanted him to come and she’d said no, but as she anxiously waits for the elevator doors to open, she rocks back on her heels and thinks about him waiting upstairs in her apartment, oblivious of how quickly she’s about to change both of their lives. 

“Scully?” Mulder says, jumping from the couch as soon as she enters the apartment. The question is in his eyes, written across his face, but as he approaches her and tries reading her face, he’s afraid to ask it. “How–” he starts, his words catching in his throat. “What’s the verdict?”

She draws a deep breath through her nose, holds it in for a full five seconds, and feels tears pool in her eyes. She’s still adjusting to their new reality herself.

“No?” Mulder asks, ducking his head in a feeble attempt to catch her gaze. She’s staring at his chest rather than up at him. He hooks a finger under her chin, the suspense killing him. “Yes?”

“I–” she starts, her chin quivering. She nods, giving herself over to the emotions coursing through her. “I don’t completely understand how, but yes. Mulder, we did it. The IVF took,” she says, stepping into his arms, clutching his shirt in her fingertips. She doesn’t realize she’s smiling until the thought crosses her mind that her cheeks from the effort. “I’m pregnant.”

“Scully…” he whispers her name, his tone reverent as he ghosts a hand across her abdomen, resting it softly there. He understands the science of it, what she hasn’t explained to him he’s looked up himself, but it still seems so impossible to wrap his head around. “We made a baby?”

Scully chuckles, high on hope and love, and leans in as he presses a kiss to her forehead. “Yes, Mulder, we did.”

2.

“Mulder, we’ve got to leave. We’re going to be late,” Scully says, checking her watch as she rests her foot on the couch to secure the buckle on her sandal. 

“Yes, but it’s just the three of us, yeah?” Mulder asks, anxiously adjusting the tie that just doesn’t seem to fit right.

Scully rolls her eyes as she walks towards him. “Mulder, it’s my mom. You’ve met and she already loves you–”

“This is different and you know it. She loves me as her daughter’s coworker and friend, not as the guy that knocked said daughter up,” he groans, more anxious than he’d care to admit. He and Maggie have a bond he isn’t quite sure he understands, though it’s clear that she appreciates him. He’d been there for her during Scully’s abduction, and he’s never told Scully about how every Christmas and birthday her mother sends him a card, let alone how during her cancer battle, he’d run into Maggie in the hospital hallway and had hugged her for a minute as she cried. Still, it’s different this time. 

“You’ll be fine,” Scully insists, trying her best to ignore the butterflies that suggest otherwise. They’ve waited to break the news until the end of her first trimester, waiting with baited breath until they were over that particular hurdle to spread the news. She pats his chest once for effect before turning to grab her purse. “And Mulder? Lose the tie. You’re not going to work, you’re going to Sunday dinner with my mom.”

3.

It happens slowly at first, his moving in. Little things like staying late to watch a movie turn into his staying over–on the couch, at least at first–give way to forgetting things like clothes and shoes, and personal items around her apartment. 

“What’s this?” Scully asks one evening after dinner, once the overhead lights have been turned off, replaced by soft lamplight filling her apartment with a subtle glow. 

Mulder looks up from the book he’d been reading, eyeing the toothbrush in her hand with trepidation. “A toothbrush.”

“But it’s not my toothbrush,” she says, slowly waving it in his direction. “This is yours.”

“I figured if I was staying the night, I might as well bring a toothbrush for in the morning,” he says, carefully saving his place in the book before setting it on the coffee table. He watches her process his response, watches as she catches his meaning. They haven’t talked much yet about what’s going to happen once the baby is born, once their child–he still balks at the word–enters their world. “It doesn’t have to be a big deal. I can leave, if you want me to,” he suggests, worrying he’s upset her.

“No,” she says, sitting next to him on the couch. She clamps her hand on his arm, as if doing so could hold him there. “But I’ve been thinking…” she says, dragging her bottom lip between her teeth. “The bed is much more comfortable than the couch.”

She’s not suggesting they switch places, because she knows he wouldn’t allow it, and he knows that she’s aware of that. They’re having a child in a matter of months, and yet they haven’t talked about the shift in their relationship and what it might mean. “I don’t want to push you for anything you’re not ready for, Scully,” he says, giving her an out if she decides she wants one. He swallows the lump growing in his throat and tries tamping down his own desires. 

She laughs, a bitter sound, and puts a hand on her stomach. The swell is small, barely noticeable to those who might not know her, but it’s there. “I don’t have much time to get ready though, do I?”

“That wasn’t what I was referring to, and you know it,” he says, realizing he’s pushing her, but also knowing if he backs down now he may not get an opportunity to have this discussion, at least any time soon. 

“Mulder,” she says, catching on to his meaning. She was the one that started this by suggesting he sleep in the bed, but now that they’re actually talking about things, words are failing her. “I guess I never really asked you, when I asked you to help me have a child, how much you wanted to be a part of this,” she fiddles with her sleeve, staring down at her hands, as she speaks to him. 

“I’m in as much as you want me to be. If you want me to get rid of the toothbrush, I will. If you want me to sleep in the bed because it’ll help you sleep better, then I’ll do that, too. I’m in this for the long haul, Dana. I mean that.”

She wants to blame the tears that spill from her eyes on the hormones, and she’s knows that’s partially true, but she knows that’s not entirely to blame. There’s a conversation that’s coming, she knows it is, but it’s one she’s not sure she’s quite ready for. She stands from the couch, reaching out her hand, relieved when he grabs it, and leads him into her bedroom. 

4.

“So you’re sure about the meadow green?” Mulder asks, stepping back to stand next to her as she observes the paint swatches on the wall. 

“I like it better than the dandelion. I don’t want something too yellow,” she muses. “Which do you like?”

“The green is good,” he says, resting a hand at the small of her back.. She ropes an arm around his waist and it nearly makes him jump, but he quickly settles into it. There’s an invigorated feeling about being close to her, an energy brought forward by the new physical closeness of their relationship, that makes him nearly giddy, “It’s good for a girl or a boy, you know.”

“We don’t need to find out,” she replies, shaking her head, knowing he was trying to goad her into telling him her suspicions. They’d had an ultrasound several days before and had agreed to wait until the baby was born to find out the sex, but he’s been asking her ever since if she’d taken a peek and knew from her own medical expertise. “I promise you, I didn’t,” she says, lightly hitting him with the paintbrush she held in her free hand, smiling as she knew he read her thoughts.

“What was that for?” Mulder asks, rubbing the spot where she’d hit him for dramatic effect. “I just think if we knew, it might make it a little easier to pick a name. Not long and we’ll have to decide. We can’t go around calling them No Name Scully-Mulder.”

Scully shakes her head, relieved by how invested he is in this. It’s absurd in a way, how much has changed in their live so fast. “I was thinking if it’s a boy, we could name him after you. Not Fox, but William.”

“You don’t think there’s already enough Williams in both of our families?” he asks. “But by that logic, if it’s a girl, we can name her after you. Katherine.”

She turns her focus back to the pain swatches on the wall. “That’s not a bad idea,” she replies, nodding slowly. He nudges her with his hip and she returns the favor. “We still have time to decide.”

5.

“Ten fingers, ten toes,” Mulder says, carefully perching himself on the side of the hospital bed. “He checks out.”

“He does,” Scully says, unable to pry her eyes away from the tiny baby cradled in her arms. So much had been taken from her, but to hold her son in her arms made it all fade to the background. “He’s beautiful.”

“He takes after his mother then,” Mulder says, adjusting the blue cap the nurses placed on his son’s head. “It does look like he might have inherited the Mulder nose though. I’m sorry about that, kid.”

It’s impossible, she knows, gaining back what was once lost. The baby squirms and she draws him close, eager to reassure him in the way only a mother can. “He’s so tiny.”

“He is,” Mulder replies, unable to say much else. The moment will come soon where a nurse will arrive asking if Scully needs help getting the baby to nurse or offering to take him away so she can get rest–he pities that poor nurse because he’s certain they’ll have trouble with that–and he already knows Maggie is on her way. But for now it’s just the three of them and so he plants a kiss against his son’s cheek before kissing Scully in turn. The world will barge in soon enough, but for now they can wait.