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Title: First Steps: I Le Lait Summary: Make love, make a child. Where there's a will.... The tingle begins at her breast, skin awakening and finding purpose. She glances down at the left slope, bared through the forgotten flaps of satin, buttons puckered by the wayside. Fine bluish lines like crayon marks leading from the top to the nipple. Will gave her his first gurgling smile earlier, his lips painted white with milk drawn through the ducts painted a faint cornflower-blue on her breast. The Gunmen had stared at her as she held the baby to her breast, their faces a mixture of awe and embarrassment. "It's nature," she had murmured, but she had wondered how something natural could make her feel so wholly unlike anything for which her life had ever prepared her. With a sough of laughter, she realized this was the mirror image of the thrill of conception all those months ago -- of some new, vital sustenance being created within her. Make love, make a child. Where there's a will.... Thinking of her baby causes a let-down, and a bead of milk slips with a whisper and a toddle over her nipple and down the slope. She watches it bloom on the white of her pajamas, shimmering iridescent on satin. She listens for a whimper, a psychic sign that the child senses his mother's offering. But the baby is asleep, lost in his own state of nature. She lets the milk collect on her skin. There will be more later. A finger, heavy with lassitude and still tender from Will's gummy gnawing, moves to the tip of her breast and catches a second bead of milk. Uncoordinated and full, she presses harder than intended and her whole body shivers and rocks with contact. Her body ripens with that same blood-dance that Mulder can draw from her, but it is a different step. Making love with Mulder is a tango. This is a minuet, a waltz, a dance centuries older, performed by mother and child across generations. Possessed by a sudden curiosity, she brings her finger to her lips and tastes. The gods of Mount Olympus lived on nectar and ambrosia. She draws the silky milk along her tongue, and realizes that Will receives the same. How very, very fascinating. The milk continues to flow, but her baby continues to sleep. She looks over at Mulder. In a fit of enthusiasm, he has bought two separate bassinets -- "his and hers", he called them. Both stand empty, though, as he holds the baby. Father and son, eyes closed in sleep, both dreaming starbursts of color. Her lover, unpracticed but instinctual, lies back on the flurry of pillows that seemed to magically bloom on her bed. Will is curled like a possum on his chest, tiny toes twitching in a petit-polka. Mulder is utterly, wilfully still, his body taking a break for punch and flirting across a crowded ballroom. He has spent the past week doing his best impersonation of a whirling dervish, buying clothes and bassinets and diapers. All the while, she stays at home, holding Will so close that she imagines if she closes her eyes she might draw him back inside her body. She is supposed to sleep when the baby does, lest he wear her out during waking hours. But how can she close her eyes to the image of Daddy and Me, sleeping like Russian nesting dolls, their quiet bodies painted in swirls of Slavic color with her love? As the air conditioning kicks in, she feels a chill on her hand, and realizes that her fingers have been unconsciously milking her nipple. Her fingers are now as shimmery white as Will's little dessert smile. She leans over as softly as the firm mattress will allow, and decorates her lover's and her child's mouths with her paint. Even in sleep, both sets of lips curl up in milky smiles. Without waking them, she lets this serve as her goodnight kiss.
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