Title: "Declarations"
Author: Angela W.
Category: Alternative Universe
Rating: Strong R
Summary: Melissa Scully and Agent Pendrell become a
couple
Timeline/Spoilers/Notes: This is a part of a group of
vaguely interconnected, alternative universe stories
in which the X-Files were never reopened after they
were shutdown at the end of season one. Thus, anything
that happened in season two and beyond never occurred.
Although Mulder and Scully are married in this story,
it's not part of my regular "married' series (the ones
where they got married in Las Vegas). M&S are actually
only supporting characters in this story, while two
supporting characters who, IMHO, could have added a
lot to the show if they hadn't been killed in an
untimely manner, are the stars.
Feedback: If it's nice or contains *constructive*
criticism, feedback is valued.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. They
are the property of Chris Carter and 1013 Productions.
Archive: Feel free to archive anywhere.
 
***

FBI Special Agents Dana Scully and Sean Pendrell were
almost through with their shift in the labs at
Quantico when the call came through.

The voice was that of Assistant Director Walter
Skinner and it was even more gruff than usual as he
described the circumstances he needed a scientifically
grounded agent for. A kidnapping and murder where the
victim seemed to have died as the result of an unknown
toxin.

Pendrell gritted his teeth and rolled his eyes. "I'll
go, Scully."

"Pendrell, I can," she began uncertainly, but he shook
his head.

"You're five-and-a-half months pregnant, Dana, and we
don't even know what kind of crap is out there. You
can't risk the baby's health like that."

Scully sighed and nodded. Ever since joining the
bureau several years earlier, she'd made a real effort
to pull an equal share of the workload, never begging
off from even the most brutal assignments with the
excuse that she was a woman. She and Mulder had
certainly operated as completely equal partners during
the year they'd worked the X-Files together. But since
their marriage and her almost-immediate subsequent
pregnancy, she'd found that her maternal instincts
outweighed her notions of professional decorum.
Pendrell was right; she wasn't going to risk her
baby's health.

"Thank you, Pendrell," she said softly. "Is there
anything I can do?"

"Yeah, you can call your sister and tell her I won't
be picking her up for dinner tonight, after all. Tell
her I'll probably be home around nine, if she wants to
come by. That is, if she's still speaking to me.
Considering this will be about the tenth time I've
stood her up for work-related reasons, she may not
be."

"Sean, I'll explain it to Missy; try to make her
understand. Anything else?"

"Call Loretto's and cancel our reservation. It was
under my name, for eight."

"Is it your birthday?" Scully asked. God, that would
make her feel even worse than she already did.

"My birthday? No. Why?"

"Well, Loretto's is a pretty expensive place to go out
to dinner on a G-Man's salary. Fox and I have only
been there a couple of times and both were for special
occasions. I know today's not Missy's birthday, and
it's obviously not Valentine's Day or New Year's Eve,
so I just wondered what rated such a fancy dinner?"

"Nothing, now," Pendrell muttered as he grabbed his
crime scene kit and headed out the door.

***

Melissa Scully had just walked in the door of her tiny
apartment when the phone rang. She hoped whoever it
was wouldn't want to talk long. It was already after
six and she wanted to spend plenty of time getting
read for her date with Sean, who'd said he'd pick her
up around seven thirty.

"Hello."

"Hi, Missy, it's me," her sister said.

"Hey, Dana. You know I love you but whatever you've
got to say, make it snappy. Sean's taking me out to
dinner someplace really nice -- he won't tell me where
but said it was fancy-- and I need to start getting
dressed soon."

"That's why I'm calling," Dana replied.  She quickly
explained the situation, ending with "and Pendrell's
afraid you're going to be mad at him, but please don't
be, Missy. If you're going to be mad at anyone, be mad
at me. It's my fault that he's been working so many
hours lately. I'm really not pulling my weight in our
department. I know it's not fair, but I can't help it.
I get tired so easily and certain chemicals that never
bothered me before make me throw up nowadays and I'm
afraid to mess with other chemicals because they might
hurt the baby and,"

"Shh!" Missy broke in. "I'm not mad at anybody, Dana.
Disappointed, yes. Frustrated, yes. But not mad."

"Would you like to go out to eat with me?" Dana
suggested. "Fox isn't going to be home 'til late,
either. And I feel like treating you to dinner is the
least I can do, even if it's my lab partner's company
that you'd prefer."

"No thanks. I appreciate the offer, but I'll probably
head over to Sean's place in a bit. I've got a key, so
it doesn't matter if I get there before he does. I can
make us something to eat over there."

"I didn't realize you had a key to his place. Sounds
like you're making progress in the relationship."

Missy let out a loud sigh. "I don't know, Dana. It's
confusing. I'm crazy about Sean, and I know he likes
me, but we seem to be proceeding in slow motion. When
we first started going out, I was really glad that he
didn't start pressing me for sex on the second or
third date, the way some of my ex-boyfriends did. But
we've been dating for six months now! There's such a
thing as carrying chivalry too far."

"Missy, I've worked closely with Sean for over a year
and I think that's just the way he *is*. He's very
thorough, very methodical. He takes his time with
things. He's not the impetuous type. If that's not
what you're looking for in a guy, maybe you'd better
just break things off with him, for both your sakes.
With Sean Pendrell, what you see is what you get."

"That's the problem, Dana. I'm seeing, but I'm *not*
getting!"

Dana laughed softly into the phone. Missy continued
with, "I get the feeling you don't think Sean and I
are a particularly good match?"

Dana sighed and said, "Look, Missy, I would have
thought Fox Mulder was the last man in the world I'd
ever fall in love with when we first met. So I'm not
going to make any predictions about other people's
love lives when I was pretty clueless about my own.
Pendrell's not the kind of guy I would have pictured
you falling for, no. But if you two are happy with
each other -- and you certainly seem to be, when
Assistant Director Skinner and I aren't conspiring to
keep you apart -- then it's none of my business."

"Okay, I'm going to let you go now. I'll follow Mom's
advice about the way to a man's heart being through
his stomach. Maybe if I cook him a nice dinner he'll
provide me with dessert."

"Missy!" said her sister, sounding faintly shocked.
Missy giggled at the fact that although Dana was now
married and pregnant, she could still be somewhat of a
prude.

"Bye, Dana!" Missy said.

***

Pendrell trudged wearily down the corridor to his
apartment. Processing the crime scene had been
grueling, both physically and emotionally. He'd done a
good job. Even Skinner had complimented him on how
quickly and thoroughly he'd gathered the evidence. But
now he was hungry, exhausted and aching for Missy, who
might not even be speaking to him. A far cry from what
he'd hoped to be experiencing by this point in the
evening, had he been able to proceed with his original
plan of taking her out to dinner. Opening the door, he
was immediately hit by a delicious aroma. 

"Hey, Sean," Missy said. "Are you hungry? I cooked."

"Missy you didn't have to do that!"

"I don't mind. I like to cook."

"Thanks," Pendrell said, sitting down at the table. He
was flabbergasted. At best, he'd hoped that Missy
would show up at his place and consent to ordering in
a pizza or Chinese food in lieu of actually going out
to a restaurant. At worst, he'd braced himself for the
possibility that she'd be furious with him. The idea
that she'd interpret "I can't take you out to dinner
tonight, after all" to mean "So why don't you cook
dinner for me, instead," had never crossed his mind.

"Tough day?" Missy asked, reaching out to touch his
face gently as they ate.

"Gruesome day," he replied. "Although it's turning
into a great evening."

"What was the crime scene you had to go investigate?"

Pendrell shook his head. "Believe me, gorgeous, it's
not something you want us to discuss over dinner. I'm
not trying to shut you out -- I'll be glad to give you
all the gory details later, if you're really
interested, rather than just making polite
conversation -- but not now. How was your day?"

Missy shrugged. "Same old, same old. We don't exactly
get a lot of excitement where I work, the way you and
Dana and Fox do."

"Missy, I appreciate you cooking for me. It's
delicious. But I'm really sorry things didn't work out
like we'd originally intended. My work has always been
hectic, but I swear to God up until six months ago
things were never this beserk!"

"Two sides of the same coin, probably, Sean. We met at
Dana and Fox's wedding.  Then she got pregnant on
their honeymoon. So if they hadn't gotten married,
your work schedule wouldn't be as crazy, but you and I
also probably wouldn't even know each other. I know
you have a challenging job that doesn't always conform
to an 8-to-5, Monday through Friday workweek. Stop
obsessing about it."

"You're very understanding, Missy. A lot of women
wouldn't be."

"My mother was a Navy wife the whole time I was
growing up, Sean. I guess it's in my nature to be
flexible. It helps, too, that it's my own little
sister you're shifting the workload off of. If the
situation was different. . .if it was just some
anonymous pregnant co-worker of yours that I'd never
even met who kept sloughing her work off on you and
interfering with our social life. . .maybe I'd resent
it more. But it's Dana and I appreciate the fact that
you're watching out for her the way you do. She does,
too. Even Fox has mentioned it."

"I'm going to go take a shower and change. Then we can
watch a video or I'll tell you all the gory details of
the crime scene that kept me working so late or
whatever you want."

"Okay," Missy agreed. She wondered if "whatever she
wanted" could include making out on the couch. Sean
was a good kisser and she always enjoyed a chance to
get in a little snuggle time with him.

***

Pendrell closed his eyes as the water washed over him,
trying to let it cleanse him of the memories of the
violence he'd been a secondhand witness to a few hours
earlier. He'd been able to block them out while
talking with Missy, but now they came flooding back.

Missy had finished cleaning up in the kitchen and was
now fidgeting in the living room. She could hear the
shower running and it was driving her crazy. From the
time she'd been in her early teens, her most vibrant
and persistent sexual fantasies had centered not on
being in bed with a naked man, but on being in a
shower with one. For the past couple of months, they'd
centered specifically on what it would be like to
shower with Sean. He had a nice body; she'd seen him
stripped down to nothing but shorts after a grueling
game of racquetball. And she was -- might as well face
the truth, at least in her own thoughts -- madly in
love with him and desperately hoping they'd get
married at some point.

Pendrell continued to let the water pound down on him
while he engaged in a furious internal debate. Should
he ask her tonight, or not? That had been his original
intention, but only after taking her to dinner at a
really nice restaurant, telling her how beautiful she
looked and all that schmaltzy, romantic stuff that
even a man as socially inept and scientifically
oriented as he was knew a woman expected on an
occasion like this. But, damn it, he was tired of
waiting for the perfect moment! Crap like this was
always happening. It was a weird quirk of fate, he
acknowledge ironically, that for the first three years
he'd lived in Washington he'd actually *enjoyed*
working long hours, as his only semblance of a social
life had been his thrice weekly games of racquetball
and an occasional beer with his co-workers. Now that
he *had* a social life  -- what could even be termed a
love life, for the first time since he was in grad
school -- he never seemed to be home long enough to
enjoy it.

Missy was beginning to get worried. She'd grown up
with a father and two brothers and had had a couple of
  "sleepover" boyfriends during her 20s, as well as
being over at her sister's house on more than one
occasion when Fox had come in from running and gone up
to take a shower. And, in her fairly wide experience,
men *never* took this long in the shower. She didn't
even take this long in the shower. Maybe Sean had
fallen and hurt himself. Maybe he was having some sort
of breakdown due to the gruesome nature of the crime
scene he'd had to investigate. He knew she was out
here and, despite his habit of breaking dates with her
for work-related reasons, he never just brushed her
off for personal reasons. Yeah, and maybe you're just
trying to justify yourself in peeking at him wet and
naked, she told herself cynically as she walked down
the hall.

"Sean?" she called, raising her voice to be heard
above the water as she pushed open the door that had
been closed but not locked.

"Missy?" he asked, pulling back the curtain. 

Missy just stared. He was very well endowed and
stiffening to attention right in front of her eyes.
She supposed she should come up with some sort of
excuse for barging in on him like this, but she was
speechless.

Pendrell supposed that if he'd actually had any blood
left in his head, he might have been able to ask her
something coherent, like what she was doing in his
bathroom. But it had all migrated south, so he asked
the only question that seemed, at the moment, a
logical one for the circumstances. "Want to join me?"

Missy tore off her clothes so fast that she could have
almost sworn she was in the shower before they hit the
ground. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she dragged
his mouth down to hers for a deep, passionate kiss.

Pendrell wasn't at all sure he wasn't dreaming --
sexual fantasies of Missy were about all he *did*
dream about nowadays -- but he planned on enjoying
this regardless. When they finally came up for air, he
moved just slightly away from her; enough so that he
could have a clear view of the breasts he'd been
wondering about for months. He brought one hand up to
her chest and gently tweaked a nipple, smiling when it
immediately peaked and she let out a soft moan.

"Missy, you're okay with this?" he asked. 

"Sean, I barged into your bathroom, ripped off my
clothes and got into the shower with you," she pointed
out. "I think that can pretty well be taken as implied
consent for any and all sexual activities."

He grinned and kissed her again. Missy let her own
hands wander this time, over his lithe, well-muscled
back. She felt his hands moving, too, down between her
legs to tease and test her. She moaned again, louder
and directly into his mouth.

As soon as the kiss ended, he turned her so that her
back was to his chest. Placing one hand on her breasts
and the other at the juncture of her thighs, he leaned
over her shoulder and whispered, "Beautiful. So
beautiful. My beautiful Melissa". Then he bent her
slightly and began to ease into her, going exquisitely
slowly.

Holy shit! Missy thought she'd died and gone to
heaven. Even in her wildest dreams -- and hot, sweaty,
sexy dreams of Sean had been keeping her awake for
months now -- she'd never imagined him being this. .
.inventive the very first time they made love. Between
the water and his hands and his body rubbing up
against her from behind, the stimulation was
overwhelming. Quite literally. She came harder and
quicker than  she ever had in her life, screaming out
her pleasure only moments after he'd entered her.

Pendrell gasped in surprise. He'd never felt anything
as erotic in his entire life as Missy's intense orgasm
squeezing his cock. Her climax triggered his own and
he spasmed within her only moments later.

After a few more minutes of kissing and cuddling,
Pendrell said, "You ready to turn off the shower and
go to bed? I'm sleepy."

Missy nodded. "Yeah. Me, too."

***

An hour or so later, Pendrell swam back to
conciousness. He'd practically lapsed into a coma the
moment his head hit the pillow. It would have been
easy to blame his exhaustion on a grueling day, but he
knew the real reason: it was the earthshattering
orgasm he'd shared with Missy that had led to him
falling into a deep, contented sleep.

Now Missy was beside him and she was. . .crying, he
realized. Her soft sobs were barely audible, as if
she'd been trying not to awaken him.

"Missy! What's the matter?"

"N-nothing," she whispered. "I didn't mean to wake you
up. Go back to sleep."

Instead, Sean switched on the bedside lamp and reached
for her, rolling her over so he could look into her
eyes. "Missy, did I *hurt* you?" he demanded
incredulously. God knows it had been fast and furious
back there in the shower, but he'd thought she'd been
ready for him.

"No. Physically it was incredible, Sean. It's not
that."

"Something I said then?" he asked searching his
memory.  

"You didn't say anything, Sean. Nothing at all."

It took a moment for the implication of her words to
sink in. Then he realized what he'd done; or, rather,
what he hadn't. She'd closed her eyes and was
attempting to roll on her side so she'd be facing away
from him. He pushed her almost forcefully onto her
back and said, "Look at me, Missy." She slowly opened
her eyes, blinking the tears out of them.

"I love you," he said quietly.

"I love you, too, Sean. But don't say it if you don't
mean it. Please! I don't want you to be dishonest with
me just because I've gone all teary-eyed on you."

"Missy, I've been meaning to tell you for weeks! I
should have told you before now. I'm sorry I didn't
say anything while we were in the shower, but you took
me by surprise and my brain was not exactly working in
high gear at that moment. That was, actually, my
original intention for this evening. To take you out
for dinner at a really nice place and tell you that I
loved you. And. . .ask you."

"Ask me what? To make love with you?"

"Not in so many words. But it would have sort of been
implied in the question I was intending to ask."

"Sean, I don't know if my brain has been addled by the
best sex I've ever had in my entire life or what, but
if what you intended to ask me is supposed to be
obvious, I'm afraid it's not." Had he planned to ask 
her to move in with him, she wondered? Although she'd
had a couple of past lovers, she'd never lived with
either of them. For one thing, she knew such a blatant
declaration of her sexual activities would have really
upset her devoutly Catholic mother. For another, she'd
learned from watching other women in the same
situation that such relationships rarely had a happy
ending. Most women seemed to feel that living together
was something they were doing prior to gettting
married, while most men seemed to think it was
something they were doing *instead* of getting
married.

"You want to do this here and now, Melissa, or do you
want to wait a couple more nights and make another try
at dinner with candlelight and roses?"

"Here. Now."

Pendrell rolled over on his side and opened the drawer
of his nightstand. He pulled out a small, black velvet
box and popped it open. Missy stared at the ring
inside; a large opal surrounded by tiny diamonds. Then
she glanced up at his face, wanting to make sure she
wasn't misreading this. A soft smile was lurking at
the edges of his mouth. "Will you marry me?" he asked.

"Yes!" Missy screamed, knocking him back against the
pillows. "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!" she punctuated each
"Yes" with a kiss.

Pendrell laughed with delight and relief. Finally he
put his hands up to her face as she was coming down to
his mouth for another kiss and held her steady, making
this one long and deep. When they eventually came up
for air, he moved her so that she was lying atop him
and his arousal was pressing against her belly. 

"Want to try making love in a bed for this round? I
swear I'm actually capable of lasting for more than 30
seconds, but it had been a long time for me and I'd
been thinking about you even before you joined me in
the shower."

"In a minute. I mean I *want* to, I really do. I've
been. . .thinking about us like this for months. But
can we talk for a few minutes first?"

"Of course, Missy. We can do whatever you want; talk,
make love, drive over to your mother's house and tell
her we're getting married. . .it's up to you."

"Can I try on my ring?"

"Naturally." He took it out of the box and slid it
onto her finger. It was a perfect fit.

"Sean, I've always loved opals and dreamed of having
an opal engagement ring! How did you know?"

"I'm an FBI agent, Missy. We're trained to pay
attention to details and figure things out."

"Did you ask my sister?"

"I didn't *ask* her. One day Skinner's secretary came
over to the lab and was admiring Dana's ring; you
know, the sapphire one Mulder got her for their
engagement. And Dana happened to mention that she and
her sister had both said since they were girls they
didn't want traditional diamond engagement rings;
she'd always wanted a sapphire and you'd always wanted
an opal. So I just tucked that tidbit of information
away in my memory."

"When did you want us to get married?"

"Whenever you want; tomorrow or ten months from now. I
wouldn't want to wait longer than a year, at the most,
but other than that it's up to you. I'm assuming you
want a big wedding, like your sister had, and I know
those take a while to organize."

"Yes, I do want a big wedding; I've got a lot of
relatives and they'd all be terribly hurt if they
weren't invited. It will probably need to be about
seven or eight months from now. We're going to have to
kind of coordinate things around Dana, to a certain
extent. I'll want her to be my matron of honor and I
wouldn't want her to go into labor during the middle
of our wedding or stumble down the aisle like a zombie
due to sleepless nights with a newborn."

'That's fine, Missy. Dana's pregnancy will have an
effect on when we can get married from my side of
things, too. She and I are the same rank and work in
the same department; so there's no way I'd be able to
take off two weeks for a honeymoon while she's still
on maternity leave. I'd like to see if I could arrange
a few days off -- officially, so it can't be cancelled
at the last minute -- sometime in the next couple of
months, before Dana starts her maternity leave, so we
can go out to California and you can meet my folks."

"You want children, right?" she asked. He'd mentioned,
in general terms, a liking for children several times
in the course of their relationship.

"Yes. I know you do, too. You told me fairly early on
that you found it kind of ironic that Dana was going
to be providing your mother with her first grandchild,
as you'd always been the one who talked so much about
having children while you two were growing up and
she'd been the more career-oriented one."

"Sean, can I tell you something that I haven't really.
. .shared. . .with anyone in about 15 years?"

"Of course, Missy. You can tell me anything."

"All I've ever wanted to do with my life was get
married and have a bunch of children, like my mother
did. I work because I have to, and it's not like I
hate my job, but I certainly don't have the great
emotional attachment to my career that you and Dana
and Fox and everybody else seems to have. I realize
being a housewife is kind of an archaic goal, but it's
what I want out of life. Is that okay?"

"Certainly it's okay, Missy. Why wouldn't it be?"

"Well, most men seem to expect their wives to work
nowadays. You'd be solely responsible for supporting
the whole family."

"I make a decent income. As long as you're not
expecting vacations on the Riviera or a ring like this
on every anniversary, it should suffice. How many
children are we talking about, anyway?"

"Five?" Missy suggested hesitantly.

"That's fine. You had me a bit worried there for a
minute. I thought maybe you were hoping for a dozen or
something."

Missy laughed softly. "I'm already over 30, Sean. I
think five is the most we can reasonably hope to
produce between now and the time I hit menopause."

"Missy, is there a chance we've already started? I
mean, back there in the shower. . .I obviously wasn't,
um, prepared and unless you're on birth control pills
or something. . ."

"It's unlikely, Sean. I'm not on the Pill, but my
period tends to be pretty regular and it's due to
start sometime in the next couple of days. So
tonight's simply the wrong time of the month for me to
conceive. If we did. . ."

"Then we did," Pendrell said with a shrug. "We may
have to rethink the 'getting married seven or eight
months from now' thing if there's a baby on the way --
it would be even more embarrassing for *you* to go
into labor during the middle of our wedding than for
your sister to do so --  but other than that it's not
really a problem for me. We'll take precautions from
now until our wedding night, though."

"Yeah," Missy agreed. "But, um, starting tomorrow,
right? I mean, you're not going to get up and go to
the store *tonight* are you?" She began to stroke him
gently. His erection, which had subsided slightly
during their conversation, was immediately back on
full alert.

"Not if you keep doing that," he said with a grin. It
was the last coherent sentence either of them spoke
for a long time.

***

The next morning, Pendrell was in the lab with Mulder
and Scully. Pendrell was sure that, if someone asked,
Mulder could come up with a semi-coherent reason --
quite possibly connected to a current case he was
working on with the Violent Crimes Squad --  for being
in the lab. Pendrell was equally sure that the reason
he kept tripping over Mulder's feet every time he
turned around had more to do with Mulder's desire to
spend time with his wife than anything career-related.


After a couple of hours, Scully stretched and said,
"Nature calls, gentlemen. One of the joys of being
pregnant. I'll be back in a few mintues."

As soon as the door had shut behind his wife, Mulder
said, "You know, Pendrell, you could just put a sign
around your neck saying  'I got laid last night'. It
would only be *slightly* less obvious than the goofy
ass grin you've been wearing all morning."

Pendrell's ears turned red, but other than that he
gave no indication he'd even heard him. Mulder was
going to be a permanent fixture in his life now, he
realized. Even if one or  the other of them got
transferred to another FBI office, they'd be running
into each other at family gatherings for the next 50
years or more. So he might as well get used to the
other man's sardonic sense of humor.

"Shut up, Mulder."

"Hey, that's Scully's line. Did she say you could use
it? I kind of feel I ought to ask you if your
intentions are honorable or something like that. I
mean, after all, Missy's my sister-in-law."

Pendrell sighed. Was he really willing to put up with
*this* for the rest of his life? His mind immediately
flashed to a mental picture of Missy, wet and naked.
Hell, yeah! Even getting Spooky Mulder as an in-law
was more than worth it.


Author's e-mail addy: tapw63@hotmail.com