Rating: PG

Summary: Gizzie gave me the supermarket scene...it was too much of a trip to pass up.

Spoilers: Nope.
 

February 10, 2001

God, I haven't drank that much beer in ages...and I wake up with a raging headache.

And I think I maybe had five.

Least I ended up not losing my money; we kind of broke even. So to speak.

Dad's already up, he's headed over to the offices, says he's doing a consult for Miss Russell tomorrow, so he's got to motor on this.

"You all right?" he asks me.

"Yeah...just too much to drink."

"Seems to happen whenever you and Blonde Boy decide to play pool."

"Not like we've played much lately." And you should talk, Dad! "Uh...what do I do with the stuff I got the other night?"

"Did you get it off your hard drive like I told you to?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well...use the viral information. Leave the names of the people out of it. ALL of them. We don't need to name our sources."

We generally don't. But if we say we got it from Fort Detrick...Langly's gonna get nosy. I know him. He's not gonna let it go.

"Whaddya think? Should we let him read the stuff, even if we don't use it?"

Dad gives me this real evil Dad-type look. "No, no, and no."

"Don't you think he's got a right to know?"

"He has the right...does he want to exercise it? I doubt it. Is it going to improve his life? Change his circumstances for the better? Not likely. Think about it, dear boy. What would you want to know in his place?"

"I think I'd want the truth." Which you finally gave to me after all these years, dear old Dad.

"We're not lying to him. But does he really need the gory details?"

"Maybe."

"And maybe not. I'd appreciate it if you'd follow my instructions this time, dear boy. I'm not quite up for anyone's nervous breakdown right now...except maybe my own."

God, he looks miserable.

"Dad? What's wrong?" I sound about ten years old when I say this.

He's slumped down, looking way old. "I just wish I felt more optimistic about times to come. It just doesn't look good out there."

Christ, what are you supposed to do?

The only thing I can do is give him a bear hug.

And I do.

And he hangs on to me like for dear life, for a long time.

"I love you, you know that, don't you?" He says.

"Yeah, I do. You, too."
 

God, I got to talk to Kelly. Maybe to the prof. The prof's like only a few months apart in age from Langly. Maybe he knows what to do...this is eating me up. I can feel my stomach knotting up hard.

Is this what my dad feels like all the time?

Shit.
 

I take a shower and head over to Kelly's. She's downstairs, and I'm surprised as shit she's still sleeping when I get there.

I knock real light on her door, she doesn't answer, so I peek in.

She looks like a little angel there.

I'm tempted to go in and kiss her, but I don't want to freak her out.

So I call her real quietly.

She rubs her eyes. "Michael? Is that you?"

"Yeah, it's me."

"C'mon in."

So I step into her room and close the door. She's all curled up in the blankets, and she's got bedhead.

And now that I can see, I can confirm it: she looks cute.

I ask her if I can sit down by her, she says sure. She reaches up to me, and I get an armful of sleepy, mussed up, beautiful little Kelly.

I think I'll just stay like this all day.

"You up late?" I ask her, after we kiss a few times.

"Uh-huh. I finished my essay."

"Want me to look it over?"

"Yeah, can you do that while I take a shower?"

"Sure." I mean, I'd rather take a shower with her...hopefully someday...not too distant in the future.

She throws off the blankets and all she's wearing is a flannel shirt and her undies.

I'm going to die right here.
 

I was hoping she'd come back in wearing just a towel, but she's dressed, got her hair wrapped up in a towel instead of the rest of her.

I tell her I'm gonna make some suggestions, but I could really stand some coffee, and she thinks that works fine.

So we go over her essay at the kitchen table of Chateau Langly. Ally and Langly are either still asleep or they went out; her car's not there.

Langly comes in a while later, looking as bad as he always does when he wakes up. He mutters something about coffee and Tylenol, rummages around in the cupboard.

"Hey Kelly." He can finally speak coherently after a cup of joe. "I gotta go to the market today. Ally's with Ellen today, and I don't do the market so good."

"What makes you think I do?" She demands.

"Well...I mean...you're a girl-"

"And that automatically qualifies me as an educated shopper? I don't think so, but I'll go with you, sure."

"I'll go with you. I shop better than he does," I point at Langly. "Course, most people do."

"Fuck you, Junior."

"Not a chance." I give him my best evil grin. "Besides, Ally's made me shop before. She says I do okay."

"Great. You can get yelled at when everything we buy is wrong." But at least he's grinning. "Hey, Kelly...I gotta ask you a question." He's sitting on the counter now, working on another cup of joe.

"Okay." She looks kind of worried, but I try to let her know, he's not gonna bite her.

Me, that's another story.

"Um...this doc you work for, she's a fertility doc, right?"

"Yeah."

"Does she like just do research or does she take people?"

"She does both. Why?"

"Just asking."

"Do you have a question you'd like me to ask her?"

Langly's thinking this one over. "Uh...you think she'd see Ally and me?"

"Why, whose parts don't work?"

God, she made him blush!

I love it.

"Hers."

"You know this for a fact."

"She got snipped last year...we lost a kid. Ectopic."

"Oh, wow, that's really sad. I'm sorry. So she had a salpingotomy?"

"A what?"

"A tubal ligation."

"Uh...yeah."

"Okay. I know she's seen people who have had that done...I don't know what she'd recommend."

"I mean, does this person see anybody like that?"

"I think so...she does all different techniques, I don't know what her evaluation would be. You'd have to talk to her." She says she's going downstairs, she's got cards in her purse.

"You told Ally about this?" I ask him.

"Not yet."

"You planning on it?"

"Gotta see if she's interested first. Besides, be sort of hard to pursue it without her."

No duh, dude!
 

"You guys ready?" He asks us, standing over us. "Which one of you's driving?"

"Hello? When are you gonna get a car, dude?"

"When I have the fucking time to go shopping for one!"

"You oughta go visit Jaleel."

"I know, I haven't had time to get out there...I'll get to it."

"We can take the 'Stang."

"Can I drive?" He's whining now.

"Oh, fuck, go ahead." I hand him the keys. "But it's mine now, you get it?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah...just for old times' sake, okay?"

"And you so much as put a scratch on it, I will fucking kill you, Langly."

I've been dying to say that to him for ages.
 

I wish we'd left him home. Kelly and me could do this a lot faster if we didn't have him to deal with.

The Safeway's a nightmare on Sunday afternoon anyway. Dad and me, we usually go on Friday night, real late, nobody's there.

We're in the produce department. Personally, I don't get what's so hard about picking out produce. You get something that looks halfway decent, you buy it, you get over it.

Doing this with my dad, well, it's a pretty scary experience. He checks EVERY damn fruit and vegetable, and he always asks the produce manager where they came from...

"Jesus fuck, will you look at these?" He holds up a package of these ugly waxy looking things.

"What are they?" Kelly squints at them.

"Rutabagas. Who the fuck eats these things?"

"I never have," she shrugs. "Since I didn't even know what they are."

"Somebody obviously eats them," I tell him. "They wouldn't sell 'em if they could use the space for something else."

"Nobody in their right mind eats these."

"Langly, what did Ally want us to get?" I think she's getting annoyed at Langly. He's back on running commentary again...which is preferable to last night, when I couldn't wring five words at a time out of him.

"Um, let's see...romaine lettuce, butter lettuce, raddicchio, red bell peppers-"

"She wants red bells at $4.99 a pound?" Kelly's appalled.

"It's on the list."

Kelly shrugs. "It's her money."

"And Granny Smith apples, and flame seedless grapes, and honeydew, and zucchini, and Christ we're not gonna have room for anything else, and this is just the fucking produce department!"

Kelly and me pick out the items Ally told him to get, and he stops and picks up the rutabagas again.

"One thing about these babies, though, they make great weapons. You get hit by a rutabaga, you know it."

Kelly shakes her head at me. "Now I know why Ally says she can't take him anywhere."
 

"What possessed people to start eating eggs?" I'm checking the cartons to make sure we get one without any broken ones. "I mean, think about it. Eating something that comes out of a chicken's ass. Who thought this up?"

"Langly, just shop, okay?" He's been directing these questions at Kelly, and she's getting kind of annoyed at him. Just as I am.

He's okay for a while. He can do breakfast cereal-Chateau Langly is never without a generous supply of presweetened concoctions to jump start them at any time of the day or night. We've got Lucky Charms, Frosted Flakes, and Cocoa Puffs.

"Hey, you know when I was a kid, they used to call Frosted Flakes Sugar Frosted Flakes? Like the name change would fool anybody! And Honey Smacks used to be Sugar Smacks."

"I love Honey Smacks," Kelly tells him.

"So throw 'em in. Just so long as we don't forget the Cocoa Puffs."

Cocoa Puffs are one thing he and I can both agree on. It's a GREAT cereal.

"I never could eat Lucky Charms, though. I hate marshmallows."

I never knew that about her. So she hates marshmallows. I'll have to remember that.

We're in the personal care aisles. Oh fuck.

She's got tampons on her list.

Ally is a very cruel woman.

I tell Kelly, this is her department.

"What is the big deal?" She's laughing at both of us. Langly, she actually got him to blush for the second time today.

That's my girl. Any girl who can make Langly embarrassed, she's a woman after my own heart.

"Like how would I even know what to get her?" he's shaking his head.

"It's not that hard! She specified what kind she wanted!" Kelly's having fun busting on us. "I mean, you guys, do you die every time you have to buy condoms?"

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do...I'm not gonna say this to her, though.

Not that I've had a lot of opportunities in my life to be embarrassed by this...but pretty soon, I hope I get the chance. Somehow I get the impression that it's gonna be a requirement with Kelly.

Langly's not gonna let Kelly get away with making him turn red twice in one day, though. I just know it.

He does anything mean to her, I will fucking strangle him.

"So Kelly," he asks her as we're trying to select packages of suitable dead animal flesh, fowl variety-eek. I hate raw chicken. It's cold and nasty and slimy. "If you had no chance of getting busted, how much would it take to get you to walk down a street in DC naked with a bag over your head?"

She looks at him like she doesn't believe he asked that, and I don't either...he is SO tacky sometimes.

"So? How much?"

"Langly, you're insane!" She's laughing at him again.

"No, no, like you'd have no chance of getting busted or anything. No laws against indecency or anything like that. What'd someone have to pay you?"

"First you tell me," she tells him.

"Hmm...I dunno. Hundred bucks?"

Kelly and I are on the floor.

"Langly, you are so fucking cheap!" I can't believe he'd do it for only a hundred.

"Am not."

"You are, too!"

"Look, I'm easy, not cheap! Get the distinction, Junior!"
 

"Christ, how did we spend over $150 bucks!" Langly screams when we get the total.

Go shopping once in a while, Blonde Boy. Get a taste of real life.

Ally's got him so insulated, it's unreal. He's way proud of the fact that he hasn't gone to the bank in a year and a half...she goes.

Wonder what she's gonna say when he springs his latest little surprise on
her.

I'd like to be a fly on the wall for that one.

Then again...maybe not.
 

ALLY:

I haven't seen Ellen in ages...but now that she's unemployed, I made the time to spend a day with her.

She is severely bummed.

We're sitting outside Starbucks-it's cold, but the drinks are warm, and she brought some cinnamon schapps to spice up our coffees. I'm not much for liqueurs, but this combination, I could get used to.

"I just don't get it." She's shaking that mop of curls. "I mean, Ally, did I tell you what they gave as the reason for letting me go?"

"No."

"Well...this is gonna kill you. You remember at your wedding, when Joan's ex was making a royal pest of himself?"

"Little hard to forget. Great performance, by the way."

"Well, I wish to hell I'd shot him, because at least then I'd understand! No, months later, I'm let go for 'unauthorized and unjustified use of my weapon.'"

"Wait a minute, El. The doors were closed. I don't think Skinner even saw you."

"Honey, if it was Skinner, I could have explained it, and he might have written me up, but he wouldn't have sat on it for months and then brought it up when it was convenient...and besides, Skinner's not even there for me to blame. No, Skinner had nothing to do with this. I'd like to know who did.

"Spender and Fowley don't do jack on the X-files, and Smullen, well, he got transferred to wiretap. Shows what they think of his services." She snorts as she sets down her mug.

"What really kills, though, is that Mulder was going to leave once Sarah was a few months old and Scully was back on the job...set up his own firm so he could spend more time with his kids. And he was going to recommend me for his job. And Al, I wanted that so bad, I could taste it."

I have no words to console her. All I can do is let her vent.

"How's Dave dealing with it?"

"Dave? He's been terrific...c'mon, Al, when isn't he? No, Dave thinks it was totally wrong and unfair, but he's not frantic over it."

Dave doesn't have it in him to get frantic is my belief. He might even be relieved that his wife is not, day in and day out, subject to loss of life and limb. A new experience for him.

"I love being with my kids, but Al, they're in school all day, and let's face it, I'm not the domestic type. Marcy's got the home front under control, and as much as I love her, being around my mother-in-law all day...I need to get out and work, Al."

"What're you looking at right now?"

She sighs, big one. "I have no idea. Back into police work? I really don't want to...but I need a job. Let's face it, Al, rabbis don't make much money...and as calm as Dave is about everything right now, it's not going to last if we don't have some income flowing in. And God, going to the FBI and finally being assigned to the X-files...Al, it was such a plum for me. I hate to say it, but I feel really degraded right now. As if somebody stripped me of a part of myself that's really important."

"Which part?"

"My dignity."

The most painful part to lose.

I want her to know that if she needs monetary assistance, she can always ask...but right now is probably not a good time. Her pride is gone, she falls. Always my take on that proverb, anyway.

"Hey, I'm sick of bitching about myself. Tell me what's happened since Hanukkah, girl."

"Well, young Frohike got well."

She laughs, that rich, exuberant Ellen-laugh, and I feel so relieved to hear it. "Good to know. How's that man of yours?"

"Well...not great. You know about Joan."

"How's she holding up?"

"She's hanging on. Even improving. I think she wants to get out of the hospital big time."

"No surprise there."

"And he's got a boss he hates now...you heard what happened to Sheridan, didn't you?"

"No, I'm sort of out of the loop."

"Sheridan died a few weeks ago. It was ruled a suicide."

"You don't sound convinced."

"I'm not. Neither is Langly."

"And there's the issue of Mulder and Skinner. And you."

"Hey, it's political and you know it."

"Yeah, but whose politics?"

She shakes her dark curls again. I could really be jealous, but she'd laugh at this. She hates her hair.

"I could look into the Sheridan thing...my resources are kind of limited right now, but I still have friends...I think."

"I'm sure you do, El."

"I hope so. So what else is going on, Al?"

"I think Langly got sort of bummed over Sarah being born."

"What'd he say?"

"More like what he didn't. He barely spoke to me yesterday."

"Sorry about that, girl. I know that that part of your life, well, that was another time."

"Yeah. He seems really disappointed, though."

"He'll get over it."

"I hope so. Maybe he regrets marrying the old girl."

"Get over it, Al! He does not. I mean, you can't blame the guy for being a little disappointed and all, but he'll deal. He always does."

"Hope so."

"How about you? You dealing okay with it?"

"I don't need any more kids, El. Miranda's a great kid. I'm lucky to have her."

"Yeah, she is. And you are lucky. Doesn't mean you wouldn't want to experience it with Langly."

"Well, as you know, it's not a possibility."

"Sure it is."

"El, I'm 45 years old! I had my tubes tied! It's NOT an option."

"Lots of advances in fertility treatment, girl."

This makes me laugh, hard. "Get real, El. I am NOT having any more kids! It's not going to happen!"

She laughs at me. "Keep telling yourself that, Big Al. Sooner or later, you might even believe it."

END OF PART 69