"Hey, Byers, hold up.  Think I dropped it." Langly finished patting himself down all over.  He popped the lock of the passenger door and hopped out.  "In there."  He jerked his thumb at the well-manicured building they had just emerged from.

"What did you forget?" Byers asked impatiently.

"I didn't forget it.  It must have dropped out."

"_What_?" Byers repeated, sounding a shade more irritated.

"My wallet," Langly said, finally supplying a direct answer.

Byers killed the engine, and the 'blue bomb' chiggered and ground out into silence.  Its two occupants hurled their sheepish confederate looks of quantification.

"Check again," Frohike gruffly stipulated. Within the frame of the next few moments, his whole manner suggested that he was possibly trying to remember something; like during a game of 'Concentration.'

"Like that's why I'm goin' back in," Langly retorted hotly.

"No.  I mean beneath the seat and on the..."  He waved Langly off, performing the rushed spot check himself.  "Nope.  So, maybe you did."  He wore that look again like he should say something, but he couldn't be sure if what he said was indeed fact.  He gave him a frustrated look.  "Man, you sure are careless."

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

"Am _not_!"

"Save it you two," Byers said, sighing, after he had smoothly interposed, and gripped the steering wheel.  "Langly, just go back in there.  Find it, and we'll be on our way.  Locating the source of that local interference isn't going to be easy."

Frohike nodded, agreeing with everything his cohort had said.

"Okay," Langly complied.  "It probably fell out when I dug the card up from my back pocket.  If her door's still open, I'll bop in, retrace my steps.  Locate it, pluck it up and be back in a flash."  Then, almost as an afterthought, he said, "Don't leave me guys."

"Wouldya get goin' already," Frohike urged, "or there'll be no spicy refried beans and 'rancheros' for you tonight."

As the tall blond streaked for the entrance of Scully's building, Byers looked at Frohike, and vice versa.  Neither spoke for several seconds.

"I'm for buying him a watch fob.  Attach it to that ugly old wallet of his so this sort of thing never happens again," Byers dryly suggested.

"What we should do is confiscate that relic.  Buy him a brand new wallet with the device you have in mind."  Frohike observed Langly's disappearance behind the door before offering any further comment.  Then he swiveled around to his friend, and replied in kind, "Methinks Lan-gri-la is pulling one of his ruses, man."  The older man's suspicious look hung in the air.

"Oh?  Why's that?" Byers differed.

Frohike facially wiseackered.  "'Cos I could have sworn I saw his lime Velcro horror lying on his monitor as we left.  I started to remind him about it, but I got distracted when the phone rang, and it was Jimmy saying he'd catch up with us later, back at our place."

"But you're not sure."

"Hey, I think he wants back in there to do his version of motion detection, if you catch my drift."

"He wouldn't," Byers objected, astounded by the gall.

"Why wouldn't he?"  Frohike had already re-opened the passenger door, and was sliding out.  "I'm dyin' to know what's goin' on in there myself, buddy.  How Mulder's gettin' on with the lil shaver.  Hell, with Scully too for that matter.  Too bad we never thought to 'seed' her place way ahead of time.  It'd be worth having it on tape."

Byers squirmed as though he were on pins and needles, wrestling with a conscience that normally casted a decisive 'nay' regarding such matters.  But the same thoughts had crossed his mind, and unlike most times, he wanted to go with the impulse of doing what he really wanted to do.

He had his door open too now.  "So what are we waiting for?" he said, smiling impishly, in conjunction with Frohike's eyebrow raising.  "Let's get in there before we miss something good..."
 

Langly wondered if they'd been on to him all along.  With a good measure of sentimentality, he welcomed his compatriots' cementable presence when they noiselessly joined him at the jamb of Scully's bedroom door.  Can't fool these guys, he thought as he shifted, making ample room.

The trio held their breaths as one man as they witnessed the tender union of their friends' inevitable, blessed wedding of lips...

The moment of melding was ethereal, yet felt everlasting and transcendent at the same time.  Ten eyes (if one were to take into consideration Frohike's and Langly's glasses) grew very moist.

Little William mewled and cooed in Mulder's accommodative arms, and the alien chaser's pair of eyes glistened in response.

Byers' sniffles were lost in Langly's tresses.  The Gunmen latched onto one another's forearms and held on tight.

"So way cool.  So totally way beyond cool awesome," Langly murmured reverently, over and over like a litany.  Easy swallowing would be an impossibility from this point forward.

Frohike removed his glasses, giving them a careless swipe against the sleeve of his jacket the color of green fatigues.  Resetting them on his face quickly, his own lump became sizeable in his throat.

"Now that's what I call a good-looking family," he inaudibly whispered, just as the discovered Agents (now, and forever, no matter their current status with the Bureau) disengaged, turning slightly to acknowledge their peeping through thick and thin friends, and loyal confidants.

The kindred souls and 'brethren' smiled smiles of a thousand suns to come, and the little bedroom glowed with a radiance that eclipsed all those dark, bad times, which Scully had recently spoken of, which had indeed, shadowed them all.

Little William hiccupped once or twice, and the profound smiles morphed into giddy chuckles, then into sustained laughter of the deepest delight.

Through a bubbly giggle, that broke the ephemeral silence clinging to the mirth in the air, Scully breathed, "Oops, they've caught us at last, Mulder."  She gazed at the trio contentedly. "So now you know."

The three of them smirked.  "You act as though we've never suspected," Byers countered, placing his hand on Langly's shoulder, with the latter nodding.

"I say he looks like Mulder," the zippy-mouthed blond cranked up then.

"Does not," Frohike insisted, "he looks like Scully."

Mulder rained improbable looks upon them.  "Well that'd be a neat trick, Scarecrow, if somehow he's got my DNA floating in him."  Relaxedly, Mulder said, "I think he bears a striking resemblance to Skinner.  Don'tcha think?"

"Don't even joke about something like that," Frohike stiffly cautioned, looking as though he'd just eaten something that didn't agree with him.

Scully sucked her teeth at the lot of them.  Unpretentiously she stated, "For the record, he looks my dad.  Ahab would be bursting with pride if he were here now.  In my wholly unbiased opinion.  Shy a husband, notwithstanding."

Mulder sniffed ostensibly.  "When has your opinion ever been even a smidgen unbiased?"  Sounding more grounded, he replied, "He is, Scully.  In spirit, I'm sure he is."  Then solely for her hearing he muttered, "Have anyone in mind to fill that last position?"

"What do you think?"  Mulder held his tongue, even surprising himself over what he'd just said.  She winked at her miraculous baby, still not quite able to believe she had given birth to anything more perfect.  "He's definitely got the 'Scully' nose."

"Now if he's got the 'Scully' mettle for 'grace under pressure,' he's got it made in the shade," Mulder capitulated and his stated estimation touched off the Gunmen nodding their heads in indisputable agreement.

"Here, here," Byers toasted.

Mulder continued, sounding a bit more cryptic, yet still sportive through it all.  "Just pray Charlie's genes don't exert too great an influence, or I'll be in big trouble."

"Mulder," Scully said reprovingly.

"Just a point of fact, Scully."  He kissed her furrowed brow, grinning.  "A point having its basis in fact.  _My_ fact."

"Only time will tell," Scully said simply, beaming at her fragile-looking newborn, and then at the four expectant men who were willing and eager to give her all the support and presence she would ever need.
 

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End...