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little fic: Scully 60th birthday with Mulder and their three offsprings (Emily, Will, Baby)

pretty please :) :)

Emily has been practicing for almost two years now, at a good dermatology office northwest of Baltimore. Emily is 5’10 and freckled, with hair like a Nebraska wheat field and her mother’s remarkable eyes. Emily, extroverted and charming and the life of every party, was the captain of three varsity teams in high school. Emily left soccer cleats and lacrosse sticks all over the house; Emily wore her father out with endless games of catch and tag and chase-the-frisbee. She has a quiet boyfriend named Sebastian who makes heavenly rugelach. He and Mulder swap notes on sourdough starters.

“Happy birthday, Scully!” she says, bending over to kiss her pixie mother. “You don’t look a day over 40, and I should know.”

Scully laughs, clutches at the human Golden Retriever that is her daughter. “I’m so glad to see you,” she says. “Where’s Baz?”

“Got a cake in the car. Hi, Dad!” She hurls herself into her father’s arms, laughing when he staggers backwards a bit.

“Jesus, kid,” Mulder says, squeezing her close. “Cut an old man some slack.”

Emily, laughing, is bright as the sun.

William, rangy and pale from too many hours in the chemical engineering lab, tosses grapes into his mouth while Vera, newly five, applauds.

“That’s forty-two, Will,” she says, adoringly, marking in her notebook. She huffs a new-penny corkscrew of hair from her line of sight. Vera alone inherited their mother’s hair. Their father’s changeable eyes.

“What up, nerd?” William says to his older sister. He throws her a grape, which she catches and eats.

Vera applauds again, records further data with the tip of her pink tongue poking between her lips.

“Price of gas,” Emily replies, walking over to drop kisses on her siblings. “Helicopters.”

Vera flings her arms around her sister’s neck. “Where is Baz, please?”

Emily scowls. “Everyone loves him more than me, even my own family. What gives?” She scoops her sister onto her hip.

“Baz makes patisserie,” Vera says, carefully enunciating. “Baz c’est magnifique.”

“Where’d you learn French?” Emily asks.

Vera beams but does not answer.

“We don’t know,” Scully says. She scolds Daggoo from the couch.

“Enigmatic little thing,” Mulder says proudly. “Like the rest of you.”

William pinches Vera’s bare toes, making her squeal. Like his father, he doesn’t openly acknowledge that Emily can see ghosts and learn from them. That he’s telekinetic, that sweet little Vera is, at least partially, psychic. He knows that Vera can speak a little French because Mulder can speak a little French.

Vera does a lot of things, does them quietly.

Their family is so boisterous, they talk so much and say so little.

Baz comes in, carrying a robin’s-egg-blue cake draped in garlands of pale yellow Lambeth frosting.

Vera gasps. “Oh, c'est beau ! Scully, regarde ce qu'il t'a fait! N’es-tu pas fière, Emily?”

William lolls on the sofa. On the table, a Rubik’s cube silently solves itself.

Emily looks at her extraordinary baby sister. Her beautiful, strange little brother. She looks at her mother, who isn’t aging quite right. At her father, whose ghosts she holds in her scarred heart. She returns her sister to the couch.

She kisses Baz on his perfect, regular, amazing, ordinary face.

“English please,” she says to Vera. “Just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”

Emily attended medical school at Hopkins.

“Fitzgerald,” Vera murmurs as she draws a diplodocus. “The Great Gatsby.”

Mulder and Scully exchange a glance.

Baz, beaming and sweetly, beautifully, oblivious, sets his artwork on the table. “Vanilla chiffon and raspberry,” he says, a kiss on Scully’s marble cheekbone. “Swiss buttercream.”

Emily preens.

“My favorite!” Vera cries.

William lights the candle without touching it, to make a point to Emily.

Emily, as expected, glares.

Vera gazes at the adults, enraptured. She sings Happy Birthday to her mother with the tone-deaf verve of kindergarten. She snuggles against her father with the trust of the utterly adored.

Scully grins, blows out the candles.

Watch little Vera, say Melissa and Samantha to Emily. She’s more.

Emily pretends to ignore her aunts, sees her brother adjust a deck of cards across the room. Sees her mother’s extraordinary beauty, sees her father’s extraordinary love.

She hugs her mother and cries, just a little, for reasons that are unclear. “I love you,” Emily says, throaty.

William rises, embraces them both. “Happy birthday, Mom,” he says. He kisses the top of her shining head.

Vera looks up from her drawing. “Ich habe keine Unruhe,” she says in her sweet, fluting voice.

Scully’s wine glass hits the floor in a sudden, piercing cry.