She can make her plans, but only one of them is likely to live forever, and it's not the guy who thinks auto-erotic asphyxiation is hot. (He still halfway believes in Bruckman's prophecy, even though it feels less and less like it fits into the life they're leading. When Scully was gone, he refused to think about it, and now that she's here, he'd rather wheedle her into choking him, if he can.) Mortality has always been a few steps behind them, but it feels like fewer than it used to.
"So we reassess in five years." Scully looks up at him, and he looks down, and it's just what he thought: she'd understand, she'd know what to say. If he hadn't spent all that time obsessively going over the options, maybe it wouldn't be like this - but he's nothing if not thorough when it comes to the things he's focused on. "Or I write an unauthorized sequel to Jose Chung's From Outer Space. Or we could start a podcast about what we've learned - it worked for Whitley Strieber."
There are options, he suspects, beyond even those possibilities. Some of what's out there for new parents is patently insane, from people who refuse to vaccinate their kids - Scully'd have an aneurysm - to those private schools that promise Latin speakers by age seven. A thousand different ways they could spend the rest of their time with their newest project, if they decide they want to. "Or we skip school and tour every MLB stadium in the country. People do that, Scully, they just get in an old schoolbus and drive their kids around until they get bored of it. We could do anything."
They could not, in fact, do anything. But you throw the extreme possibilities into the light and let your partner disagree, and eventually, you end up with a good plan. It's bargaining, and storytelling, and trying to make her smile.
no subject
"So we reassess in five years." Scully looks up at him, and he looks down, and it's just what he thought: she'd understand, she'd know what to say. If he hadn't spent all that time obsessively going over the options, maybe it wouldn't be like this - but he's nothing if not thorough when it comes to the things he's focused on. "Or I write an unauthorized sequel to Jose Chung's From Outer Space. Or we could start a podcast about what we've learned - it worked for Whitley Strieber."
There are options, he suspects, beyond even those possibilities. Some of what's out there for new parents is patently insane, from people who refuse to vaccinate their kids - Scully'd have an aneurysm - to those private schools that promise Latin speakers by age seven. A thousand different ways they could spend the rest of their time with their newest project, if they decide they want to. "Or we skip school and tour every MLB stadium in the country. People do that, Scully, they just get in an old schoolbus and drive their kids around until they get bored of it. We could do anything."
They could not, in fact, do anything. But you throw the extreme possibilities into the light and let your partner disagree, and eventually, you end up with a good plan. It's bargaining, and storytelling, and trying to make her smile.