#but if I could I would buy vapes in a heartbeat

[kiingbiing]

-

[nightmare-niko]

ATEEZ responses to “What are we?” [Hyung Line]

Warnings: NON IDOL ATEEZ!! NO MENTIONS OF Y/N!! GENDER NEUTRAL READER!! a lot of lying down and doing nothin! Mentions of weed!

A/n: I found this prompt list on Pinterest! I can link my Pinterest page on my master list!! Also you can def tell which members are my favorites😅 sorry not sorry!!

Copying or translating my writing is not allowed. If you see my work on another site it is stolen. Reblogs are appreciated and encouraged.

Masterlist

Kim Hongjoong:

You would spring the question. on him randomly one night while hanging out in your room. Both of you in baggy pjs, limbs tangled together on your bed.

The room was dimly lit by the purple LED lights lining your nearby desk. You were calm, too calm. That’s why you popped your head up to look at the man next to you.

“Hongjoong, what are we?”

You watched as the corners of his mouth curled up, “You know what we are. You just wanna hear me say it.” He lifted his hand up to play with a lose piece your your hair.

Guilty. You blush, “maybe i do, Maybe I don't…”

He let’s out a content sigh, “you’re mine, l'm yours. Sound good?"

“Sounds perfect.”

Park Seonghwa:

The two of you have been friends for a while. Most of your hangouts consisted of you hogging Seonghwa’s bed while he sat at his desk while he played legos.

Every once in a while you would show him a funny post. After a while, your mind started to wander. You found your eyes falling onto Seonghwa. He wasn’t paying attention to you, all of his focus was on the LEGO set taking up his whole desk. You had bought it for him not too long ago.

The cashier had asked you if the set was for you. Not bothering to lie, you told her they were for your friend. But was Seonghwa just your friend? Buying a boy a set of legos was practically marriage in this day and age!

…Were you and Seonghas a couple— or just friends? You didn't know for sure.

“What are we?" You broke the silence with your intense question.

You heard him chuckle at your question, “I don’t thing that’s up to just me, now is it?”

You were taken aback at his honesty, "well I don't know? Do you like me?"

"Of course,” His voice was as calm as ever while you felt your heartbeat slowly rise. “Do you like me?”

You hum, "sometimes.” You joke.

“Wha-!" He whips his chair around, fake betrayal painted on his beautiful features.

"I'm Kidding!" You smile at him.

Seonghwa crosses his arms across his chest, pouting cutely. "I take it back I don’t like you anymore."

Jeong Yunho:

[a/n 2.0: I use the terms pen and vape interchangeably but I’m talking abt a normal weed pen🤓]

You and Yunho were best friends.

All best friends have rituals, some may shop, or play videogames. But for you and your best friend, it was smoking weed in your room. Yunho wasn’t allowed to smoke at the dorm due to Seonghwa’s rules, he lucked out that his best friend had their own place.

You balanced all of your stacks on top of eachother. Slowly making your way to your bed where Yunho layed sprawled out. You dumped everything onto him before kicking off your slippers and moving him out of the way.

“You take up so much room, bro." You complain, taking out your pen and clicking it five times to turn it on. Before you could even take your first hit of the night, Yunho was taking the pen out of your hand and taking one long hit.

"Thanks babe," he throws the vape back into your general direction.

You groan and cursed at him under your breath, Flustered at the nickname. You were thankful for the dim lighting. Finally taking your first hit, you take a moment to take in Yunhos apperence.

His face bare, his sort black hair fell perfectiy over his forhead. The hood From his hoodie was pulled on, he looked beautiful, but when did he not?

Too busy staring, you forgot to exhale your puff, the burn becoming too much before you let out a nasty cough. Gasping dramatically you reach out to Yunho who nonchalantly opens a water bottle before putting up to your lips to drink.

"Thanks baby." You blow him a kiss, and he giggles softly. God he was perfect.

As the night went on, the two of you got higher, passing the pen back and forth. Maybe it was just the weed (definitely wasn’t), but your best friend was looking too hot for your own good.

Here the two of you were, shoulder to shoulder on your bed, Sharing snacks and drinks. Almost as if the two of you were a couple. More times than not you felt like a couple, how come the two of you hadn't had the conversation?

“What are we?” Your hand flies to slap over your mouth. It was too late, your didn't mean to say that out loud. “wait no-I didn't."

His laughter rung out in your otherise quiet bedroom. Yunho turns on his side to face you, you mirror him, “whatever we are, I wouldn’t ask for anything difterent.”

The two of you couldn’t keep serious at his cheesy line. Immediately breaking out in loud laughter, “Mr. Cool guy over here!!” You tease him, hiding your face against his chest to conceal your laughter.

Smiling ear to ear, his large hand wraps around your arm gently, pulling you back to look at him. "I just wanted to seem cool, you made me nervous!”

Kang Yeosang:

Yeosang wasn’t the biggest fan of physical affection. But for some reason he can't fathom the thought of sleeping with out you in his arms. The two of you didnt live together, not technically.

That didnt stop the two of you from being in the same bed everynight. When you weren't together, he would text you to tell you he couldn’t sleep. Then the next day one of his roomates would text you about how grumpy your boyfriend was.

Wait- Boyfriend? No - Yeosang wasn't—was Yeosang your boyfriend?!

When you heard your front door open and close, your heart sunk. He had a hey, of course he did. What if he got out of work when you weren't home? Going back home to an empty bed was a big no for him.

You stayed on your bed anxiously, his footsteps grew louder as he approached your room.

“Hey, Yeosang. How was work?” You croak out timidly.

Letting his bag flop of his arm he furrows his eyebrows. "Yeosang?" He questions.

"That's your name last l checked,” you chuckle.

"Not to you? Is something wrong?"

You sigh and smile at him, “no Sangie, nothings wrong,” you try your best to reassure him, "Go shower quickly and come back. You’re all sweaty

“Okay..." He looks at you suspiciousy, not convinced your not mad.

One quick shower later and Yeosang was back in your room, excitedly making his way into his Side of your bed. You cursed yourself mentally for being so freaked out about something stupid it was freaking Yeosang out.

“Are you sure nothings wrong…?”

“What are we?” You blurt out, looking at the boy next to you. He looked stunning, his hair pushed away from his face, under his hair you could still see his birth mark.

"Whatever you’d like us to be, silly." He smiles gently.

You pause for a moment, somewhat surprised at how calmly he answered you. "So…boyfriend girlfriend?"

"That's fine by me, darling. But I’m tired so let’s sleep.”

Tag list (If you want to be added just comment!)

@nallasstuff

@chmpgneprblem

@qoopeeya

@lilybellalana

@sleepysongbirdsings

[purplesurveys]

1386

What is in the back seat of your car right now? There are letter-shaped pillows. Used to be in my parents’ room but they donated it so that my car can have pillows if anyone needs to take a nap in it. I think one of my bucket hats may also be in there.

What was the last thing you threw up? A bunch...my dinner, soju, the snacks I had while drinking. Last night was a mess, lol.

Menthol or regular cigarettes? I don’t use cigarettes but I do vape. I always get the watermelon variant.

What is your favorite episode of Friends? Okay, so even though I have access to it since all the seasons are on Crave, I haven’t actually watched the entire series in chronological order from start to finish. *Shock gasp horror* I may finally do it at some point, but so far I’ve only seen a handful of episodes. I laughed really fucking hard at the one where Ross goes on a date and gets stuck in those leather pants, though. < This is LITERALLY my favorite episode - The One With All the Resolutions. It has Phoebe trying to steal a plane, Rachel trying not to gossip, Ross trying something new every day which somehow leads to him struggling with leather fucking pants, Joey learning the guitar, Chandler trying to not make fun of the name Hornswoggle, and Monica taking photos of everyone. Everything was just so well-put together and made for a really funny episode.

Does anyone have any blackmail on you? Probably.

If you could marry any celebrity today who would it be? Delulu-wise, I’d go for Yoongi in a heartbeat hahaha.

Have you been to a strip club? I have never been inside one but I’ve driven past some and the doors are for some reason always open wide, and so I always take a second or two to look at the poles inside and the pink lights and stuff like that haha.

Is there anything pink within 10 feet of you? Yeah - my keyboard cover is literally pink.

Are you wearing socks right now? Nah. I could wear socks rn since I’m holed up in our room in Zambales and feeling cozy and all, but I’m too lazy to put them on.

What was the last thing you had to drink? I had cookies and cream milk tea from this local tea place.

What are you wearing right now? Yellow tank top and denim shorts.

Last food you ate? Quattro formaggi pizza and chicken tenders.

Have you bought any clothing items in the last week? Nah, I only occasionally buy new clothes.

When is the last time you ran? I’m not too sure. I don’t run a lot since I spend much of my time at home; and when I do find myself outdoors there’s usually barely any reason for me to start running.

What’s the last sporting event you watched? Does it have to be live? I watched the first hour of Wrestlemania 30 a couple of weeks ago. As for real life, probably a UAAP game back in 2019.

Last person’s house you were in? I didn’t go inside anymore since it had been like 11 PM, but I last drove by Angela’s place to drop her off.

Last movie you saw? I rewatched Steve Jobs last weekend and the screenplay was every bit as spectacular as I last recalled it to be.

Who is the last person you sent a message to on Facebook? Angela. I was just telling her how socially exhausted I am from this trip and that I plan to spend my remaining time here holed up in our room. Extrovert Robyn is OUT, hahaha.

Ever go to camp? No.

Were you an honor roll student in school? My first school doesn’t have one l since they don’t want to encourage competition and all, which honestly makes more sense to me and I’ll always be grateful for that. But in college, yeah I made it all throughout. 

Do you like sushi? Fucking love it. It’s probably my top favorite food.

Do you have a tan? My co-workers remarked earlier that I’ve already started to look darker, so yeah it’s safe to say that I do have a tan now.

How old do you want to be when you have kids? 27 is an ideal age but the possibility seems bleak at this point.

Have you ever drank your soda from a straw? I don’t think I have. I barely drink soda in the first place anyway, so.

What is your age? 23, but I’m turning 24 in April.

Are you someone’s best friend? Yes.

What are your siblings’ middle names? Beatrice, Edgardo.

Where is your dad right now? In a cruise ship somewhere in France. He’s coming home next week though! :) What was the last thing you said? “Thanks Gela!” I just asked the owner of the hostel we’re currently staying at for the wifi password and I thanked her after she typed it for me on my laptop.

What color is your watch? I don’t wear watches.

What do you think of when you think of Australia? My aunt and her family who live there.

Ever ridden on a roller coaster? Yeah, once.

Favorite gemstone? Diamond.

Do you go in at a fast food place or just hit the drive thru? Drive-thru or just delivery altogether.

Do you have a roommate? Nope. Do you have any bad habits? Yeah, being a hardass perfectionist and overworking are two of them.

What is your favorite number? These days it’s 7.

Do you know anyone named Lori? Nah but this name reminds me of Lori Grimes from The Walking Dead, who I rooted for just because the actress who plays her is really pretty HAHA. Lori is objectively a shitty character, though.

What color is your mom’s hair? Black.

Do you have a dog? Yes and I miss them both so much.

What happened to you in 1993? Like, I was probably a sperm cell back then.

Does your first memory involve your dad? It doesn’t. My mom is in it, though.

Do you remember singing any songs as kids? Yes. I have a couple of videos of younger me singing, too.

When was the last time you went swimming? November. I’ve gone to the beach a couple of times during this trip but I haven’t actually swum. I’m not planning to either; I don’t feel like getting wet and all this weekend. Looking at the sea will suffice for now.

Has your luggage ever gotten lost? No.

Biggest annoyance in your life right this minute? Welp, the power in the hostel came out five minutes ago so we’ve lost the internet connection. There’s also like, zero signal here so I can’t connect to 5G either. Hopefully it comes back soon so I can actually post this survey and look for other ones to take.

Have you ever thought it would be cool to smash a guitar? No. Unless it’s a rock concert and it would be cool to see a guitar getting smashed, this just sounds like a big waste of money overall.

Do you like watching a bonfire? Sure, they’re fun.

Are you allergic to anything? Grass and certain fabrics, yep.

What is one thing you miss about your past? I miss being an associate, hahaha. Being a manager gets really hard sometimes.

Do you ever get flu shots? No.

Favorite shoes that you wear all the time? My Ivy Park sneakers.

What is one thing you’ve learned about life recently? I really need to separate my emotions from work. I take the smallest of mistakes incredibly seriously and personally so it affects the way I approach work more than I would want it to.

Are you jealous of anyone? No.

Is anyone jealous of you? I doubt it.

[poeticsandaliens]

Miracle

Rating: M because Will curses like a truck driver.

Timeline: Post-MS IV (I know, I know. If you look closely, you can see my middle finger pointing directly at Chris Carter.)

Summary: Six times Dana Scully called Will a miracle and what that word really means. 

Tagging @today-in-fic. This fic has been my pet project for the last two weeks and was interrupted repeatedly by the porn I’ve been writing. If you squint it can be read as the same universe as my other post-finale fics, namely Morning Hour, but that’s not really relevant.

‘Miracle’ is a dirty word, dirtier than ‘fuck’ used to be and much less versatile. When you work miracles, you set a precedent. You promise you can save people the next time.

Reading his own files in a government database, long-dead typists call Jackson Van de Kamp a miracle or a monster, savior of the world or bringer of the apocalypse. It’s a tired Superman story, and he’s read every possible ending in his childhood comic books.

He’s not the government’s mail-order Jesus, here to die for their fucked-up sins.

He can prove it, too. He didn’t forgive his murderers; he popped off their heads. And he didn’t die to absolve anyone of blame; he died for the very thing God didn’t want anyone to get ahold of—Knowledge. The Truth with capital T. He died because he taunted some chain-smoking bastard on a bridge. He didn’t mean to get shot, and he didn’t mean to come back to life.

                                                        * * * * * * *

The first time Dana calls him a miracle, Will leaves. He’s used to the word—which makes it worse but easier to hide. Still, he packs up his duffel and promises he’ll be back. He pretends it has nothing to do with them, everything to do with the itch of the road. It’s not her fault miracles make him sick.

He leaves them the adirondack chair. It’s a derelict piece of shit he picked up from some guy’s garage sale, but it’s his piece of shit. He hammered it back together, painted it the color of the Wyoming sky, and planted it in their yard. He hopes they take it as a sign that he’s making them his home, so he doesn’t have to say it out loud.

He drives South and lets the humidity suck him in. He picks a bucket of figs outside Inman, South Carolina with an ancient African American woman who embroidered the entire solar system into her jean jacket. She is an elm tree of a woman, engraved with all the wrinkles of ninety-two years. Then, he buys a bag of boiled peanuts and three honey-sticks from the ramshackle fuel station next to a railroad overgrown with kudzu. The attendant calls it a miracle that a customer has come ‘round. Then he tells Will that honeysuckle is free.

Southerners, he has noticed, toss around ‘miracles’ like they’re cheaper than cigarettes. He likes it.

Will crawls back to Virginia after a couple weeks spent on the road, where he wasted monsoon nights smoking his head away in the Everglades and keeping an eye on the unborn kid. He’s not an idiot; he knows it’s a high-risk pregnancy. If something goes wrong, he’ll know before Mulder and Dana do. He even knew it was a girl before they did, but he’s good at keeping his mouth shut.

He’ll be around for his sister, and they all know it. He’s attached to the kid, even if he tries to hide it. The baby is something untainted by his death count, his back-from-death count, his bloody miracles.

                                                       * * * * * * *

The second time Dana calls him a miracle, he lets it slide. Slip of the tongue, mumbled in between bites of croissant. He’s laughing for the first time in God knows how long, laughing his way through autumn.

Dana sits cross-legged in the grass, sipping tea. She sits in the grass a lot, he notices. Maybe it’s a side effect of being an ex-city-dweller, the way grass relaxes her and she shushes him to hear the cicadas. Will was always a trail-and-cliff kind of boy, raised in the shadow of Wyoming Rockies, but he can appreciate the rickety solitude of this home.

He pads barefoot through the dying lawn and sits down next to her. He’s been home for a week now, longer than last time. Tomorrow, he will shove two hoodies into a backpack and drive to the Appalachians. He will leave behind a companion to his adirondack and a bucket of pine-green paint. This time when he says ‘itch of the road,’ he means it. But for now, he holds up a paper bag from the bakery. “I brought croissants.”

Dana’s eyebrows shoot up; her face splits into a grin. “Thank you Will,” she says as he passes her the bag. The scent of melted chocolate wafts from its wrapping. She bites into the croissant with a contented sigh as he reaches into the bag for his own, butter and chocolate sticking to his fingers.

“You’re a miracle,” she says through a mouthful of buttery goodness.

Time stops.

Will doesn’t register it until he has swallowed. When he looks at her, she’s bright red, her eyes wide and all of a sudden younger than her face. He smiles as reassuringly as he can and lies back on the lawn. She didn’t mean it like that, and even if she did. It’s not her fault.

                                                         * * * * * * *

The third time doesn’t really count. Spring goes out with drums of thunder, and June bleeds into their lives. One morning, Dana cups a naked, watermelon-pink creature in the palm of her hand and stalks urgently across the patio.

“It’s a baby robin,” she informs him. It lies panting on a paper towel. Before he can protest, she slides it into his hands.

He must have startled at the sight of it, the intersection of hideous and adorable, because Dana apologizes for the lack of warning. Turns out it dropped from its nest, and she’s too short to reach the branch. He is pleasantly surprised by this side of her, the tender side that rescues birds and folds bandannas around her neck on sunny days.

Dana leads him to the birds’ nest, sitting seven feet up a tree and already brimming with hatchlings. An alarmed screech from a nearby tree alerts him to the mother robin. He cradles the baby bird in his hand, admiring it for a moment. But just before he lifts it to the nest, he hears—

thud-thud-thud-thud-thud, the newborn’s rapid heart rate strumming his eardrums. This again.

“Are you okay?” Dana watches him, her brows furrowed.

“Uh-huh,” he assures her. “Just got the bird’s heartbeat stuck in my head for a second.” He smacks his ear as if he’s caught water in it, and the sound fades.

“You can do that?” Amazement sparkles in her eyes. Also, he discerns, maternal pride.

“Yup.” He tries for nonchalant, ends up sheepish, scratching the back of his head and avoiding her eyes. Should he tell her? He studies her—tiny and wound up like a sharp violin, bearing an impressive collection of pantsuits and an even more impressive collection of scars. All taut muscle except where a small-for-now baby bump blossoms beneath her t-shirt.

“You know, I can hear the kid’s heartbeat too,” he says, gesturing to her stomach. He tries to ignore her quick intake of breath.

        She stands up straighter, gaging how much he wants to tell her. “What does it sound like?”

        “Like a metronome.” His short-term memory lobs Miami at him. He’s unsure why he tells her any of this, but he does. “When I was in Florida,” he muses, “I bought this shitty electric keyboard. The kind they have elementary school music classrooms, that takes like ten double A batteries and plays a bunch of out of tune instruments. I wanted a guitar but I didn’t know how to play one; plus, I thought it would be cute for the baby. Make a good first impression, y’know?”

        He doesn’t give Dana a chance to respond. “Anyway, I was camping out in the everglades. Just… stretching out and sleeping in the trunk of the car. At night if it wasn’t raining, I would open the sun roof and look at the sky. And I tried to check up on you guys, in here.” He taps his forehead. “Came up with the heartbeat instead. Sometimes I tried to play the keyboard in time to it. I could play some tunes from Pirates of the Caribbean but not much else.”

        A smile graces her lips. “You said you used to love those movies.”

“I did. That’s what the Everglades reminded me of,” he adds. Pirates, tropical marshes, the monsters that lurk in the deep. He remembers sitting on the roof, going through three different flavors of vape, scared to dangle his feet over the car because a gator had taken up residence beside it. He remembers watching the gator breathe, watching its slick, scaly back dry out in the heat, and its jaw hang wide open. He remembers finally climbing down the car and reaching out to touch it. His rational side was terrified it would snap, but he realized, somehow, that it wouldn’t. Not at him, at any rate. Maybe his alien blood is reptilian. Who knows. He’ll never forget what an alligator’s back feels like.

“What happened to the keyboard?”

“It broke. I tossed it before I came home.” He reaches into the bird’s nest and drops the little creature in. It mewls hungrily.

“Miracle of life from non-life,” says Dana. She gingerly touches his shoulder. He listens for the rhythmic creature unfolding in her womb. Life from non-life, skin from stones, cells from silence.

                                                           * * * * * * *

The fourth time Dana calls him a miracle, it is not Dana at all. Dana is inside, flipping three grilled cheese sandwiches while Mulder hoes a disheveled garden. A heat wave barreled violently into Virginia last week, and Dana won’t show her face outside at midday, especially since the baby made its presence clear.

Will pulls into the driveway with three bags of fertilizer and a greenhouse worth of seeds. He tucks his ice coffee in his elbow and unloads the dirt from his trunk. Already decorated in roots and silver dandelions, Mulder empties them messily into the turned dirt.

“Thanks, kiddo,” he says with a grin. A month ago, he might have rejected the nickname, but he’s trying to befriend Mulder. Bridge the gaps he already has with Dana by virtue of telepathy. It’s hard to hide from a woman who can read your mind.

“No problem.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and wanders over to the garden. “Anything I can do?”

“Can you blot out the sun?” Mulder chuckles, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Or, you know, work some human Miracle-Grow on these flowers?”

“Unfortunately,” Will says distractedly, “My talents don’t really extend to peaceable flower-growing. I don’t think that’s what the government had in mind when they cooked up my DNA.” He means it casually. He really does. The same way Mulder means ‘human Miracle-Grow,’ and he was going to let that one go.

Mulder stares at him with those regretful labrador eyes. Shit. One wrong step and he’s swimming in parental guilt. Dana knows why he took the first time. He wonders if she ever told Mulder, or if she let him believe it was wanderlust. Genetic, of course.

“It’s okay,” he assures Mulder. Will doesn’t want his parents’ teary remorse, but he accepts it. They’ve seen Hell, and that’s coming from the kid who’s blown up human heads. So he curbs his annoyance every time they hug him like he’s fine china and doubt him when he says he’ll stay.

“I’m sorry,” Mulder says, “that was insensitive.”

“Naw, it’s fine.” Casually, callously, that’s the only way Will knows how to talk about what he’s been through.

Silence thick with pollen. Mulder shakes sunflower seeds over a haphazard row.

“You were a miracle, you know. Scully wanted you more than anything.”

He knows this. He reads it like newsprint off her brain. And yet—

“I was a weapon,” Will says bluntly. Another comic book cliché to tack onto the list. Not like he’s counting or anything.

“No.” Mulder shakes his head, shoves the hoe into a fresh groove. “They tried to weaponize you, but you wouldn’t have it. Will, you’ve got a choice that Scully and I don’t have—you don’t have to be their experiment. It’s too late in the game for us; we’re old, and we served twenty-five years in the X-files, prodding and being prodded. But those men are dead now, and while the scars may never heal, you don’t have to let them open another wound. You are human, and you’re allowed to have a life. You’re only their weapon if you believe it.”

He says it so forcefully Will almost believes him. Maybe one day he will. Not yet. “I did kill people,” he reminds his father solemnly. He has inherited Mulder’s ability to suck out his own soul.

“It’ll haunt you, and it’s never okay, but sometimes that’s what it comes to.”

“Yeah, but—”

“I killed people. So did Scully.” He was dead when Mulder shot the smoking bastard. He wishes he had seen it for more reasons than one. “Just…” Mulder trails off. “Give yourself a chance. Give Scully a chance. You won’t regret it.”

He wonders if he’ll ever love someone as much as Mulder loves Dana. He wonders if he wants to love someone that much, to bear the everyday risk of losing them. He empties two bags of poppy seeds into the garden.

Mulder has returned to the open car. He lifts a shopping bag out of the trunk and peeks inside. “What’s this?”

“I found it with the sunflower seeds. They were on clearance.” Will shrugs, acts like he didn’t buy it thoughtfully.

The wooden windchimes clink when Mulder examines them—sleeves of birch wood dangling like spiders on a thread. At the top, a cardinal opens its beak to the sky. “It’s beautiful. Your moth—Scully will love this.”

Wisely, neither of them discuss the Freudian slip.

                                                          * * * * * * *

The fifth time Dana says it, they are sitting in the Adirondack chairs, watching the overdue baby struggle against her confines. He comes to rest somewhere between amazed and utterly creeped out at the sight of it, and it probably shows on his face. Things have begun to show on his face recently. Since he pulled his hair into a ponytail and let himself relax, he no longer resembles the drunken guitarist of an out-of-line undergrad rock band. That was how Mulder described the scraggly shape of him when he was on the run. Mulder recognized it in himself, maybe—trying to scare off his enemies, winds up scaring off everybody else.

Scully cocks an eyebrow at him. “You look slightly perturbed.”

“It’s a little freaky looking,” Will concedes, eyeing the bow and flex of her abdomen. Kid’ll be here any day now—tomorrow, he predicts, maybe the day after. His sixth sense will go fucking haywire the second Dana goes into labor.

“It feels even stranger than it looks,” she replies.

He settles into the chair, leaning his head on his hands and stretching his gangly legs in front of him. He listens. Songbirds, wind chimes, the desperate buzz of insects having sex before they die… his sister’s heartbeat thumping frantically against the side of his head. He half smiles.

“It’s miraculous, you know,” she murmurs. “Even if it looks and feels discomfiting, it’s still a miracle.” A weighty pause. “You’re a miracle too.”

This time, the weight of the word ‘miracle’ doesn’t make him ill. His whole life, a catalogue of unexplained events and Sunday mornings in the Presbyterian church, people called him a miracle. On the playground, he healed scraped knees, and kids called him a wizard.

Dana and Mulder, though—they don’t see him as a miracle of Biblical proportion, or a miracle of science, immaculately crafted for a destiny. To them, he’s a miracle of love. His birth is a transcription of amor omnia vincit, and his return is a testament to it. He is a miracle because he was born and because he is a person Dana Scully created with Fox Mulder in a tatty DC apartment. Not because he’s a gritty reboot of a Christ allegory.

He is okay with being this kind of miracle.

He hears a quiet, “oh…” and opens his eyes. Dana scrunches her eyebrows together and squeezes the arm of her chair. “Braxton-Hicks,” she explains. He takes her at her word the way Mulder doesn’t. (Mulder, who suspects the baby is coming every time she so much as grunts; Mulder, who couldn’t be there the three times his son came to life.)

“If she sticks around much longer,” mutters Dana as she shifts in the chair, “she’ll say her first words in the womb.”

“Tomorrow,” he promises. Immediately he regrets telling her, but she looked so uncomfortable just there. She reminded him of his neighbors in Wyoming, a dusty-haired lesbian couple who wore nothing but khakis and hiking boots. Their son must be three or four by now, but he remembers how Lilian taught him to repair his mountain bike in her last month of pregnancy, woeing incessantly about how she couldn’t ride her own. ‘If the baby doesn’t come tomorrow I’m going to lose my goddamn mind,’ she’d told him every day for a week.

Now, Dana gazes at him with ocean-wide eyes. “You know?”

He shrugs self-consciously. “Yeah.”

“How?”

“I dunno. Same way I do all the other shit, I guess.” He wiggles his fingers. “Galaxy magic.”

This time she laughs, and a little bubble of pride wells in him. He can make her laugh through her discomfort, a clear, beautiful sound. He loves her, his mother. She doesn’t feel quite like his mother, but he catches love for her like he caught it for his unborn sister. Or maybe she is something like his mother—not his mom, the titles ‘Mom and Dad’ will forever be reserved for the parents he grieves, and he’s still shaking the nagging guilt that he is somehow replacing them by loving Dana and Mulder.

Maybe this is the kind of love you feel for your parents when you’re thirty, or maybe it’s the kind of love you feel for a step parent who isn’t your mom but who does her best, asks how your day is going and offers what advice she can. Whatever it is, it is keen and familiar, and he clings to it like a lifeline on days the earth swallows him.

Mulder finds them laughing their asses off at the most beautiful sunset in months. Dana glances up at him with an ear-to-ear grin, one hand on her belly and one hand on Will’s shoulder. Weeping tears of laughter, they forget what cracked them up in the first place.

                                                          * * * * * * *

In his eighteen years on this bitch of an Earth, Will has worked two legitimate miracles:

Jerry Abernathy from his eighth grade Algebra class had an allergic reaction to a peanut butter cookie. Somehow, he survived without a single shot of the epi pen he’d left at home that morning.

Alice Mulder-Scully enters the world screaming. The volume of blood on nurses’ uniforms belies the healthy baby. Relieved, haggard doctors struggle to explain the mother’s strong heartbeat. Nothing to see here, tells the look on Will’s face as strangers pass him in the waiting room. He wipes a trickle of blood from his nose and downs an energy drink to stay awake.

                                                          * * * * * * *      

The sixth time Dana calls him a miracle, he is sitting on the porch steps of the Virginia home. Alice’s baby feet kick his knees, and he grins as she struggles from his lap to crawl across the grass. Fireflies light up the gravel drive, flashing and dying, glowing with no particular pattern. They move like stars in space-time, as if he’s witnessing the lifespan of a galaxy in time lapse. Alice giggles as one blinks in front of her nose.

“Bug!” she screams happily.

“Yeah, kiddo, a lot of bugs.” A fox skittered across the property that morning, and Alice pointed at it and called it ‘Dada.’ Mulder was fake-insulted for hours.

Grinning down at her, he begins to rearrange the fireflies. To his behest, insects in mating season are shockingly tenacious, and it takes all his mental effort to control them. It’s worth it as they lazily swirl toward Alice, who bats at them and giggles uncontrollably.

“Bug! Bug!” she pops the word over and over again, snickering as one lands in her tufts of russet hair.

“I assume this is your doing?” Dana appears behind him, and he grins at her over his shoulder. The screen door smacks shut.

“She loves them.”

“More than her actual toys,” Dana snorts. She cocks her eyebrow at him, then lifts her phone and takes a picture. “I never liked fireflies.”

“Not even as a kid?”

“Well,” she chuckles, “maybe. But one of my first cases on the X files ruined them for me.”

“Seems like those files fucked you both over,” he replies.

“Someone had to do our job.” She sits down next to him and wraps her sweater tighter round her frame. “It took a lot from Mulder and I, but it brought us together. And when the ash settled, we gained two miracles.”

Watching Alice clumsily reach for glow worms, Dana wraps her arm around his shoulders. He lets her. Alice’s fireflies scatter and spiral into the stars.