Small Lives Awake (1/2)
Thanksgiving, 2000. "For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give -- yes or no, or maybe -- should be clear: the darkness around us is deep." -- William Stafford
First Posted: December 2000
Category: M/S, Story, Oddness, Alt-U. NC-17.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Spoilers: Through "Je Souhaite". I'm having rather a good time with Season 8, but this story wouldn't exist there. No potential Season 8 spoilers are referenced here either.
Thank You: Liza, Renee and Jess, for all the wonderful nits and advice.
Feedback: Would be lovely, please and thank you. eviljesemie@yahoo.com
Author's Notes at end.

Scullyfic Challenge (x2) Fic

Happy Holidays

- - -
Remorse is memory awake,
Her companies astir, --
A presence of departed acts
At window and at door.
-- Emily Dickinson

- - -
21 November


Mulder's head tumbles from his shoulders and bounces bloody and rubbery down the passenger car aisle; his attacker starts to advance on her, so Scully protests with a small, angry, frightened trill in her throat and then wakes unknowingly when Mulder tucks the blanket around her ankles.

"No," she says, sitting up and slapping at him. She can still hear the echo of the train.

"Shh," he says, "you were dreaming."

She falls back in her warm cotton cocoon and murmurs something even she doesn't understand.

"Hmm?" He rubs the bridge of her nose softly with one finger, in a way she registers as uniquely Mulder-affectionate.

"Nothing," she says. "Aren't you sleeping?" She uncurls a hand and thumbs his wrist instead of opening her eyes.

"You're Goldilocksing my bed, Scully," he says without irritation.

"Sorry," she says faintly, dream darkness smudging her thoughts. "Did you set the alarm?"

"For 7am."

"Lie down."

"You sure?"

She doesn't manage to answer. The bed sags with his weight as he settles beside her. They do not touch.

- - -
22 November


Sometimes a car is her favorite toy: she's bulleting through the world, cannon-shot with silver fins and the American flag streaking against the eye. The target is any place selling cheap petrol and a wide selection of novelty edibles, like Val-o-Milks or Nerds. Eggnog taffy. Never mind that the car is actually another boring rental: hunter green this time. It makes her feel she should complete the outfit by wearing the perfunctory men-in-black sunglasses and making ominous body language warnings to gawking onlookers when she rises clunky-heeled out from the driver's side to twist off the gas cap.

Mulder watches her through the window for a moment. Their gaze catches and steadies through glass while she yanks up the pump lever and the numbers reset themselves slot machine-style.

Plugging the nozzle into the tank hole gives her a penetrating sense of visceral manliness. She's taken to swaggering around the cramped for the holidays Stop-n-Saves. The parking lots are always full of sales-flyer-tumbleweed and rolling plastic supersize soft drink cups. Lighted signs have variations on "Happy Thanksgiving" spelled out on them. A few also feature vaguely Biblical admonitions like, "Jesus loves you whether you like it or not."

Mulder plays with the map while she leans against the car and breathes in the intoxicating scent of fuel; he's unconvinced that the interstate will ever take them someplace they'd actually want to go. The car doors are closed. His poster-sized diagram of webbed roads rustles mutely, as though her outside world's wind blows it around soundlessly.

He was going to spend Thanksgiving alone again.

After she pays, the wheel once more spins in her hands and she cheerfully growls into the cloudlight. They are on a vacation of sorts. The car smells like sugar and aftershave, like leather and weather. Mulder eats a whistle pop and unwraps her green apple Jolly Ranchers for her so she won't have to be distracted by the irritable sticky cellophane seams in the wrappers. There's streaky rain on the windshield, classical on the radio -- something with a lute, Mulder points out, and then something featuring a pipe-organ. Two airline-roughened bags in the backseat.

Southern Illinois is grainy and cold under the wheels. All around them, farmland adheres to other farmland. The car's a tractor, pulling its culling rake over harvested soybean hills. She readjusts the seed cap she isn't wearing, tipping it at Mulder in appreciation of his finer skills at candy handling and trash management.

He picks a piece of purple scarf fuzz out of her hair and gives her his wily stare. "You might be having too much fun driving, Scully."

She shakes her head, smiling. She wants to maneuver all the quiet places with him now, all the uncharted tracks of water, all the carnival trails.

- - -
"Scully," he said the night before. He was turning a tea saucer over and over in his hands. "Really, it's too much trouble. I'm sure your brother didn't plan for extra company."

"Nonsense. They as much as invited you anyway when they called a month ago."

She wrung out the rag and the wire scour while soapy water glugged down the drain.

He finished putting the pans in the drawer beneath the oven and sat down at his kitchen table.

"It's one week. You need to get away, see your family."

"You're my family too," she said in a rushed breath, as though they were arguing.

He seemed slightly startled. "I just think... You see me every day."

"Yeah, but how often is pie involved?"

He sighed a little.

"Look, if you don't want to go--"

"I do want to. That's not the point."

"What is the point?" she said, thinking it would maybe be less hassle to strangle him.

After a pause, he spoke, fiddling with a dinner napkin. "You want me to go?"

The inflection in his voice was something she tried not hearing for years. Years.

The answer was always simple. "Yes," she said.

- - -
Slow Dance, IL, Charlie's latest zip code, has a thriving town square and a county seat courthouse with nuns on the front steps, ringing brass hand bells. Two of them, bundled in winter coats and pom-pom-topped toboggans, sit at a table covered in liquor bottles. A small crowd eases up and down the stairs, and sales appear to be booming.

"What's the story?" Mulder asks.

"I think they must be here on behalf of the associated local monastery. The monks make a mean malt."

The nuns wave hello while Scully parks in front of Gimmell's Magic shop, cattycornered from Dryer's Drugstore. She waves back as though she lives here too.

"I didn't pick anything up for the kids back in DC," she says.

"Buy them a few spells," Mulder says, holding the shop door open for her.

Inside Gimmell's, the manager, Niam O'Dell, is delighted to show them his fire-breathing routine. Mulder, impressed, rubs his hand over the sooty circle on the wall, stained over years of dragon demonstrations, as though it was a sacred piece of stone.

"Are you a 'Watcher' too?"

Scully has heard Mulder's treatise on "Buffy" before, and she keeps her mouth shut. There are some debates no-one wants to start.

"Nah," O'Dell says, picking up the reference immediately. "Besides, I've never heard tell of a single vampire in these parts. What's to slay? As you can see, I sell birthday party favors, nostalgia and childhood." He makes a game show model sweeping motion with one hand, gesturing at the collectibles in one corner. "And other illusions."

He lets Scully step inside the trick box where women are sawed in two. The enormous contraption -- "I've never found another quite so huge," O'Dell tells them -- stands upright like an iron maiden. She lets the friendly man close the lid and, sightless, she touches the inside of the false coffin, the little secret levers, the spots where she might be run through with swords.

She steps out of the box like a reincarnation. "Show him your arm trick," Mulder says.

She does, and both men, and three boys who've wandered in, clap. O'Dell gives her a stick of gum.

"Will it turn my teeth blue?"

"Of course."

She buys Jimmy and Pete a set of fake handcuffs each. Under his breath, Mulder says, "You could always get an extra set."

"Why?" she dares.

He walks away from the counter, ostensibly to check out the rack of magician top hats. "Oh, you know, just to have." O'Dell laughs and doles out Scully's change.

She looks over her shoulder and cocks one eyebrow at Mulder before asking, slowly, in her deepest, most mock-honeyed voice, "What's wrong with the handcuffs we have?"

Mulder clears his throat and says loudly, "So, Mr. O'Dell, how far is Carmichael Lane?"

"Three blocks west," the man responds, lifting a large fake head off a tall shelf for one of the boys. "Who you looking for?"

"Charles Scully," Scully answers.

"Yep, he's down there."

The youngest boy, maybe only four or five, tugs at Mulder. The child does not let go of the shirt he's snagged until Mulder turns around and says, "Yes?"

"You know Peter?"

"Peter Scully?"

Scully keeps silent, watching the exchange. As if by instinct, by magic, Mulder pulls one of her apple candies from behind the boy's ear. The child's eyes go wide and bright and he snatches the candy from her partner.

"Didn't anyone tell you not to take candy from strangers, Stanley?" O'Dell chuckles.

"But it came from _my_ ear," the boy whines.

"Peter is one of her nephews," Mulder says, pointing to Scully.

"Ssl'oh," Stanley slurps around the candy.

"Charlie expecting you?" O'Dell asks.

Scully looks at Mulder again. The kids have surrounded him and her candy is quickly vanishing, faster than her eye can see.

"I hope so," she says.

- - -
"You're too, too skinny, honey."

"I like what you've done with your hair, Michelle. It's very Dolly Parton circa '78."

"Always in business suits. Well, I guess you have the figure for it. What with your, you know, smaller bustline."

"I didn't know leg warmers were back in style."

The two women break off when Scully notices Mulder standing in the doorway.

"We're just filling in the blanks since Tara isn't here to ever-so-discreetly drop little 'hints' about our appearances," Michelle explains. "Season's greetings!" She hugs him like he's a long-lost brother, as opposed to someone she's never met, and drags him into the living room.

Scully hears the hoofing of tennis shoes against wood before she sees the kids. They pounce on her like ponies.

"Ah-ha," she says, pushed to the couch. "Hello there."

"Jimmy, Pete, be careful," Charlie warns from somewhere in the back of the house. "Aunt Dana doesn't like to get wrinkled."

"Ha, she bombed us with alien slime last time," Jimmy yells back.

"Scully!" Mulder says. "I'm shocked you would expose these children to extraterrestrial enzymes."

"These children are already mutants," Scully defends.

Peter crawls in her lap and kisses her on the cheek with his grape juice mouth. He holds up his red fingers.

"I helped bog the cranberries," he says.

"No, no, cranberries grow in bogs. You helped crush them," Michelle corrects. "The kitchen has been splatter painted with pulp, actually."

"So it's good you're wearing black already," Charlie says, walking in. He bends down to give her a kiss and ruffles his middle child's hair.

Peter in turn, having already lost interest in the conversation, bites his brother on the arm, starting a series of vehement protests from several parties.

With the kids banished to their rooms, Charlie plays tour-guide and presents the guest bedroom with a flourish. "Ta-daa. The couch is brand new and completely untouched by kid cooties."

"Where's Miri?" Scully asks, just remembering that there's one child unaccounted for.

"Michelle's sister has her this afternoon. She'll be dropping her off later, I presume," Charlie says.

Mulder tests out the springiness of the sofa. "Nice."

You're too tall for that couch, Scully thinks.

Charlie taps on the bookshelves by the window. "Ahem," he says. "Voila."

In lieu of a verbal response, she begins scanning the rows of volumes, noting with unspoken pride how many passages from each she remembers.

"It's Dana's book collection," Charlie is telling Mulder, "or a good chunk of it at least."

"The stuff that wasn't related to being either a pathologist or an FBI agent," she says. "And I kept Dad's copy of 'Moby Dick'."

"Of course," Mulder says.

Charlie continues, "Donated in an act of extreme altruism, and also because, because, uh. Why exactly?"

"I ran out of space."

"She ran out of space," he says.

Instead of the truth, that in the wake of the Pfaster incident she gave away most of the belongings that stopped being cozy and started to make her apartment seem too cluttered, claustrophobic. She would look at her bookshelves and see them toppling in a tremendous crash, would feel herself thrown against a mirror, would see her bedroom floor covered in shards and splinters, like the stinging ones that had been embedded in her back. The trapped sensations ceased eventually, but she could hardly regret giving the books to people who relish them.

"Michelle and I figured out there isn't a single book here that Dana hasn't marked a thousand passages in. Margin notes, scraps of paper with lecture fragments -- her DH Lawrence had cafeteria french fries mashed between 'Lady Chatterley' and the mod vs. post-mod critical essays in the back."

Scully stops her finger on the broken spine of her copy of "The Scarlet Letter", the only survivor from a stack of freshmen lit requirements. "Not all of these are from college," she says absently, peering at the top shelf. "Look, Mulder, here're those used books we bought on refinishing cherry furniture."

"We wondered about those," Charlie says.

"They were used on one of our cases when the X-Files were closed," Mulder says.

"I was called away to consult on another case at the same time, and those books saw a lot of mileage. They went with me to Chicago and then you took them and then gave them back when you had to fly to..."

"Portland, Maine. That's where the last victim was found. The killer who was leaving messages to his victim's families beneath veneer coats on old furniture. He refinished antiques for a living by day. Clues about the next victims were always on the pieces owned by the person he just killed. Scully and I were the only agents who bothered trying to figure out the process he was using."

"Did you?"

"Never did. And then the furniture was 'misplaced' and probably sold accidentally at a police seizures auction. We caught the killer though."

"Lovely." Charlie grimaces before switching subjects. "There are, presumably, chores I'm supposed to complete for my publisher before tomorrow, and Michelle's taking the boys over to her cousin's to spend the night. You're on your own for the rest of today unless you really want to watch me slave over a keyboard and/or murder my perpetually on-the-blink printer. After it misfed two pieces of Michelle's stupid European-sized letterhead, it started spewing blobs this morning."

"Like an angry squid?" Scully asks.

"Yes! Exactly." He scratches his head. "You guys need anything? The fridge is stocked. All our TVs have cable. We are not savages."

"We might go for a walk or something. Kick back. Nap. That sort of thing." She lugs her suitcase up onto the bed and fiddles with the hateful lock.

"I'll be upstairs if you need anything. Just holler."

"Goodbye, everyone!" short people yell from the hallway.

"See?"

Charlie steps out to negotiate farewells. When the rattling commotion of kids quiets, Mulder opens one snoozy eye and says, in his sultriest and least serious tone, "Wanna help unjam _my_ inkjet?"

Scully can hear Charlie's laughter in the stairwell.

- - -
Bath complete: face washed, hair combed, teeth brushed. The next part of her ritual tonight includes pretending she isn't -- she can hardly think it in actual words -- deeply happy that she's sharing space with her best friend. Yesterday notwithstanding, she hasn't yet made a habit of sleeping in the same room as Mulder. It's still hard to even admit she might like to.

She juggles a plate and her dirty clothes, and the bookshelf beckons her again. She can't decide what to reread first.

Without glancing up, he says, "You certainly have a lot of books."

"Mmm."

She's been having a good time being with them again, her old friends. A stack of Woolf, the Brontës, and Joyce teeters on a small table by the door. She replaces the book of Beatrix Potter letters as she makes room for her snack.

He watches her run her hand over a shelf of her oldest books, the ones she devoured repetitively as a kid: "The House at Pooh Corner", "The Boxcar Children", "Webster's NewWorld Dictionary, Collegiate Edition".

"Wow. You just wanted to visit your books."

"Did you see this?" She pulls out a ratty 1940s Popular Library dime novel -- "Behind the Flying Saucers" ("The book everyone's talking about!") by under-esteemed author Frank Scully.

"I did. Uncle?"

"No relation as far as we know. Pity."

She plops down on the sofa. She eats crunchy peanut butter and cherry preserves on fresh three-grain bread and foot-fights Mulder for the middle cushion. "Look here," she says, flicking the cover of his book ("World's Largest Men's Briefs", a mystery), "I see that your legs are longer than mine but there's plenty of room for both of us."

He tosses his paperback aside, scoots over and pinches off a corner of her sandwich. He munches, thoughtful, before giving his critique. "This is the snootiest p-b-and-j I've ever tasted. I think you're doing it all wrong."

"They don't have any smooth p-b or white bread or grape jelly, sorry."

He sniffed. "Besides which, as midnight smackerels go, this doesn't even have any food with the word 'whiz' in the description."

"I'm a disgrace to your kind, aren't I?"

"Yes. And you're once again hogging my place of slumber, Scully."

She takes another bite of her sandwich and brushes crumbs off her nightgown.

"How's the book?"

"Not nearly so mysterious as your brother's choice of socks."

Earlier, they puzzled over a dozen extremely bright pairs of argyle knee socks, stashed in a bathroom dresser drawer.

"What are tomorrow's plans?" Mulder asks.

"Eating, mostly."

"Ah. No other family traditions?"

"Charlie and I used to give each other rope burns. We could initiate you."

"That's okay."

"I'll teach you how to make really good macaroni and cheese."

"You mock my culinary skills."

"Being able to read the instructions on a box doesn't count as a skill, really."

He pouts and pinches off more sandwich.

"I know a great recipe that uses rutabagas," she says, thinking randomly and wistfully of the casserole.

"I don't like eating food that sounds so bad it's probably good for me."

"Rutabagas Madness -- you'd love it. It calls for condensed canned soup."

He's been inching closer to her and they're sitting very near each other; she lays her head on his shoulder because she can.

"Have I told you my latest conspiracy theory about Jello?"

"Is it as good as your lecture on corndog mysticism?"

"Better." He gently settles her against him.

"Let's hear it."

"It involves contaminated samples in a CDC lab, a school cafeteria in northeast Appalachia and martian ectoplasm," he begins.

You are my favorite storyteller, Mulder, she thinks, allowing herself the sentiment. You are my most treasured tale.

- - -
- - -
23 November, midnight exactly


The pages are not tissue paper, not crumbling pastry layers. They are far more disconcerting. They have the feel of dried, peeled skin.

The book sighs from the thoughtful caresses, from being allowed to breathe, spread open, bared to the gilded candlelight.

Some places are primed for this sort of thing, for the words rolling inside them. In the corners of the shop, shadows dart and glitter, moving toward each other. Their merging produces little smoke and only a short crack of ruby flame. Sooty blackness pours through the floorboards and disappears.

Completion.

Under the creaky wooden planks, the freed entity runs its fingers over the tiny rocks and gravel that have trickled down, brought inside by customers over many, many years. It remembers this sensation, of stone in its hands.

The freed entity bubbles up and up like tapped crude, only forming shape when all of its oily body is spread upon the wood. It is elfin from certain angles; feline from others; a bit of porcupine and Pinocchio from other perspectives still. It casts no shadow: it is shadow.

The shop is quiet and empty of life, with shiny surfaces reflecting the dim street light slanting beneath half-closed window shades.

So much damage to unleash. So many breakables.

The captured entity waits for morning and mischief. It sniffs the air. Magic here, and silver things.

- - -
- - -
23 November, not midnight


"It's snowing?" She has Miri on one hip and tries not to laugh at the boys' construction paper Indian feather headbands. Jimmy is loudly insisting that Mulder needs a pilgrim hat.

"Very tiny snowflakes," Mulder says. "They look like they've been run through a Cuisinart."

"The streets look like they're coated with baking soda," Michelle says. "Is anyone else starving?" She's doing obscene things to a raw 20-pound turkey.

"Mom, why can't we make Mulder a hat?" Jimmy snivels.

"Because it's not nice to make the guests look like dorks," Michelle says dryly.

Scully turns toward the window, snickering.

"You can make a hat," Charlie says, "if you eat all the oatmeal that's in that canister you want to use. Plain cooked oatmeal, not cookies."

"Yuck," Peter says.

The defeated boys, their attention spans set on Sugar Pops High, flee the kitchen in search of model robots to pulverize.

Miri fusses, upset that her entertaining brothers have exited.

"Miri," Scully singsongs, "want to go for a walk in the snow?"

The baby pulls at Scully's hair in encouragement and gurgles a grin.

- - -
"Just hold her for a minute." She pawns the kid off on Mulder and reties her own loose bootlaces.

"Scully, she doesn't like me."

"Sure she does. She isn't crying."

"She doesn't look happy."

He's right. Beneath her furry hood, the baby is screwing up her face, as though preparing to cry long and loud.

"Gaa," Miri says in her choppy tot voice. Scully and Mulder both stop and watch her, but she resumes a pleasant, neutral expression and looks up at Mulder.

Scully takes Miri, who starts blowing drool-bubbles. The trio take a slow walk around the tiny quiet neighborhood. There are few other people out.

After a few blocks, Mulder again gingerly takes Miri, who continues to amuse herself, getting him a little slimy in the process.

The snow is pretty, pristine and delicate, with shrinking flakes. "It's like pixie spit," he says.

Scully refuses to let her mind process any part of the human scene around her. She focuses on the snow, on not falling down.

- - -
She helps Jimmy and Peter silly-string Charlie in the living room while Michelle insists Mulder learns to bake bread.

"You don't have a bread machine?"

"Philistine! Come here."

A tickle-war with Jimmy leaves Scully exhausted and sprawled on the floor, gasping. Someone turns off the football game and she can hear Michelle talking.

"Keep kneading. Peter, wash your hands, for heaven's sake. Flour. Flour your hands again and keep kneading. Where was I? Oh yeah. So, no, there hasn't been a full Scully family get-together in some time. Probably, what, two years? I think we were all together at Christmas in '98. I can't say I miss everyone, though I wish the kids could see Dana more often."

Scully, turning over onto her stomach, props her chin on her hands and thinks of that day with an ill taste in her mouth.

Getting not-shot by not-Mulder was a real highlight, compared to what happened after supper. The whole family plus assorted extras were there at her mother's, and ghosts still pressed in on every side.

Ella, Tara's niece, had reached out one chocolate-sticky hand and touched the small cross in the hollow of Scully's throat. "Where'd you get that?" the girl asked, transfixed.

"It was one of my Christmas presents a long time ago." Scully smiled and wiped the child's hand clean with a dishcloth.

"From Santa?" Ella tugged at the chain and looked back at Bill with somber eyes.

"It was a birthday present from our mom," he said, know-it-all tone firm.

"What was?" Margaret came through the door holding two empty casserole dishes and with Peter at her heels.

"Scully's cross."

"No," Scully said. "It was a Christmas present."

"Nonsense. I gave it to you when you turned 15."

Bill nodded.

She took Ella off her lap and bestowed her with two cookies. The girl immediately lost interest in jewelry and grabbed Peter. The two ran out of the room, squawking happily.

"Dana?"

"It was a Christmas present, Mom," she said, ignoring Bill. "Don't you remember? You gave one to me and one to Missy."

"It was your birthday. We had that party, at the ice cream emporium."

"I might have been 15, but it was definitely Christmas."

"No way, brat, it was that stupid birthday party. You whined the whole time. God, you were the most spoiled kid," Bill grumbled.

"Christmas," Scully said. "And you gave Missy hers then too, Mom. Just like Grandma gave one to you at Christmas." She was aware she sounded hurt. Her head ached and her eyes burned.

"Kids," Margaret said, sighing her well-worn sigh.

"Birthday," Bill said. "Why do you always have to pick a fight? Why can't you just admit you're wrong sometimes?"

"Bill. Maybe it was Christmas, Dana, I honestly don't remember. I'm sure I once told Fox I gave it to you for your birthday." Margaret avoided Scully's surprised gape and handed Bill the dishes.

Bill scowled, more from the mention of her partner than the dirty dishes, Scully knew. The set of his jaw told her something she'd always suspected and was never privy to the full brunt of.

Their mother attempted to cut him off before he began. "William, if you're going to start another unfounded rant you're going to do it outside--"

"Well, sorry, then," he snapped, plunking one of the dishes down in the sink with a clatter. "Dana's almost always right, isn't she? Whatever she says, goes. Whatever she does is fine."

"It's just a necklace," Margaret said.

"That you probably gave her on Christmas. I got it." He shook his head as if he couldn't believe how astoundingly stupid Scully was. "I don't remember it like that and you, Mom, don't remember it like that, but Dana does and it's not as though we can ask Melissa, is it?"

Scully drew in a sharp breath and was on her feet before another thought could enter her mind.

"Dana--"

"I'm not staying," she said, rising and pushing in her chair.

"Dana," Margaret repeated.

"I need to be going anyway."

"Dana." Louder, pleading.

Tara tapped on the doorframe. "Anyone seen Peter?"

"He just left with Ella," Bill said after a pause.

"Ella!" Tara bellowed, disappearing from sight.

Sister and brother stared at each other. Finally, Scully dropped her gaze and took her coat off the back of the chair.

"I'm sorry," Bill said evenly. "I wasn't insinuating anything."

"You most certainly were," Scully responded, her voice flat.

Margaret took a step forward, her face dark. "Honey..."

"Let her go," Bill said, scraping out a dish with a spoon. "She always does."

"Just stop it," Margaret said. But she didn't turn her head, didn't address Bill directly, and Scully knew it was as much a request of her as of Bill.

"I can't," Scully said.

As she arranged her scarf and buttoned her coat she consciously avoided touching her cross or any part of the necklace. He kept it with him; he wore it when she was gone. He even found it in Antarctica, in a spaceship. He gave it back to her each time, after keeping it safe.

She couldn't bring anyone back. She left her mother's house without saying another word.

Scully's car carved through the wind and she was full of words that should have been spoken aloud, if she were more courageous. She was miles away before she wiped her eyes.

"Aunt Dana?" Jimmy pats her on the head and she starts.

"Oh. What, sweetie?"

"Momma says you need to come help free Mulder from the bread monster."

She rises, joints stiff, and joins the cooks in the kitchen.

"Snow everywhere," Jimmy says, exasperated at the disorder.

"Behold, bread," Mulder announces, pointing at a pan with his gooey fingers.

"Don't let him touch my faucets like that," Michelle says, busy somehow stirring three stovetop pans at once. "That stuff's like glue."

Scully runs the water for him and scrubs down the floury counter.

He peers at her closely. "You all right?"

"Yeah," she says, fingering her cross by reflex. "Yeah."

- - -
At dinner they talk about Mars mud, atomic fish and Charlie's fetish for incredibly low budget horror movies: "You have to see 'Patched-Boil George' before you go home. It's schizoid gore at its finest."

The kids sack out and are carried off to bed by 10pm. The conversation moves to the living room. Michelle waxes poetic about prancy perv toys, Charlie and Scully demonstrate the fine art of the ropeless rope burn, and Mulder finally has an audience for the fable of his most exciting close encounter, the one with an unquantified stranger he calls Pinball Elvis.

Peter and Jimmy, in a bold effort at anarchy, escape their respective beds into the basement play room for a late night round of Punch Your Brother. Much wrestling ensues.

Scully feels rabidly possessive of everyone in the house. Her stomach hurts from laughing.

- - -
"Mulder."

He snuffles into the couch pillow while attempting to turn over. "What?"

A more forceful whisper. "Mulder."

"What?" The couch groans as he tries pulling the tangled blanket from beneath him.

"Come here."

"Why?" He's out of breath, limbs hanging off the side and the end of the disrupted cushions.

"Just come here."

With drunken-giraffe grace, he rolls onto his feet, weaving, his t-shirt twisted, his hair mashed on one side. He climbs onto the bed rather blindly. She reaches forward and grabs him before he can even realize how far he's crawled. She hauls him into her arms, onto her body. They fall backwards, him in her ferocious embrace, her arms and legs locked around him. She squeezes him and presses her face into his messy, soft hair.

He makes an odd, happy noise. "Did you learn this technique from Michelle?"

"Happy Thanksgiving," she whispers, and kisses his head.

After a minute, he gently raises up over her and kisses her forehead before lowering himself back down. "This is the nicest holiday I've had in a long time." He slides off her a little, props up on one arm and traces her cheekbone with a cool finger. Even in darkness she can see him watching her closely, and she thinks of New Year's, and his zombie lesions, and...

Almost a year since she felt that warmth against her mouth.

She turns her face to his throat, feels him hum. They wrangle the quilt into a purposeful position, and she pulls him back into her arms.

"I'm too heavy," he says to her collarbone. He's almost asleep already.

"You're fine," she says, her voice rough but pleased.

He nuzzles closer to her and says "I love you" very quietly.

The window at the head of the bed leaks smoke-spiced cold air. The pane seems to ripple, as though spirits are passing by, waving, friendly. Before closing her eyes, Scully reaches up and fingerprints the condensation, constellates the glass.

"I love you," she whispers.

- - -
24 November


They have been strolling the square this afternoon. There are a lot of shoppers out for such a small town. Talk of snow is making some people skittish; others are indifferent, focusing instead on major shopping accomplishments. At the start of the holiday season, in Slow Dance, IL, at least, the stores are jangling with customers.

She likes browsing. Mulder comes along.

The doors of 'Antiquing' are gilded and heavy, and their intricate frame is decorated with greenery, soft pine swags twined with miniature white lights. According to the National Register plaque, the building, initially the home of McBee & Higgs Towne Bank, was erected in 1903 in Colonial style. In the square's old-fashioned lamplight, the deep red brick is vibrant against the shutter of thick shale sky.

Gee, Scully thinks, a life-sized painted cement gorilla looks out of place in front of this shop.

Mulder kicks his foot a little and stifles a yawn. "Are you looking for something in particular?"

"Not really."

"So we could go home instead. Or you could come back some other time." He doesn't say 'by yourself,' though of course it's implied.

"C'mon. You see the gorilla. How boring could it be?"

"I also see china and a collection of teapots displayed in the window. I'm falling asleep just thinking about it." But he follows her in anyway.

- - -
Books line the walls of the musty, cold parlor but are barely visible behind ivy growing up the shelves and across the ceiling.

"I don't recognize most of these titles," she says to Mulder.

"I can't even read most of these titles. These books are _old_."

"Mr. Kingsman specializes in finding rare historical texts for universities," a shrill voice says.

They turn and observe a dour woman dusting and unpacking a box of other obscure tomes.

"It doesn't seem to be the only facet of the store," Mulder says. He has already eyed the baseball card selection.

"No, it's not. May I help you with something?" She moves to the shelves, as if to shield them.

"We're just looking," Scully says.

"Do you have anything in a nice ancient pagan sacrificial ritual?" Mulder asks.

Before she says no, something brief and peculiar flits across the woman's face. Then another customer comes in with a question and Scully sees a row of delicious Tiffany lamps in an adjacent room. She heads for them.

Mulder yelps behind her.

"What?" Scully says, whipping around.

He frowns, perplexed. "I don't know. I'm fine."

The lamps summon her. "I'll be in here."

The moment passes.

- - -
Having lost him almost two hours ago to a room filled with gargoyles, salvaged cathedral windows and faux-chimeras, Scully completes her purchases -- a railroad lantern for Frohike and an old, strange Victorian doll for Michelle's tiny collection -- and sets out to find Mulder. She rubs her hands together in an effort to warm them. The store is freezing despite numerous fireplaces, all crackling with fiery logs.

She's two steps from the staircase when she hears the first plink. She's two steps from the top when she hears the second. As she walks toward the sound, Mulder spies her and comes over, lugging a 10" marble vase with him.

"It's on sale," he says.

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

Another plink, and a man saying, "Ow!"

"That."

"Oh!" the man says. "Stop, help!"

Suddenly, there's one plink after another, a rapid metallic jingle, as though someone is tossing cutlery.

The agents stride into FBI mode and round the corner. The plinking stops.

A pudgy middle-aged man has tumbled to the floor and is covering his head with his hands. He's awash in silver.

"Scully," Mulder whispers excitedly, "this man has been spooned."

- - -
These badges really are handy, Scully thinks.

They've cleared the room of curious, good-natured shoppers, who wander off without much bother, and Mulder quickly sweeps all the spoons into a pile with an authentic Shaker broom ($105).

The somewhat embarrassed victim turns out to be Mr. Kingsman, owner of Antiquing.

"I was rearranging this display of hat pins and brooches, you see," he tells Mulder and Scully. His hands shake and he sips from his cup of tea. His clerk, the woman from the downstairs library, brings him a faded velvet footstool and leaves. "Thank you, Hazel," he calls after her.

"You were just standing here, alone in the room, and the first spoon hit you in the elbow." Scully thinks that repeating the words might make them less incoherent.

"That's right. I looked down and was trying to figure out if it had maybe...fallen off a shelf or something." He puts his hand down the inside of his vest with such enthusiasm Scully wonders if he's lost a squirrel there. "Then there were spoons _everywhere_, flying at me, right at my face. Soup spoons, slotted spoons, grapefruit spoons, tea spoons, measuring spoons, salt cellar spoons, ah-ha!" Triumphant, he tugs his hand out of his vest and shows them the discovery. A gravy spoon. He tosses it on the heap and shakes his head.

"All genuine silver," Mulder says.

"All pieces of various, lesser collections, yes, that's what it looks like."

"That's very weird."

"An understatement," Scully says, arching her eyebrow at her partner.

"Well," Mr. Kingsman says, "it was rather odd. But odd things have happened here before. It's been a while, but they've happened. No harm done." He smiles and stands up, rubbing his brow with his wobbly hands. "No harm."

Scully and Mulder exchange glances.

Hazel returns and interrupts before anyone can speak again. "You're needed at the front desk," she tells Mr. Kingsman. She sounds perturbed but the man doesn't appear to notice.

"Yes," he says. "It's a busy day, you must excuse me."

The shopkeeps trundle away.

"Brrr," Scully says.

"Yeah, they were a bit...eccentric, weren't they? Regardless of the spoon incident."

"No, I'm really cold. You ready to go?"

As he pays for the vase, she notices horseshoes nailed to all the doorjambs.

- - -
(See Part Two)