FIC: Strange Bedfellows

[ivyclarice.livejournal.com]

Title: Strange Bedfellows
Author: ivyclarice
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Cigarette Smoking Man, Teena Mulder, Fox Mulder, Bill Mulder, Samantha Mulder
Word Count: 1013 (last letter of the story is an 'x')
Summary: Whose decision was it to save Fox over Samantha? (Episode: 4x23 - Demons)



Fox is dozing and nothing is really registering, so he is startled when Samantha comes into the room and leans over him.

"Wake up, Fox," she says, her index finger pressed to her lips to signal that he has to keep silent. Her usually sunny face is tense and grave, and she is so anxious that she doesn't even dare to make an audible shush. All at once, he becomes aware of the raised voices, the arguing, and the smell of cigarette smoke wafting up to them. It isn't their mother's cigarettes, he notes, she smokes menthols, and then he realizes there are three raised voices drifting up to them, not two. That means he is here.

They creep out into the hall and press their faces between the balusters to look down on the living room. Their mother is seated on the sofa, her face pressed into her hands. It is clear from the heaving of her shoulders that she is weeping. Fox is disturbed to see his usually cool and controlled patrician mother rocking back and forth as if she is a mental patient trying to comfort herself.

"I'm scared, Fox" Samantha says, her voice barely audible.

Their father is pacing back and forth, up and down the living room, agitated. A moment later, he stomps off into his study. Their mother rouses herself from the sofa and jogs off after him, clearly not done with the argument, even as upset as she is.

Fox glances back at Samantha and sees that her hands are shaking. "Stay here," he tells her. "I'm going to go down and listen."

Samantha shakes her head and reaches out for him, but she isn't quick enough and her hand only snatches at empty air.

"Fox, don't!" she says, her urgency somehow clear in her knotted eyebrows and tense arms, even though her voice is still no more than a whisper.

"I have to find out," he tells her, motioning her back with his hand. "We have to know. Just...stay there and don't move, OK?"

She nods and goes back down on her haunches, looking down on the lower level through the balusters.</lj-cut>

Slowly, Fox creeps down the stairs, putting one foot in front of the other as if he were treading over dead leaves. There is a fullness in his throat that makes it feel as though he can't swallow, and his heart is thrumming as if someone has just crept up behind him and cried "boo".

As he approaches their father's study, there is a roaring in his ears. At first he thinks there's something outside making that noise, but then he realizes that it's the sound of his blood drumming. He's terrified to hear what they're saying, and terrified of being caught. He doesn't know which is worse. Half of him hopes he'll be caught and sent upstairs so that he doesn't have to know what's being said.

As if by heavenly design, his father just happens to pace past the door over to where Fox can hear his mother crying. He
freezes, thinking he's been seen, but he hasn't. Not yet.

"How could you do this to our family?" his mother demands.

"I'm not doing it!" his father protests. "It's not just me! These orders are coming down from..."

"Be quiet!"

His father makes an exasperated grunt and Fox can see the shadow of him throwing his hands up in the air. Bill turns and Mr. Spender is standing there. Usually he's unflappable, but tonight he's in as much of a state as their mother and father. He and their father are practically nose-to-nose.

"You don't have a choice, Bill! It has to be one or the other!"

"Look," his father shouts back, "just give us a minute alone, all right?"

A second later, his father paces by again, and this time he does see Fox standing there. For a moment, their eyes meet, his father's eyes look onyx in the dim light, glaring, and then he closes the study door.

For a fraction of a second, Fox feels almost faint with relief that there is no punishment, but then the door opens again and Mr. Spender steps out of the shadows.

"You're a little spy," he says, enveloped in a cloud of his own blue-gray smoke. Fox gasps and backpedals toward the stairs, desperate to get away from this man...this ruiner of families. He runs back upstairs, wanting to launch himself into his bed and pretend that none of this has ever happened, but part of him can't stop. Part of him can't tear himself away from what's happening. Quietly, carefully, he sneaks back to the balusters next to Samantha.

For a while they hunker there together, holding hands, weathering the storms of their parents voices. They can hear Mr. Spender's footfalls as he walks back and forth, waiting for their parents to emerge. Clouds of fumes drift up to them. Minutes that seem like hours later, the study door opens again and their mother bursts back out into the living room, running at Mr. Spender.

"Not Samantha!" she shouts, her fists hitting his lapels. "You can't choose!"

Mr. Spender allows her to hit him with her fists for a few strikes, but then locks her in an embrace that isn't really an embrace. Quick as a striking snake, his hand catches a handful of her hair and she falls still. Their mother's blue eyes are round with fear and she tries to pull away from him. It is a look Fox will never forget.

"Let me go," she says. "You have no right to choose for us!"

"Someone has to," Mr. Spender replies. "Besides, 1961 gave me the right to choose, Teena. And I think you and Bill both know it."

Samantha turns to look at Fox, her fingers laced through his tighter than ever, and she asks him the question which will haunt him forever.

"What's going to happen to me, Fox?"

Comments

[wendelah1]

This is sad and creepy.