TITLE: Blood of Abraham - Chapter One
NAME: Mik
E-MAIL: ccmcdoc@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: M/Sk
RATING: NC-17. M/Sk. This story contains slash i.e. m/m sex. So, if you don't like that type of thing - STOP NOW! Forewarned is forearmed. Proceed with caution. Of course if you have four arms you can throw caution to the wind.
SUMMARY: Sometimes going back is the only way to go forward.
ARCHIVE: Only with my permission.
FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist.
TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: Nnnnnnnnnope.
KEYWORDS: story slash angst Mulder Skinner NC-17
DISCLAIMER: Fox Mulder, Walter Skinner, and all other X-Files characters belong to Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions and 20th Century Fox Broadcasting. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made from their use. I'd rather say that they really are mine, but I've been advised to deny everything. But when I become king...
Author's notes: There was a discussion in the X-haling chat recently about what sort of father Mulder would be. Someone call Child and Family Services...
The blood of Abraham, God's father of the chosen, still flows in the veins of Arab, Jew, and Christian...Jimmy Carter, The Blood Of Abraham: Insights Into the Middle East, 1985.
If you like this, there's more at https://www.squidge.org/3wstop
If you didn't like it, come see me, anyway. Pet the dog.
Blood of Abraham - Chapter One
by Mik
"I don't care how you got here...I am not calling you Moses."
The basket on my coffee table wriggled a little.
"In fact, I'm not calling you anything. I'm calling Child Welfare Services. Now." I would have done it if I hadn't looked back down into the basket. I've looked on a lot of grisly and inexplicable things in my career and I can pride myself in saying that I don't turn to mush easily. So why were those blue green eyes making my spine go squishy? Too squishy to reach for my mobile which was just an arm's length from me. So squishy that I just kept standing there looking into that basket.
I have lived in this building a long time. I have tried to mind my own business, and keep my business from invading the lives of my neighbors. Oh, sure, there has been an unusually high body count on my floor. And things keep blowing up, being poisoned, going missing. Unauthorized people keep going through my apartment like the sweater counter at Barneys. In other words, I am never going to be awarded that coveted Tenant of the Month parking space. But I rarely encounter the looks of suspicion and distaste I met that night, dragging my ass home after a particularly grueling day of nothingness under the thumb of Assistant Director Kersh and his campaign to numb me to death.
It was easy to understand why. Sitting outside my door was a small wicker basket, with a note that read: Mr. Mulder, this belongs to you, in letters big enough that even Mrs. Holden across the hall, who couldn't see dust bunnies smaller than Pekinese, could read it. And the basket was wiggling and making sounds that couldn't be mistaken for laundry - not even mine.
Knowing full well that Mrs. Holden was watching me through a crack in her door big enough to let in Mormons, I scooped up the basket without even a peek inside, and unlocked my door. I left my keys on the counter, the basket on the table and my gun on the desk. I went back to the door and gathered my mail and flipped through it, looking for some further explanation for my unusual door prize. "Well, there's got to be some explanation," I allowed, aloud. "You're not exactly a free sample from Avon, are you?"
The basket wriggled in reply.
I lifted the blanket that had been draped over it carefully, and confirmed my suspicions. It was a human baby. Okay, it was humanoid. It definitely wasn't a puppy. And it looked human. I decided to operate on the assumption it was human 'til it proved otherwise. "So...what am I supposed to do with you? Obviously, someone thinks I ought to be doing something with you. But whom? And what?" I peeked in again. "C'mon...give me a little clue?"
The nose in the middle of that face wrinkled up as if there was some serious contemplation going on behind those eyes. The result was a sound that seemed to come from another part of the basket, and probably was not relevant to the conversation.
Still, it did make me aware that there were aspects of having an infant around for more than a minute or two that I was not prepared or willing to deal with. "Know what I think?" I asked as I managed, at last, to reach for my phone. "I think we need some expert help. Time to call in the pros." I hit number one on my speed dial.
There was no answer the first time. Okay, granted, she did tell me she had plans for the evening, and that I was not, on any account, to find any dead bodies, or paranormal phenomena that might require her involvement. "But she didn't say anything about babies, did she?" I asked as I hit number one again. "I'm sure she'd consider babies something worth interrupting her about." Still no answer. "She's being pretty childish, isn't she?" I asked the basket. Got another one of those sounds. The third time I dialed it went directly to her voice mail. "Come on, Scully, you know it's me. I need your help. I swear it's neither a dead body nor a paranormal phenomenon. But it is kind of an emergency, so please...call back. Please?"
I put the phone down. "She'll call back." The face wrinkled again, but this time as if in distress. I risked putting a hand down inside and patted in the general vicinity of the middle. "Don't worry. You can always depend on Scully. I promise. Look...why don't you just...go to sleep or something?" It did not look inclined to follow my advice. "I hope you're not planning to be difficult about this, kid, because you must be this tall to go on the Mulder funhouse ride. I'm just not equipped for anyone smaller."
This didn't seem to afford the contents of the basket much comfort, and there was some thrashing and noisemaking going on in there. I looked around my apartment, searching for something to amuse or entertain or at least silence the kid without resorting to bondage. Keys. In the movies and on television, babies were always entertained by car keys. I ran to the counter and grabbed mine. I started to dangle them over the basket, and then decided I needed to pull my mini maglight off. And my keychain version of my Spyderco folding knife. And maybe my keys had been dropped too many times in liquids of suspicious origin to go into a baby's mouth.
I put the keys back, and looked around some more.
I was on my knees in the bottom of my cupboard, hunting for something that might intrigue or amuse or stifle a baby, when I heard a determined rap on my door. Getting up, kicking boxes out of the way, I ran over and covered the basket with the blanket, and went back to the door.
Scully was on the other side, breathless, her hair disheveled, looking ready to bite or shoot or both. "Wh - what is it?" she panted, hand to her breast. I know it was to her breast because she was wearing so little dress it was easy to spot that part of her anatomy. "What was so important that you called me away from dinner with friends? The first time in three years, mind you ..."
She was getting wound up for a real speech. So I stepped aside, inviting her in.
She came through, still ranting. "... and is it that unreasonable that occasionally I can...Mulder, what is that?" She pointed to the blanket-covered lump on my coffee table.
I lifted the blanket. "I think it's a baby. You're a doctor, you tell me."
She glared at me, but the glare turned quizzical, as she set her bag down and shimmied out of her coat. "Mulder, where did the baby come from?"
"Well, the way my dad explained it, when a man and a woman really love each other, they hire some birds and some bees and some stamens and some petals are in there somewhere, but I always - oof."
She was holding her hand up as if she was ready to slug me again. "How did you come to be in possession of this one?"
"Cracker Jacks? Okay, okay." I put my hand up defensively. "It was waiting by my door when I got home."
"Babies aren't its, Mulder. They are he or she." She pulled the blanket away completely and looked into the basket.
"He or she was in that basket out in the hallway." I picked up the note. "This was tied to it - the basket, not the baby."
"Your father didn't teach you the difference between hes and shes?" she asked, dryly, taking the note.
"That would require touching him or her. I decided to wait for an expert."
She scanned the note. "Well, evidently you did know the difference between hes and shes at one time."
"Uh uh. Not me," I protested. "Scully, the last time I had sex with an actual woman in the room was probably around the last time you went out to dinner with friends."
Scully cast me a slightly disbelieving look and set everything aside to give the contents of the basket another look. "You know, Mulder, he or she does look like you."
I didn't bother to look. "Well, unless I ordered a super deluxe package from 1-900-HOTONES, which I don't recall doing, then he she or it does not belong to me."
She was doing something inside the basket. "Then why did you call me and not Child Welfare?"
Well, she had me on that one. I shrugged and smiled weakly. "Truth? I have no idea. I read that note and just couldn't bring myself to turn it - him or her, over to strangers until I knew how that basket came to be on my door."
"Him, Mulder. It's a boy."
Okay, why did that give my nerves a little jangle? I backed up enough to get a look inside. "Well, he's not Jewish."
Scully, my ever so straight laced and by the book Scully, sniggered. "You don't know that," she countered, "he could be -"
"Uh uh. I don't know much about babies, but even I know that kid is more than eight days old."
"Yes." Scully scooped him up, bare butt and all. "I'm no expert either, but my guess would put him at about six weeks." She turned her head enough to brush her cheek against his and my Scully went gooey on me. "Oh, Mulder, he is so sweet." She was actually snuggling against him.
I went to the kitchen and came back, snapping on the latex. "Don't get too attached, Scully." With the basket safely debabied, I twisted it toward me and began to poke around inside. "He doesn't exactly come fully accessorized, that's certain. The blanket, a couple of these disposable boxers, and a...uh ..." I held up a small object and looked at Scully questioningly.
"Pacifier."
"Ah." I let it fall back into the basket. "Nothing else."
Scully was bouncing the kid softly and making sounds I didn't know she was capable of making. "Forensics could probably pick up something," she said to him in a voice that sounded as if it belonged to a teletubbie. "Wouldn't that be fun?" Suddenly she stopped bouncing and cooing and a look of stark disbelief came over her face.
It only took me a moment to figure out why. Her dark blue dress was a little darker in one spreading patch. "Uh oh." I tried not to smile. "Um...nice dress, by the way."
She shifted the glare to me. "Hand me one of those disposable diapers, will you?"
"Hey, don't put him there!" I protested. "I sleep on that."
She ignored me and deposited his bare wet baby butt right where my shoulder had spent years making an indentation. He was kicking his legs all over and evading her hands, with an expression that said 'yeah, come and get me, screw!'. "Hurry with that diaper, will you?"
I stuck my hand in the basket and groped for one. I pulled it free and tossed it to her but in the process managed to knock the basket over. I said some words that are meant precisely for such circumstances and knelt to gather things together.
"Mulder. Language," she said sternly.
I looked up at her. "You know, if you'd called me Fox just now, you would have sounded exactly like my mother," I told her, scooping things up and dumping them in the basket.
She was still doing things to the kid, but she was smiling sort of smugly. "And I thought you said you made her call you Mulder."
"She did," I allowed, putting the basket back on the table. "Except when scolding me. My mother had a zero tolerance for swearing. I think she even gave my dad time outs for cursing."
Scully had finished with the kid and was dabbing at the front of her dress with tissues, which only seemed to mat up and leave white flecks clinging all over the spot.
I frowned sympathetically. "That's a goner. Sorry."
"Oh, no ..." She dabbed a little more. "A good dry cleaning - which you will be paying - and it will be fine. But," she held out the wadded tissue, "do you think you could lend me something to wear home?"
"Sure." I left her for a moment, smiling to myself. Scully in one of my shirts. That was an image to savor. I put a dress shirt and a pair of running pants on my bed for her. "Hey, it's not Versace but it will get you -" I stopped. She was holding something in her hands and frowning. "Where did you get that?"
She looked up, bemused. "Under the table. It must have fallen out of the basket - Mulder? Are you all right?"
I don't know what I looked like, but I know what I felt like; like someone had buried a pick ax in my chest. I staggered into the room, reaching for it.
She wasn't responding to my outreached hand. She was responding to something in my face. "Mulder? Are you sick?" She looked at the baby. "Some kind of allergic reaction? A chemical contamination? I should call -"
I had said no two or three times, but I finally shouted it as I grabbed the object from her hands. I sank into a chair, staring. "No," I repeated hollowly. "No one. We aren't calling anyone."
"Mulder?" She reached out and I jerked my hand back from her grasp, but all she was doing was touching my knee. "What is it?"
"I haven't seen this since I was twelve years old." I felt tears and blinked them away. "I don't remember her having it in her hands when she - when they ..." I felt one rebellious tear drop. "But it couldn't ever be found after." I let the item fall into my lap. A fist sized, black, stuffed lamb, with well-worn button eyes and what was once a pink thread nose.
"Your sister?" Scully had the grace not to be openly skeptical. "Do you think ..." she looked at the wriggling mass at her side, "that there's some connection?"
I made myself get up and look down at the kid. "I don't know." I looked toward my bedroom door. "I don't know anything except that kid's not going anywhere until I do."
"Mulder," she chided, "be reasonable. This is not a stray puppy for you to rescue. It's -"
"Him."
"He's someone's child. He's a missing person."
"He's not missing," I pointed. "He's right there. Besides, maybe he isn't someone's child. Maybe he's a clone, or something else. Never had a mother." I headed for my bedroom.
She was still making protests behind me, but I ignored her, digging around in the bottom of the cupboard for an old box of photos. She was still reciting reasons and regulations when I returned to the living room and held out a photograph. "What do you think?"
"Oh, Mulder, you were actually cute as a little boy," she said as if the fact astounded her.
"Never mind me. Look at Samantha."
Scully turned and took her time comparing the photo to the kid. "He looks more like you, Mulder."
"Well, he's a he," I retorted. "He would."
"There is something ..." she conceded after a moment, "around the eyes. Maybe the chin. And there is that bear."
"It's a lamb," I corrected.
"Lamb." She handed the photograph back to me. "But do you think it's possible...It's not possible it could be hers."
"Why not?" I felt my chin come up rebelliously.
She reached up and put her hand on my arm. "You know why, Mulder."
I looked down at her. "I have just one word for you, Scully: Emily."
Her fingers dug into my arm. It was her only reaction. Finally, she let her hand fall, and she drew a shivery breath. Then she managed a smile and said, "Well, you're going to need a few things if you plan on keeping him around for any time."
"Right. Of course." I looked around the room. My wallet was on the counter, next to my keys. I grabbed it, fingering out twenty, forty, sixty, seventy dollars. "Here's seventy. Is that enough?"
She looked at the cash in my hand and then at me. "For what? A bribe? Not even close."
"No, to go get what he needs." I pushed the money at her.
She pulled back as if I was shoving a toad in her face. "Mulder, I'm not going. I can't go out like this. You go. I'll stay here with him."
"Me?" Now I felt as if she was shoving the toad in my face. "I don't know what to get."
"Neither do I," she countered levelly.
"But you've got to know!" I argued.
"And you base that assertion on what data?"
"Dana data. You're a woman." I gestured sharply to indicate order. "Women know these things. It's a biological imperative."
"No, it's a biological imperative to mate and give birth to children, not to shop for them." She stood and gave me a little push. "You go. Use common sense. Diapers, formula, a bottle or two, some -"
"Wait a minute. Slow down." I was scrambling for a pen and paper. "A bottle of what?"
She sighed. "An empty bottle, Mulder. To put the - oh, give me that." She snatched the pen from me. "I'll make the list. You watch Moses."
"Moses?"
She pointed with the pen. "That's called a Moses basket. He arrived in it. Moses."
"Oh, no...I knew that. We've already had that conversation. I'm not calling him Moses."
"What will you call him?"
Well, that was a perfectly reasonable question. For which I had no answer, reasonable or otherwise. "Do I have to call him anything?"
"Of course you do. You're the psychologist. You know we need identity. Give him one."
"I can't just call him the kid?"
She was scribbling. "No."
"How about the Biograph Boy?"
"Mulder, what are you rambling about?"
"You know...back in the early days of motion pictures, there were no stars, no famous actors and actresses. They were just known as the Biograph Boy, or the girl with curls."
"Here's the list, Mulder. Try to pick up a name while you're out, as well." She put the list and my cash into my hands. "Go on. I don't want to be here all night. I have to work in the morning."
"So do I," I reminded her, shoving everything into my pocket.
She cocked a brow at me. "And what are you going to do with him?"
"I – oh...yeah."
"Oh, yeah," she repeated. It sounded as if she was mocking me.
"What am I going to do?"
She leaned over and collected the kid, stroking his head. "Didn't they cover this at Quantico?"
I think I was having a small pang of jealousy. "No, it was an elective and I chose Ten Ways to Not Kill Your Partner, instead."
"Let me see, what did they tell us...oh, yeah: Call the proper authorities." She must have seen something in my face that I didn't deliberately put there because she backed right off that. "Okay. Second option...use a couple of sick days. That will get you to the weekend. But whatever you do, you'd better start by going to the store. He's going to want to eat soon and two diapers won't last two hours."
"Right. I'm going." I started for the door.
"Mulder?"
I turned back. She was holding him out to me. "Aren't you going to say goodbye?"
I barely refrained from rolling my eyes. Instead, I came back and gave his hair a tentative ruffle. "See ya, Biograph Boy."
"You'd better find a name, Mulder," Scully called after me, "or I'm going to start calling him Fox, Jr."
At the door I paused, and turned. "You should be advised that I didn't score very high marks in that elective I took. I might forget how not to kill you."
End Chapter One