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[jowls]

Leave prompts, you'll get nonsense.

Comments

[rockitlike]

I'm pretty sure burning medical waste at home is illegal, but also I don't really care.

I'm not eating anything cooked over it. That's too close to eating it.

[jowls]

Maybe we skip burning the placenta and just have a celebratory bonfire in honor of little Katherine-or-Fox.

[rockitlike]

Certainly more sanitary and probably easier to light. I vote we do that. Weather permitting, as soon as the turnip's big enough not to be bothered by the smoke, obviously.

[jowls]

If we keep the turnip downwind, the smoke won't matter.

[ At some point later, maybe a few days' worth of 'later': ]

Do you want to baptize it?

[rockitlike]

Would you object, if I did want to?

[jowls]

[ There's a pause of five or ten minutes, time spent genuinely considering the subject (or maybe finally getting a hold of their internet service provider and lodging a complaint, who knows). ]

Not necessarily. But I'd want to know how much of a religious commitment I'd be signing the kid onto.

[rockitlike]

If my mother were here it wouldn't be a question.

Part of me wants to, but maybe that's just nostalgia? There are certainly aspects of involvement with the church I don't want to bring into our lives. Still, there's a part of me that thinks, this is important-- and it's hard to explain. I don't have rational reasons.

[jowls]

I'm not holding you to rationality - at this point, I'm not convinced that anything about having a kid is rational. That's not why we're doing this.

[ they're so lucky he's sort of chilled out about religion. there's a pause, and then, in an attempt to be normal about Things: ]

If you want the truth, I feel kind of weird about it, but I know it's important to you. And I want the turnip to have the things you think are important.

[rockitlike]

[ The fact that he's come to-- not understand, exactly, but to respect her faith and the place it holds in her life is one of the things that makes this relationship work in ways it never used to. ]

I'm going to have to think about it. But it means a lot to me that you're open to it.

What I can say is- I don't expect us to be the kind of family that goes to church every week. That's not what it's about.

[jowls]

Scully, you'd have to pay me to go to church with you. We were never in danger of being that kind of family.

[rockitlike]

You know what I mean.

[jowls]

I know.

You believe, and that matters more to me than the thought of my grandparents spinning in their graves. I want to trust your judgement.

[ which is to say, I'm trying to trust your judgement . ]

[rockitlike]

I'm not sure either of our families would totally approve. I don't care. I just want it to work for us.

And I wouldn't want you to be uncomfortable with it, obviously-- if we did. If you don't want to stand beside me I don't want to force you, but I wouldn't want to do it without you.

[jowls]

[ A long pause. Maybe this would have been a better conversation to have in person! Whoops. ]

I wish I knew what would work for us, Scully.
It doesn't matter to me in any objective way. We might as well dip the baby in silver paint to appease the Robot God QWERTY.
I really don't care if I'm shunning a millennium's worth of ancestors and their suffering by letting a priest pour some holy water over the turnip's head. And I don't care if it believes in God when I don't.
I'm not leaving you on your own with this one.
But I still feel weird. I can't explain it.

[rockitlike]

I think that's fair. I mean it is a little strange to consider it, even for me.

I know you don't tend to put much weight on rituals, but if there's something you want to share with the turnip, I'm open to that as well.

[jowls]

[ She's generous with him on this one, and he leaps at the chance to put a pin in the are we committing to Catholicism here question. Maybe in a few weeks, he'll have a better answer for her. ]

Oh, that's easy.
2001.

[rockitlike]

That seems like a pretty small ask. Unless you mean you plan to build a monolith.

[jowls]

We'll save that for when they need to get their woodworking badge.

I don't know, Scully. I don't have that many rituals up my sleeve.

[rockitlike]

I know. I'm just trying to--

You're her father. Or his, whatever. What you want matters as much as what I want. That's all.

[jowls]

I know.

[ And sometimes he even believes it. It's an incredible feat of cognitive dissonance, to be painting a ceiling like Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel and still think to yourself, I wonder how long before we lose this one, too. Thinking of a kid in the long term, letting himself believe that it'll look at him and go that's my dad and not that's my mom's friend, Agent Mulder, is still a work in progress. ]

Taco Tuesdays. Friday night movies with popcorn. Opening day baseball games. Setting off fireworks on the fourth of July. Catching the Perseids every August.

That's what I want.

[rockitlike]

Can we limit to sparklers only until twelve, and reasses responsibility for explosives thereafter? I'm not qualified to reattach fingers.

[ He can talk her down to ten for sure, and in practice maybe eight, honestly. ]

[jowls]

Counter offer: I light the fireworks off, and we buy the illegal ones.

[rockitlike]

That goes for your fingers too, you know.

[jowls]

I graduated from sparklers about forty years ago, you know.

[rockitlike]

You have to accept a certain amount of fretting, Mulder, it comes with the job.