Iris: Chapter 1 (Aged 17)

...

Today is gonna be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you

By now you're gonna somehow

Realise what they've gotta do

I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now.

~ Wonderwall, Oasis

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The Mulder Family Residence

Martha's Vineyard

Sometime During The Summer of 1979

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"O Juliet, Juliet!—wherefore art thou my sweet Juliet? Deny thy father and refuse thy name. Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a-"

"Mulder", Scully whined, shivering slightly in a pair of red tartan pyjamas bottoms, combat boots and the leather jacket and oversized NASA t-shirt that she had been wearing earlier at school. "Get down here. I'm freezing."

It was a fairly pleasant summer's night, dry but with quite a chilly breeze in the air that, much to Scully's annoyance, blew her long auburn hair all over the place.

"Aww but Scully, you were missing my big leading lady moment", Mulder yelled down sarcastically, with a crooked half smile, squeezing his lanky frame out through his bedroom window before loudly clamouring across the roof towards the tree that had come in extremely handy for late night meetings ever since sleepovers had become out of the question when they were in the seventh grade.

It was a move they had both perfected in the last seven years, Mulder not quite as silently as Scully and even though using the window to get out of Mulder's house probably wasn't necessary anymore(since his parents barely cared what he did these days at all), there was something liberating about escaping a place through the window.

"Is this demonstration of boyish agility turning you on at all?", he called down to her, stretching for the lowest branch his seriously long legs would allow.

Eighteen year old Fox Mulder was a handsome guy. Lean like a swimmer, with a look that was the perfect balance between clean-cut and 'I don't give a crap'. His dark brown hair just about hit the collar of his washed-out looking Star Wars shirt, and the front was long enough to cover his eyes.

Scully rolled her eyes, looking up at him half amused and half annoyed as he jumped down from the tree beside her, clumsily taking out a nice percentage of the wild-looking white rosebushes that his mother used to hire a gardener to tend to until Samantha vanished and she lost interest in almost everything around her.

She liked seeing him like this, carefree and happy. After everything that they had been through and considering the darkness that they both still fight together on a daily basis, moments like these when they can be young, happy and in love were precious.

"It might if you weren't so damn loud, Mulder", Scully said with a small hint of a smile, looping her arm through his as they headed for the tin pot of a car Scully had saved up her wages from her summer job the previous year to buy.

It was a rare occasion but his father was home tonight, and even if they both knew that Bill Mulder wouldn't give a damn if his son was out after midnight, Scully would prefer if no one knew where they were off to.

Her bedroom was their usual go to place, what with her sister away at college for the majority of the year. However with the summer holidays so close, the Scully house was jam packed with people between Scully's three siblings either visiting or home from college, her parents, her father's Naval buddies who visit regularly when they come back from being away at sea, her eldest brother Bill's new girlfriend Tara and a handful of aunts and cousins that come and go.

Mulder's house, on the other hand, had too many bad memories for both of them. It was the place where Samantha had been taken and where they had both lost their childhood innocence forever...not exactly an ideal place to spend the night of their senior prom, a prom neither of them had the slightest interest in attending.

Mulder and Scully rarely hung out there anymore despite the fact that they could almost guarantee having the whole place to themselves.

Since the divorce three years ago, Teena Mulder had moved out to Connecticut to be closer to her sister and her family. She seemed a little happier and a little less like the broken woman that Mulder remembered on the few occasions he had spoken to her on the phone in the last few weeks.

Bill Mulder, on the other hand, who still lived in Martha's Vineyard was away, more often than not, on trips for his mysterious government job that he wouldn't give anyone (especially Mulder and Scully) details on no matter how persistent they were.

There was often meetings that went on late into the night in their house and Bill Mulder insisted that both his son and his son's best friend kept well out of his and his suit wearing and cigarette smoking colleagues way.

Mulder knew he could be angry with both of his parents, but had made peace with their distance given the knowledge that they were just trying to distract themselves from the loss of Samantha.

He probably reminded them too much of her, just as they reminded him.

He could forgive them for their distance but Scully couldn't, as she often told him when she and her mother came by on the regular occasion that the house was completely empty, save for Mulder himself.

Stubborn as they were, the two Scully women got around him to come back with them for dinner after finding a sizable amount of proof that he wasn't looking after himself.

Proof in the shape of Hostess apple pie wrappers, sunflower-seed shells and half eaten bowels of cereal practically on every flat surface. Not to mention, the empty kitchen cupboards and the mess of books (many of which were about non-fiction serial killer cases, freak abductions and alien conspiracies—'No wonder you can't sleep', Mrs Scully always told him when she saw his reading material, tutting over him like a mother hen while Scully herself threw him an apologetic look. Even if her mother didn't get it, she did.)

There was also normally a heap of dirty and sweaty clothes that had been dumped beside the living room sofa that Mulder dozed off in when his insomnia (which he had only recently been officially diagnosed with) was at its worst.

They wouldn't think about any of that now though, despite everything that had gone wrong in their still quite short lives and despite all the shit they had already been through together, they were still two young people in love and on the cusp of adulthood.

Tonight was their night off tragedy, weirdness and things still to be explained.

Scully slid into the driver's seat, tying her hair out of the way into a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck and turned to Mulder who was riding shotgun. "So whatcha got?", she asked teasingly, eyeing the drawstring bag he had brought with him.

They may not have been the type to go dressing up for prom (a prom where they liked nobody and nobody liked them), but they sure as hell were going to mark the end of their high school years in some way (despite how crappy they had been), namely with some alcohol and a night time trip to the beach.

Mulder grinned mischievously, tossing his best friend/girlfriend the aforementioned bag. "We've got some junk food, some music, a blanket and some booze."

Scully grinned widely after a quick peek in the bag, satisfied with what Mulder had brought along. She felt her stomach squirm, half with nerves and half with excitement, at the surprise of her own that she had in store for him later.

"You know Ahab would forcibly enlist you if he found out that you were trying to get his youngest daughter drunk, right?", she asked teasingly, sliding the key into the ignition as she tossed the bag of goodies back on to his lap. "After he had gotten over the shock of course."

Chuckling darkly, Mulder took her hand from where it was on the gearstick, kissing the inside of her wrist. "Surely you're parents know after thirteen years of being us being joined at the hip that I'm a bad influence."

Scully rolled her eyes as she began to reverse her car out of the driveway into the empty moonlit street behind them. "Mulder, you know just as well as I do that my parents, my mother in particular, think you're a saint. If anything you make me look bad when you're around them."

Mulder smiled sheepishly, shrugging. There was definitely no love lost between him and Scully's mom and dad considering how it sometimes felt as though they cared more about him than his own parents did.

On the other hand however, the idea of him making her look bad was probably a bit of an overstatement since both Mulder's parents and Scully's had gotten their fair share of letters and phone calls phone about their children's misadventures together ever since their meeting on the first day of kindergarten. They had been inseparable ever since, together through everything.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

...

And all the roads we have to walk are winding

And all the lights that lead us there are blinding

There are many things that I would like to say to you

But I don't know how (don't know how)

Because maybe you're gonna be the one that saves me

And after all, you're my wonderwall.

~Wonderwall , Oasis

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