Blood of Abraham – Chapter Nine

by Mik

It continued to be the kind of day one does not look forward to recording in one's diary or, in Langly's case, blog.

It was not a companionable gathering, to begin. It was clear Skinner was still upset with me. And the Gunmen weren't all that happy that I'd invited them over for a play date and then effectively cancelled by showing up home seven hours earlier than expected. I tried to get Skinner to leave, and he insisted he was committed to being there since I was the reason he'd had to leave the office. Of course, in his argument, he conveniently overlooked the fact that he was the one insisted I go home, and then he was the one insisted I couldn't drive and then he was the one insisted he'd drive me home. But that was immaterial. It was my fault he was there. Then Skinner tried to get the Gunmen to leave, but they wouldn't go, and I was relieved. I didn't want to be left alone with him, in his highly offended state.

After a couple of hours, however, even the sour silence from his seat on the opposite end of the futon, going over the contents of his briefcase was an improvement on the antics of Huey, Dewey and Louie. I'd never seen those guys so animated...or heard them so loud. They crawled on the floor, even Byers risked the crease in his pants to get down and play with the baby. They took it in turns to carry Bram around on their backs 'til he was screaming in either ecstasy or terror, I was never really sure.

I had toyed with the idea of a nap while they were there, maybe make up for some of the hours lost the night before, but with the lot of them playing at full volume, sleep really wasn't feasible. I never bothered to try. I just sat on my end of the futon, legs tucked under me, pretending to read, and trying very hard not to wince every time Bram emitted one of those ear piercing squeals. The kid definitely had a future either in politics or with a death metal band.

Finally, even Skinner had had enough. He put his briefcase aside, stood, lifted Bram from Langly's shoulders and said that he was overstimulated. I'm not sure if he meant the baby, Langly or himself. "He hasn't had a nap today," he added. "It's time." Maybe he meant me.

Frohike responded by reaching for his electronic Battleship game and maneuvering it between he and Langly, but Skinner remained standing over them, babe in arms, looking meaningful until they got the hint and began to look at their watches, exclaim at the time and make movements toward the door.

"See you tomorrow, Mulder?" Frohike called over Skinner's shoulder as he herded them toward the door.

"Yeah," I answered. "And...hey, thanks a lot for being here today," I added belatedly. Skinner had left his things on the desk. Evidently he wasn't leaving quite yet.

I heard the front door close and I dropped my eyes to the magazine in my lap. Skinner was talking softly to the kid as he came across the room. He paused in front of me. "He really should have a nap."

I looked up. He was holding Bram out to me. "Yeah?" I jerked my head toward the bedroom door. "You know where his crib is."

He didn't move.

I sighed and closed the magazine. "He won't go to sleep for me, you know that. Just give me a break and put him to bed, huh? I'll put coffee on while you do."

He wasn't budging. "You need to put him to bed. You need to get him to sleep on your own. He needs to start interacting with you, Mulder. You won't always have someone around to help you."

I scowled up at him. "You're expecting him to be around a while, are you?"

He backed up just enough to let me slide off the futon. "Aren't you?"

"Oh, honestly...I don't know." I let him pass the kid to me. For a change Bram didn't howl when I took him. He looked up at me, his little fists pumping and his feet wiggling as if he was dancing to that death metal band. "We haven't exactly bonded, you know." I was holding him awkward and had to shift him around to get him in a grip that didn't feel as if he could squirt out of my arms at any moment. "Haven't I already proved it would be a mistake for me to keep him? And besides," I stepped over piles of Gunmen made mess, "Scully's going to find out who he belongs to any day and we'll get him back home. So it's really a waste of time, isn't it?"

"What if she doesn't?" he countered. "What if, somehow, this child is related to you?"

I glared at him. "Now, that's not fair. All right, all right...bonding time it is." I carried him into the bedroom and held him over his crib. "Okay, kid. Just this once, could you please sleep for Uncle Mulder? Just this once? Please?"

Just for a second, there was a flash of something in his eyes; mischief, affection, that reminded me so much of Samantha I expected him to call me Buttmunch and I didn't want to let him go, but the look passed. I leaned over the rail and eased him down into the bed. "Now...here's the lamb and here's a blanket. There you go." He seemed to be settling down quietly, and I patted his stomach for a moment. His big eyes were slipping closed. "That's it. That's a good boy." I backed away from the crib, and started for the door.

And he screamed.

I banged my head against the doorframe. "You see how he is for me? You see?"

Skinner had resumed his place on the futon, and he merely turned a page of his report in response. "He needs something, Mulder. Babies cry for a reason."

"Yes, and his reson d'etre is to drive me crazy."

"He's hungry or needs changing," Skinner answered placidly.

"It's easy for you, isn't it? You get to go home when you're tired of him." I straightened with a sigh and looked back into the bedroom. "And why don't you?"

Skinner made no reply.

The kid was red and had scrunched his eyes up until they threatened to sink permanently into that puffy sticky face. "Give me a break, kid." I came back to the crib. "Just tell me what you want and we'll both be happy. Hell, I expect everyone in this building would be happy."

"Yelling at him isn't going to help, Mulder." I felt Skinner's hands on my shoulders as he eased me out of the way and went to the crib. "There, you see?" he announced a moment later. "He's wet, that's all. Very easy to fix." He lifted Bram out of the crib. "Some great investigator, huh? Yeah, I know," he soothed as he carried him to the bed. "To think I pay him to figure things out."

I didn't move near the bed. "Don't listen to him," I instructed. "Your taxes pay my salary."

Skinner continued to coo and bother with the kid's clothes. "Uh oh...he's getting a little rash. Where's the zinc oxide ointment we bought?"

"A rash?" I moved closer, and peered over Skinner's shoulder. The kid's backside was decidedly red, and bumpy. No wonder he cried. "How did that happen?"

"It happens." Skinner brushed me away. "Food allergy. Left too long in wetness. Stress."

"Probably all of the above," I concluded guiltily. "I know, I know. I'm a bad uncle." I went to the bathroom cabinet and looked through the boxes he selected last week. "Zinc oxide? Are you sure we bought some? I don't see any."

"I'm sure we got some. Keep looking."

I brought an armful of packages to the bed. "I don't see anything about rashes or zinc."

Skinner pawed through them. "Honestly, Mulder, how could you forget rash ointment?"

"Hey, you were the one who wanted to be the wizard of Sesame Street," I shot back. "I was just along to pay the bill and carry things."

"Well, there isn't any here." He lifted Bram and put his wet little butt in my hands. "Here. We shouldn't cover him again until we put something on the rash." He went into my bathroom and went through my cupboard as if he really believed I couldn't find a rash cream without Divine assistance.

I held the kid away from me. "I looked. We didn't get any."

"Well, one of us should go get some."

"One of us?" I put Bram back in his crib, resting my arms on the rails wearily. "Shall we flip for it?"

"No, I'll go. You're supposed to be home sick." He looked at his watch. "Shall I bring back Chinese?"

I sighed deeply. "I'd kiss you for Chinese," I said with feeling, then remembering I wasn't talking to Scully, felt the stupidity and heat spread over me like lava. "I mean...yes. Thank you."

He was stunned into silence for a moment...but only a moment. "I might have to take you up on that," he said quietly, and left.

I heard the front door shut and looked at the kid. "What did I do?"

Bram just looked up at me, without an ounce of sympathy and hiccoughed loudly.

"Now, listen to me. I am going to put on coffee, and try to clean up the mess your playmates made." I frowned to emphasize how serious I was. "Do you suppose you could not throw a fit for fifteen minutes and let me get a few things done?"

This time his hiccough jerked his entire body. And it made him smile. Or at least stop scowling at me. He waved his arms wildly, almost as if he was shooing me away.

I don't need to be told twice. At least...not often.

I'm not purporting to be the world's tidiest person, by anyone's standards, but I like familiar chaos. I don't like other people's messes. I feel physically compelled to clear up any disturbance in my personal entropy and the Lost Gunmen had certainly disturbed things. They'd made some odd sort of fort-cum-spaceship out of my dining table chairs, spread blankets everywhere, and moved stacks of newspapers and magazines into the middle of the floor to continue their game of Battleship while riding Bram on their backs. When Skinner finally threw them out, they'd left half full cups of coffee and juice everywhere. I even found one of Bram's bottles rolled under the bookshelves and his sucky thingie had somehow ended up in the fish tank.

But with a few moments to myself, I managed to restore my sense of order. The coffeemaker was making appropriate coffee noises, I'd pushed everything back out of the way, rescued the bottle and the sucky thingie, and vacuumed cracker crumbs and shredded paper bits off the floor. My stomach was growling in pleasant anticipation of a nice Chinese supper.

Looking around the place, I drew a deep breath of satisfaction. Which stalled in my nose. I was not smelling lemon wax or freshly brewed coffee. I was smelling something along the lines of rotting carrion basted with the back end of a skunk. I dropped the Hoover and ran into the bedroom, remembering, with horror, that I'd left the little stench factory uncontained in his crib.

He'd done it. Foulness was everywhere, and boy, wasn't he proud of himself for being so thorough. "What did you do?" I yelled. "What the hell did you do?"

Disappointed that I wasn't as pleased with his handiwork as he was, he began to scream again.

"Just shut up, will you?" I snarled, overwhelmed by the prodigious nature of his bodily functions. "Shit, what a mess." I reached into the crib and grabbed the lamb. "Look what you did!" I shouted, shaking it in his face. "Look what you did!"

Carrying the befouled toy by one ear, I raced to the bathroom sink and began scrubbing, swearing under my breath. I could have been shouting obscenities at the top of my voice, it wouldn't have mattered. His screaming would have drowned it out. I hung the lamb over the towel rail to dry, grabbed baby wipes and the roll of toilet paper and marched back in there to try and undo some of the damage.

It took a trash bag, Lysol, rubber gloves and an entire roll of toilet paper to get that mess cleaned up. And the kid screamed at me the entire time. Exasperated, exhausted, and extremely angry, I picked him up under the arms, holding him away from me, begging and finally shouting at him to shut up. I even gave him one good hard jerk before I realized what I was doing and put him back in the crib so fast it could almost be said that I dropped him.

I was shaking as I left the bedroom. My God...I'd been partnered with a pathologist long enough to know the trauma done to a brain in a body exposed to force like that. Just one hard shake to a body that size was almost the same as a head on collision to an adult. I could have killed him. I could have left him with serious and irrevocable injuries. I had no business caring for him or any child.

The doorbell rang. I was still too agitated to respond. Whoever it was could just go away. I never thought of myself as a brutal person but this kid had introduced me to levels of brutality I didn't know I was capable of reaching. He had to go. Immediately.

"Mulder?"

I turned around. Scully was standing in my doorway, looking concerned. An angel from on high couldn't have been more welcome at that moment. "Scully...oh, thank God."

"Mulder, are you all right? You look white as a sheet." She came toward me. "Is Bram all right?"

At the mention of his name another wave of acute guilt poured over me. I didn't know how to confess what I'd done. I just stood there, stammering. "I...I ..." I gestured toward the bedroom door, and as I did, saw that I still had remnants of Bram's accomplishments on one of my hands. I said an appropriate word and rushed for the bathroom sink to scrub my hands furiously.

"It's only baby poo, Mulder," Scully said quietly, following me into the bedroom. "It won't kill you."

"Very funny," I said bitterly, over the rushing water. "What are you doing here? Never mind. I'm glad you're here." I reached for a towel. "You were right, Scully. I have no business trying to keep him. He should be turned over to the proper authorities." I dumped the towel into my overflowing hamper. "Tonight. Right now."

Scully made a face at me. I knew that face. It was her 'I don't think you want to do that' face. It wasn't one I ever gave much heed. "I don't think you want to do that, Mulder," she said, digging into her bag.

I wasn't going to give it any heed this time, either. "Yes, I do." I couldn't even make myself look at the kid. "I really do."

Scully shrugged as she dug. "Well, all right, but I just came by because I'd been down to Quantico and got the preliminary results on his paternity test. I think I've found out who he belongs to."

"You did?" I looked at her. Then I looked at him. At that moment, finding out he was a direct descendant of Attila the Hun would neither surprise nor upset me. "Who?"

Scully had a strange expression, as if she couldn't decide whether to smile or frown. Instead, she held out an envelope. "You."

End Chapter Nine

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