Rating: PG

Summary: Life in water time.

Spoilers: Nah.
 

MICHAEL:

I needed that nap. I feel better. I'm warm again.

And hungry. I smell dinner.

One of the reasons I wanted to go swimming like I did was that all I've done on this trip is eat. And eat. And eat some more.

Something about being here makes you hungrier and everything taste better.

It smells really good downstairs. I think it's Jo's night, but whatever it is, it smells awfully tasty.

I guessed wrong. It's Dad's night, and it's...

Burritos. Oh man. And he makes awesome ones.

My chances at self-restraint tonight just flew out the window.

And he's got Kelly helping him, telling her how to make salsa, and she's doing the chopping.

I don't know what he puts on the chicken, but just smelling it drives me nuts.

That, and watching Kelly's ass while she chops vegetables.

"Well, look who's among the living again," Dad says when I come into the kitchen, which is real small.

"Hey, Michael." Kelly looks up, sets down her knife, and puts an arm around my waist. Makes me real grateful she put the knife down. "Your dad's teaching me how to make Mexican food."

"Needed some help chopping the salsa," he mutters into the skillet where he's doing the chicken. Then he turns around. "Since we've determined you're not dead, you can set the table."

Okay, I can handle that. Used to do it at Chateau Langly sometimes when I lived there.

I can never remember whether the forks go on the left or right. Fuck it. Long as we have them.

There's a definite chill in the air tonight. I'm glad I've got my sweats on. Maybe later, Kelly and me can cuddle up and keep each other warm.
 

ALLY:

(or, meanwhile, back in Virginia)

I feel like hell.

Yesterday I had four embryos implanted. Dr. Shalad was hoping to have more, but apparently, I have very uncooperative ova. She says next month, she's going to try a washing technique that breaks the capsule around the ova in order to allow the sperm better access.

Between having my private parts violated by various forms of instrumentation, generally of the sharp and metal variety, and drowning in massive doses of progesterone and estrogen, I am one miserable excuse for a female.

On top of being physically uncomfortable, I've begun to feel defective.

I no longer look in the mirror and see a small, generally healthy woman with a few bad habits.

I don't know what I see anymore.

I was expecting to be excited about being implanted, that we had some viable embryos, but having had it done, I feel more like...a breeding device.

And I have nobody to blame but myself. I agreed to this.

I'm on the sofa, trying to study but not concentrating too well. I really need to. I have an exam in physics in a week, and I really need to nail it. I'm at 90 percent. Right on the edge. It wouldn't take much to push me on a downward trend, thus ending my chances of entering a graduate program.

This thought merely increases my anxiety by a factor of maybe ten or so. Logarithmic, not geometric.

And I'm tired. Constantly. I am totally dragging my ass these days. I hate that.

I get home a little before Langly, and I hear him burst in through the back door.

"Hey, Ally, you in there?"

"Uh-huh."

He comes out of the kitchen, having already grabbed the requisite brew-and none for me, which I desperately miss-and sits himself next to me on the sofa.

"Hey. You okay? You look sorta bummed."

"Just don't feel all that great." I lean my head against him. I want him to make it stop.

I have the power to do so, but I don't exercise it. My choice again.

"Do anything for you?" He pulls me against his chest.

Yes, Langly. Make my back stop aching. Make my cramps go away. Make me stop feeling as if I'm going to cry every time I imagine somebody is giving me a strange look.

Tell me I'm not defective. Tell me that I'm perfect the way I am.

Even though I'm not.

I play with a few strands of his blonde hair. He's got wonderful hair. He also doesn't have any reproductive difficulties. Our incapacity to normally conceive an infant is totally on my side. This is not a guilt trip, it's a medical fact. I have one ovary, ligated fallopians, and a history of miscarriage.

He, on the other hand, is healthy and normal, according to Dr. Shalad. She may be the only person on the planet to ever apply that adjective to him. The thought of this makes me giggle.

"What's funny?" He kisses me lightly on the mouth.

"I was just thinking...Dr. Shalad described you as completely healthy and normal...I bet not too many people have ever used the word normal to describe you."

He muses on that one, and finds it amusing. "Don't think so."

He is handsome, sexy, beautiful, intelligent, healthy, amusing, and, in the words of Dr. Shalad, a very normal 37-year-old man.

Of course, she is not privy to most of his eccentricities. Which he has in spades.

And I love these little quirky things about him. They make him unique and wonderful.

And when I look at him, I want him to father my child.

Which is what he wants to do.

So much for rationality.
 

MICHAEL:

After dinner, Jo says she'd like to play cards, do we feel like it?

The game is seven-card stud, Dad's favorite, and Jo likes it, too. She learned to play in the service, she says.

Kelly learned the game at Chateau Langly, she's not great at it, but we're only doing nickel-dime-quarter. At Chateau Langly, minimum bet is a buck.

We're playing for kicks, not blood, tonight. And it's fun. It's fun to play with Langly and Byers and Mulder sometimes, but they can get kind of caught up in it, and they can really go nuts on wagers. Dad says Langly spent more of his time in college playing Dungeons and Dragons than he did going to class.

Obviously didn't hurt him. He did finish everything including his PhD in seven years. Not bad for a guy who spent most of his time goofing off.

Lately I wonder about the truth of this story. I mean, I know how much time I have to put in-and I don't even find my coursework hard.

I bet he was a closet studier.

We play a few games, and Kelly wants to go study-she's back doing it again.  I find this a bit of a downer, I mean, it's vacation and all, but even I have a project due in my programming class when I get back. I may actually have to break out the laptop and write some code.

Course, I can take the laptop on the porch and watch the water while I wrestle code to the ground. Could make it less painful.

Or more. Wanting to be out swimming again.

I got to try to go further tomorrow. Especially after tonight's dinner. Not only were those burritos killer, but Dad made double-chocolate brownies for dessert. With vanilla ice cream. And hot fudge.

Like I would have any resistance. I could be damn near ready to explode, and I couldn't pass that up. No way.

I have got to go swimming again.

We finally have a winner. Dad. Big surprise there. He smiles. I think he takes some measure of pleasure in kicking our butts. We reward him by throwing all the cards around and telling him winner picks up the game. This makes him protest that we've all been around Mulder too long.

Perish the thought.
 

ALLY:

"I gotta go see Joanie for a little while tonight. You wanna go?" Langly asks me as he's playing with my ponytail.

"Sure." Give me a chance to concentrate on somebody else's troubles for a while.

God, I am turning into such a bitch.

"Miranda want to go?"

"Miranda's at Sarah's house, spending the night." It's vacation for them, too. We've hardly seen her since Friday.

Which is one of the pleasures of teenagers.

This makes me wonder how I'm going to do, at my age, with someone who is utterly dependent and unable to do anything for him or herself.

I tell myself, you did fine with it when Miranda was a baby.

I was also 15 years younger.

I'm starting to hate this internal dialogue that never stops. I just want to be at peace, with myself, with my husband, with my daughter-who is decidedly unhappy with our decision to plunge forward-and with my decisions.

A trip to Joan's might help.
 

Joan looks a little better than she has. She's not back at work, but she hopes to be soon.

Futilely, it seems. Dr. Walker doesn't think she'll be returning this school year. She's almost done with chemotherapy, but it's not as if you stop taking it and the next day, you're fine.

She's delighted to see her little brother. She asks him about work, he makes a face that is normally reserved for ten-year-olds when asked if they like a girl in their class. I crack up. He has the most diverse range of facial expressions, such mobile features.

I wonder if our baby would inherit these. Could be interesting.

Joan asks me what's going on with me-I think being shut in, she's starved for everyday news of the outside world. I talk about work and school. I skip the details on the treatments. She is aware that we are engaged in the process, but I don't feel the need to share the pitfalls with her. I'm also vaguely aware that she is not entirely approving of the process-at least, this is my sense of this-but she does understand her brother's desire for biological children of his own, and she leaves it at that.

Besides, we have told everyone that when we're pregnant, each of them will be the first to know.

E-mail is a wonderful thing. Everybody gets to feel special.

Julie's not there when we arrive, but she comes along not long after. She looks as if she's had a long day at work.

I am reasonably certain that this job is not affecting her mental health in a positive manner. She's got the look of a person who sleeps poorly and is very close to snapping.

Langly asks her what's going on, and she just shakes her head, says, check your e-mail later. She vanishes upstairs, probably to send it to him-she won't do it at work, that much I know.

She joins us again, offers us each a beer-then, sort of shamefacedly, explains that she keeps forgetting I'm not drinking.

If Joan is somewhat skeptical of the means we are using to have a child, Julie is downright contemptuous. Her attitude is simply, you can't have kids, accept it. It's not the end of the world.

This has, needless to say, created some tension between her and her uncle. She's trying to bridge it tonight, but she's already frazzled from whatever happened at work today. Which she isn't discussing in front of us, and most certainly not in front of her mother.

Langly asks Joan if she needs anything, Joan assures us she's fine, even with Jo in North Carolina. She gets tired easily, so we don't stay for very long.

Plus, I suspect that Langly is itching to check his e-mail.
 

Langly races to the computer when we arrive home. For some reason, I burst into tears.

I feel horribly neglected.

And more than a little put upon.

He's checking it out in the offices, so I follow him out there after I manage to mop up my soaked face.

"Hey, Ally, we're outta coffee filters," he tells me when I lock the door behind me. It's just him and me out there tonight.

"Some in the house," I tell him.

"Well, like, you mind getting some?"

This is an eminently reasonable request, if not the most tactfully phrased. In my normal life, I'd go to the kitchen, grab a fistful of filters, bring them out, and be on my way. And I know he's not inherently a tactful person, and I tend to overlook it.

That is, when I'm not amped up on massive doses of hormones.

And this is all it takes to set me off.

"Excuse me, but what the fuck did you guys do before I was around? I don't recall that you had maid service!" I'm spitting nails here.

He looks totally baffled. "Huh?"

"Langly, what do you take me for? I'm not maid service, I'm not your mother, and I'd like to think I'm something other than a brood mare!"

Before he probably even knows what rammed into him, I slam the door behind me and stalk off to our room, where I throw myself on the bed and sob myself to sleep.
 

A short time after I doze off, I feel him shaking me gently.

"Hey. Got to talk to you." The voice is tentative, almost apologetic. Not what you usually get from Langly.

And I feel like such a shit for going off like I did. I seem to be making a lifestyle out of this these days. And I hate it.

I rub my eyes-I can't even get my contacts in most days; the hormones have dried out my eyes, and I grab my glasses.

I'm such a mess. I've got tear stains all over my cheeks, my eyes are red, I've gained five pounds in the past week, all of it water and all of it uncomfortable, my hair is all over the place, my barrette having gotten caddywampus, my boobs hurt, my stomach hurts, my back hurts.

He sits down next to me and scoops me in his arms, just rocks me gently until I get a little calmer.

"Sorry. This is rough stuff, isn't it?" He's got a sad, sweet expression on his face.

Yes, sweetheart, it certainly is.

"Guess I'm not being much help."

I'm not sure what he could do...I seem to be having abnormal responses to normal situations.

I just want him to hold me right now. And he does. He's playing with the strands that have fallen out of my hair clip, and finally, he unhooks the entire clip, combs out the strands with his fingers.

"You got pretty hair," he tells me. "Hope the kid gets your hair."

And I start the waterworks again. Jesus! I've become totally disgusted with myself.

I can feel him start to tremble, very mildly, but perceptible to me.

"Ally?"

I'm still sniffling.

"Ally. Do you want this baby or not?" He's cuddling me close to his heart when he says it, and I can hear the clutch in his voice.

Oh, Christ. How do I answer this question?

I love kids. I want to have one with him.

I just always imagined that if it happened, it would happen in our bed, with us laughing and carrying on and loving each other mightily. I didn't picture it happening with massive hits of hormones that I have to take every day, checking my basal temp along with brushing my teeth, having to schedule lovemaking around when I'm being implanted...

I was only implanted yesterday, and that means no sex for at least four more days...at a time when I crave him near me, around me, and in me.

And I feel selfish. I have had a child. I know the feeling. I've known the feeling of producing another person with someone you love.

And I want this with him. I don't want to deprive him. Miranda has been my joy. Doesn't he deserve the same shot?

"Yes. I do. I just feel like shit. It's not going to last forever."

He kisses my hair, murmurs softly.

"Langly? Can you just stay here with me? Don't go outside tonight. Please."

He nuzzles my face. "Sure." He looks a little confused and more than a little helpless, but he'll do as I need.

As I should do for him.
 

MICHAEL:

April 3, 2001

I feel fine when I wake up.

Kelly, however, is sneezing her poor little head off.

My poor girl's caught a cold. And here my dad was all worried about me.

She wants to go swimming, too. I tell her, don't think so. Not today. This annoys the hell out of her. She wants to be a good swimmer before we go home. I tell her it's a bad idea, and if she wants, we'll just hang out, I won't go in, either.

Even though I really need to. You want to talk about feeling fat.

She shakes her head no, if I wanna go swimming, I should go. But she wants to practice.

Dad interrupts this discussion. He hears Kelly for about thirty seconds and tells her, no swimming. I think this pisses her off, but he's actually real nice, he says he doesn't want for her to get sick, he knows how important her studies are to her, and if she's sick she might miss school.

Shit, I should've thought of that.

Jo backs him up. She says, stay on the shore today, see how you feel, stay warm. She offers to take Kelly into the town to do some shopping, and Kelly thinks this could be fun.

They're packing up to leave when I stop Kelly.

"Do me a favor. Get some nail polish."

"What?" She's confused here. "You don't wear nail polish, Michael." This cracks her up.

"Not for me, for you!"

"I don't wear it."

"Seriously. Get some nail polish. Indulge me. Okay? Please?"

She looks pretty skeptical, but she says, okay. She'll get some nail polish. She asks me what color.

Hell, I have no idea. I hadn't thought that far.
 

Kelly and Jo left for town, I'm gonna use this time to go work out. After Dad's feast last night, I need it. I'm already getting a gut.

Dad asks me what I'm up to. I tell him I'm going for a swim, I need it.

"Not too long. And not too far." He doesn't open his eyes, he's just letting the sun fall on him, and he looks pretty relaxed.

"Dad, you worry too much."

"It's not as if I have nothing to worry about." But he's not a bastard about it today.
 

MELVIN'S BRAIN IN SLOW MOTION:

The boy is headed out into the water. I hope he won't go too far, but soon, I lose sight of him.

This terrifies me.

He is an excellent swimmer. I'm not concerned about that.

I'm concerned that I cannot see him.

I realize how lost I would be without him. I've grown horribly dependent
upon him.

I find this more terrifying than mortar shells and rats the size of cats.

We always had rats in the bunkers. And they were huge.

I have nothing against cats, mind you. I think they're nice pets. But they remind me, size-wise, of the rats we'd have in camp. And it makes me uneasy. Langly and Byers, animal lovers both, constantly let Allison and Langly's cats into the office. The hair isn't good for the equipment.

That's what I tell them, anyway.

In truth, I find having a cat sneaking upon me makes me jump.

And I feel like such a fool for feeling this way.

Something about their stealth and silence, it disturbs me.

In the jungles, the silence was always far more terrifying than the sounds. And the sounds could make your blood curdle.

But it was what you didn't hear and see that was the most dangerous.

I can deal with a cat once it's in my presence and I'm aware of it. I'll pet them, and I find the sensation pleasant, not unlike petting Mr. Floppy, who was my last pet. It's their approach I find unnerving. The first time the black cat, Screamer, jumped on to my shoulder, I almost passed out from fear.

Michael adores animals. Lately, he's been annoying me about getting a cat. I wanted to say the landlord doesn't allow pets, but I couldn't pull that one off, considering that several of the tenants have cats. And the landlord has a Jack Russell terrier. So I can't pass it off on the landlord.

I like dogs, but we don't have the room for one. I suspect a cat would be a good compromise. I've been stalling him, but he also brings it up quite frequently. At least once a day. Usually more frequently than that.

It would take me some getting used to, having a cat in our home.

And I feel like such an idiot for the real reason why we don't have one.
 

I don't see him. He must have gone very far out.

I hope he doesn't overestimate himself. I can't help him if he does.

Not being able to help him makes me feel helpless.

I've felt so helpless so many times. And I've grown weary of it.

Are we all this helpless when it comes down to it? Or is it just me?

I try so hard not to be afraid. Perhaps that's the problem.

Maybe I should just let myself be frightened, instead of fighting it.
 

I indulge myself the luxury of being totally terrified of losing my son, just for once. I sit in the bright light of the day, allowing myself to be utterly fearful that I can't see him, and I try very hard not to tell myself I'm stupid or cowardly for feeling this way.

I'm not entirely successful. I'm afraid I'll have to work on this.

And sometime later, a small figure appears back on the beach. He's moving slowly. He's been out for over an hour, and he must be exhausted.

But he waves at me as he approaches the house. I can't say how relieved I
am.

He's cold again, and tired, and out of breath, but he's smiling.

"You oughta try it sometime, Dad." He heads into the house, hopefully to get warm.

Maybe someday I should.

And I'm not getting any younger.

END OF PART 87