Chapter Text
It’s been a long drive and an even longer day. Scully wants nothing more than a long, hot bath, a mediocre motel mattress, and maybe, maybe, if she’s lucky, eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Eight hours without Mulder’s voice pulling impossibilities out of thin air and trying to convince her of his latest theory.
She drops her bags on the bed and toes off one shoe, already picturing the way the steam will fill the room as the hot tap runs at full-force, and the small miracle of comfort returning to her body after a day that started before dawn and never quite brightened.
She hasn’t even reached for her second shoe when there’s a knock at her door.
“Scully, it’s me.”
Of course it is. Scully closes her eyes for a count of five, mentally rationing the last of her daily patience quota. Kicking her other shoe off with a little more force than necessary, she swings open the door.
“...Yes?”
“I know, I know,” Mulder says, immediately clocking her expression and still managing to look entirely unapologetic. He waves a scrap piece of paper with a hand-sketched map around in the air as if it might be the thing that finally convinces her. “Do you remember that case I was telling you about? The one back in ‘51…”
Scully stares at him, expressionless, waiting for him to get to the point. Of course she remembers. He hadn’t shut up about it all day, how an unsolved case from over forty years ago had “eerie similarities” with one in the seventies, and now this one, how the case file was “curiously” missing key details regarding the exact location where the body was found, how it “could be a cover-up” and how “the locals must still know.” Scully thinks the link he’s made between the cases is a stretch, at best. She also has the infuriatingly familiar feeling that he’s still holding something back, but at this moment she cannot be bothered to press further.
“...anyway, the motel owner drew me a map,” Mulder continues eagerly. “That geographical feature referenced in the witness statements? He says it’s only about a fifteen minute drive from here, and—”
“—Mulder,” she interrupts, and there’s a little whine in her tone that she’s not entirely proud of, “can’t this wait until the morning?”
His expression is all plea and earnest anticipation in his attempts to convince her.
“A fifteen minute drive, Scully. If we can orient ourselves tonight we can hit the ground running in the morning and have as much context as possible…Scully, I promise, it’ll be worth it. It’s important.”
Scully exhales slowly. It always is, with Mulder – important, urgent, unprecedented– often unexplainably so. She peers past him out the door at the slight drizzle that’s begun to fall and glances up at the darkening clouds.
She considers telling him to just go by himself and leave her to the peace of her motel room, but thinks better of it. The thought of Mulder wandering off into an impending storm with a hand-drawn map leading to God-knows-where as night closes in doesn’t sit well with her. And judging from the squirrelier-than-usual version of Mulder in front of her, she's beginning to suspect he’s been awake for at least 24 hours. It’s not an ideal combination.
“Fine,” she says, with resigned huff. “An hour, Mulder, there and back. That’s it.” She glances at her watch and then back at the sky. “I want to be back before it gets dark, and before this storm rolls in.”
He grins and gives the doorframe a content little tap. His eyes are bright in the way they get when he’s wired from lack of sleep, and she wonders, briefly, what’s triggered this latest bout of insomnia. He certainly doesn’t seem stressed. He seems wired. Maybe a little too wired. She files the thought away for later examination.
“I’ll start the car,” he grins.
“I’ll drive,” she insists. “You'll navigate.”
Mulder nods and tosses her the keys. Scully catches them without looking, too busy peering past him at the parking lot as the rain begins to fall steadily. She sighs heavily, not even bothering to mask her annoyance.
“Can you make sure there’s umbrellas in the car? If not, I saw some in the lobby when we checked in. Grab two, please. I’m going to change my shoes and I’ll meet you at the car in five minutes.”
“Umbrellas. Five minutes. You got it, Scully.”
She shuts the door and leans her forehead against the wood, takes a deep breath, and exhales for a count of five.
Eight hours was a pipe dream.
“Great,” Scully mutters, staring into an empty trunk containing exactly zero umbrellas as rainwater pours down the back of her neck. “That’s just great, Mulder. You know, I asked you to remember one thing.”
He arrives at her side, looking genuinely baffled. “Sorry, Scully. I swear I did. It must be—”
“—Do not,” she interjects, “tell me it must be an X-File.”
“Fun fact for you, Scully. The first umbrella factory in the United States actually mysteriously exploded back in the—”
“—Mulder, unless your fun fact is an actual umbrella, I don’t want to hear it. Let’s just find what we’re here to find so we can leave.”
Scully is not in the mood for his jokes. She is not in the mood for his fun facts. She is not in the mood for anything besides hot water and peace and quiet. Instead she gets freezing cold rain, the squelch of mud beneath her boots, and Mulder.
She rises on her toes to grab the lid of the trunk, fully intending to slam it shut to make a point and has to jump slightly to reach it. She slips on the slick mud, arms flailing for something to grab onto – and Mulder’s hand shoots out and closes around her elbow, steadying her before she falls.
“Careful, Scully,” he chuckles. “The mud’s slippery.”
“I’m aware, thank you,” she snaps, reclaiming her arm and her dignity with a quick yank. Mulder reaches up and closes the trunk with one fluid motion, and something immature and childish in her scowls involuntarily at the way he makes it look effortless.
She is more or less glowering as they trudge through the mud, following a rough footpath leading off the shoulder of the road towards a stand of thickets dotting the edge of a field.
Within minutes, they’re both soaked through with the kind of rain that finds seams easily – the sensation of having cold wet sponges tucked into her boots does little to improve her mood.
Mulder, evidently, is unbothered by it all. His eyes are bright, his cheeks are rosy and he grins as he turns towards her.
“Hey Scully,” he calls over the downpour, “Doesn’t this remind you of our first case?”
She is not in the mood to be sentimental, either.
“This reminds me,” she mutters, “not to trust you to pack for the weather.”
“Rain-soaked in the great outdoors while you yell at me about how I’m wrong,” Mulder continues fondly, as if the memory itself is enough to warm them both. His voice cracks mid-sentence with an odd rasp and he clears his throat and coughs, rainwater spraying from the curve of his lips.
Scully scowls, refusing to acknowledge the memory of those first days in Bellefleur – a little flicker of warmth in her chest; like the candlelight in a dark, rain-lashed motel room – she tightens her jaw and deflects instead. She’s good at that.
“And remind me why we couldn't wait for the weather to clear to look at some big pile of rocks?”
“Not a pile of rocks, Scully,” Mulder corrects, wiping rain off his nose with the back of his hand. “A geographical feature that just so happens to have been referenced in the original file back in 1953—”
“—in 1951,” she corrects, annoyed.
“—Right, yeah, ‘51.”
“And this couldn’t wait until tomorrow because…?”
“I wanted to see it in person, Scully. To orient the theory. I think the formation itself could be something big. Look…first it was Thompson in fifty one, and then the Hubbard boy in…seventy…two. And now, the, uh, Ferris girl. Which is why we’re here now, and...”
It’s not Ferris, Scully thinks to herself as he rambles on about rituals and rocks. It’s Ferrick. And the Hubbard case was in seventy six. She frowns a little. Mulder doesn’t misremember case details. He doesn’t always remember to sleep or eat, but he remembers the names and dates pertinent to every case he’s ever worked on. She chalks it up to the hour, the weather, and the fact that it’s been a long day for both of them. Long enough that quite frankly, she can’t be bothered to correct him again.
He’s not wrong about one thing, at least – the rain in Oregon had been equally cold and unforgiving, too. Scully huffs in annoyance. She never had a chance to take a much-needed hot bath that night, either.
They follow the edge of a large clearing and come up with nothing but brambles and puddles. There is no geographical feature to behold, no rock formation, not so much as a pebble amidst all the mud.
Mulder slows and looks around. “Huh,” he says, coming to a stop.
Something in the way he says it grates at the fine edges of Scully’s patience.
“What is it, Mulder?” she snaps, blinking rainwater out of her eyes. A droplet clings stubbornly to the tip of her nose and she wipes it away angrily.
Mulder consults the hastily drawn map that is more or less dissolving in his hands, the ink bleeding into unhelpful little smears of color. He turns once, twice, and looks around as though the foggy horizon may offer up better directions.
“Well,” he says slowly, “according to the files, the bodies were found against a large rock formation. I’m… not seeing a large rock formation.” Mulder drags a wet hand over his face and sniffles. His gaze darts over towards the tree line and then back at the map in his hands, which has more or less become pulp in his grip.
Mulder sniffs once, sharp and wet, then again. He tilts his head back minutely, gasps sharply and angles his face towards his shoulder with a sudden, resonant sneeze.
Scully startles and fixes him with a glare. She is too cold, too wet, too annoyed to offer a polite “bless you.” As far as she’s concerned, such pleasantries are a luxury for people whose socks aren’t soaked all the way through. She is, in a moment she won’t be proud of later, cataloguing all the ways he has ever been an inconvenience to her.
Mulder straightens and gives his head a quick little shake, raindrops flying from his hair in all directions. “Rainwater up my nose,” he chuckles hoarsely, wiping his face with the back of his hand.
“Mulder, is this even the right place?”
“Uh, hang on, Scully,” Mulder says. He looks around again, looking lost in every sense of the word. “I…I think…” He sniffs and coughs again. It’s a harsher sound now, deeper, not the sharp little splutter of water going down the wrong way but something that scrapes at the edges of his voice.
Scully’s frown deepens.
“Mulder...”
He looks at the map, then at the trees, then back at her, and for the first time she senses something like uncertainty threading through his usual air of investigative enthusiasm.
“I, uh…” His brow furrows, water running in rivulets down his cheekbones. “You know. I think maybe I mixed up the two crossroads aways back.” His voice cracks again, and drops lower. He covers it with a cough that sounds worse than the last one.
“Mulder.”
“Maybe if we—”
“You know what, Mulder?” Scully exclaims, “I’m calling it.”
He blinks at her. Rain drips from his lashes.
“Calling…what?”
“This.” She gestures around them – at the brambles, the mud, the dissolving map, the entirely rock-free landscape. “We're done here. We’ll get proper directions in the morning and try again if you really think it's that important.”
Mulder opens his mouth like he wants to argue, then he seems to think better of it. His wet shoulders sag a little.
“Yeah,” he says, voice rough. “Okay. Yeah. We can, um—” He spins around, squinting through the curtain of rain. “Car’s this way, yeah?”
He starts trudging down the path in the wrong direction. Scully shakes her head, mildly incredulous. What the hell is going on with him?
“It’s this way, Mulder.”
He stops, blinks once, then slowly turns to follow where she’s pointing. The puzzled little frown between his brows is new, she notes. He usually knows exactly where he’s going, even when he shouldn’t. Particularly when he shouldn’t.
It’s been a long day, she tells herself again as she leads him back down the footpath towards the car. She’s tired. He’s tired. That's all it is. They’ll get warm, get dried off, get some sleep, and try again tomorrow.