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When he finishes telling Scully his theory about Holman, Mulder readies himself for an argument, lining up facts in his head to counter all of the scientific explanations he’s sure are coming.
But Scully surprises him. She doesn’t say anything at first, just sighs heavily and rubs a hand across her forehead like she’s not quite sure how she ended up here, in a shitty motel room in rural Kansas, talking to her crazy partner about a man who controls the weather.
“You’re really planning on sleeping here tonight?” she asks after a few minutes, apparently deciding to forego any further discussion about the case.
“What choice do I have, Scully?” he says, gesturing vaguely at the door. “You heard the motel manager. It’s high season here in Kroner; they’re all booked up.”
She rolls her eyes and makes a little scoffing noise, but there’s the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“Besides,” he says with a grin. “It’ll be fine. You won’t even know I’m here.”
“Yeah, right,” she mutters, just loud enough for him to hear. He pointedly ignores her, looking down at the old newspapers spread out on the bed in front of him. She sighs and stands up from the chair, picking up her laptop case and carrying it over to the rickety little desk in the corner.
Once she sits down, she powers up the computer and starts typing. Mulder watches her for a few minutes before flipping on the TV and settling back on to the bed.
**
Sharing a room with Scully isn’t nearly as much fun as he’d hoped it would be. In the two hours they’ve been in here together, he's watched four episodes of an old Twilight Zone marathon and she has typed up what he figures must be six months' worth of old case reports on her laptop.
A new episode starts up, Rod Serling somberly telling him that they’re about to enter another dimension, and Mulder looks over at Scully. She’s still wearing her suit, and she looks incredibly uncomfortable, hunched over the laptop and squinting at the screen.
“Hey, Scully,” he calls over to her when there’s a pause in the click-click-click of her typing. “You want to take a break? Maybe order some pizza? Watch some TV?”
She sighs and he knows she’s probably going to refuse, so he rushes on before she has a chance to turn him down. “Come on,” he says, and he hopes it doesn’t sound too much like begging. It’s just—there’s a chance he might go crazy if he has to watch her do any more work tonight. “You can pick the toppings and everything.”
He doesn’t expect her to actually agree because, well, she’s Scully and doing unnecessary paperwork is practically like breathing for her, but she looks at him over her shoulder and shrugs a little. “Okay,” she says in a voice that implies eating pizza and watching The Twilight Zone with him is a huge imposition. “Fine.”
“Great.” He grins at her, feeling almost absurdly relieved as she closes the screen on the computer. “I’ll order.”
“Okay,” she says again, going over to her suitcase and grabbing some clothes. “I’m going to take a shower. Get peppers and mushrooms on the pizza, okay?” He nods at her as she walks over to the bathroom and closes the door behind her.
When Mulder hears the shower start up, he reaches for the phonebook, flipping through it to look up the number for pizza delivery.
**
Twenty minutes later, the pizza’s there and Scully’s still in the bathroom, the steady drone of the water loud enough to hear over the TV.
Six years of adjoining hotel rooms have told him that she normally doesn’t shower for anywhere near this long, and he wonders if maybe she’s trying to avoid him.
He looks around the tiny room, his stuff strewn about everywhere, and he thinks that maybe she is.
The water keeps running and Mulder tries to straighten up the room a little. He sets the pizza box on the bed, kicks his shoes into the corner and gathers up all the case files and old newspapers, making a messy pile on the table next to her laptop, trying in vain to make his presence as unobtrusive as possible.
By the time he’s done with his half-assed attempts at cleaning, exactly three minutes have passed and she’s still not out of the shower.
He just stands in the middle of the room for a few seconds, trying to decide if he should knock on the bathroom door and see if she's coming out any time soon. He could just start without her, but that seems rude, what with him taking over her room and convincing her not to spend her whole night doing paperwork and all. Finally, he walks over to the bathroom, waits a few seconds before he knocks softly on the door. “Hey Scully,” he calls over the sound of the water.
“What?” she calls back, her annoyance obvious through the cheap plywood door.
“The pizza’s here,” he yells, feeling ridiculous. She doesn’t say anything, but the water turns off and he feels strangely relieved. At least she’s not planning on staying in there all night. “Scully?” he says again, when she doesn’t respond.
The door opens suddenly and Scully’s right there, dripping wet and just wearing a towel, a cloud of steam filling up the bathroom behind her. He stares at her and his stomach kind of flips, which is completely absurd. He’s seen her a lot more naked than this, although he’s not sure it counts since those other times she was either unconscious or in the process of being decontaminated. This feels like a different kind of naked.
“Mulder?” she says. A drop of water falls off her chin, landing on her chest, right where the towel meets her skin. Mulder forces himself to keep his eyes on her face. “What is it?”
“Uh,” he says, because hell if he can remember. She raises her eyebrows and oh, right, the pizza. He clears his throat. “Dinner’s here.”
“Oh,” she says, glancing over to where the pizza box is sitting on the bed, before looking back at him. “Did you get drinks?”
“Uh,” he says again. She rolls her eyes at him, apparently not needing him to say anything else to realize that he did not, in fact, get drinks.
“I saw a couple of vending machines over by the office,” she tells him. “Why don’t you grab us some sodas while I get dressed.”
He nods dumbly at her and she takes a step back, closing the door between them. Mulder just kind of stands there a minute, staring at the door, before rubbing a hand across his face and grabbing his wallet off the bedside table.
It’s going to be a long night, he guesses.
**
He makes his way across the motel parking lot and, Jesus Christ, it’s hotter than hell out here. The air smells heavily of ozone and there’s a kind of thickness to the air, dense and heavy with static, and he thinks about Holman, wonders what’s upsetting him at 8 o’clock on a Thursday night.
The little bank of vending machines is all the way over by the front office and by the time he finally gets there, puts his money in and presses the button for two cans of Diet Coke, he’s practically dripping sweat. He gets the drinks and makes his way back to the other side of the motel. The heat is rising in waves from the blacktop, and he idly wonders how long it takes to get heat stroke.
When he opens the door to their room, Scully’s sitting on the bed watching television, the box of pizza laying open in front of her. Her hair is wet from the shower, curling around her face, and she’s wearing a black tank top and these stripy pajama pants, and that—that is not what she normally wears to bed, he knows. It’s almost as disconcerting as the towel.
“Mulder?” she says, turning her attention away from the TV and over to where he’s standing in the open doorway. “You okay?”
He clears his throat and looks down at his feet. The cans of soda in his hand are very, very cold. “Yeah.” He smiles a little and kicks the door closed behind him. “Yeah, I’m good.”
**
They sit next to each other on the bed, their sides pressed together, eating pizza straight out of the box and watching television. The bed’s not very big and Scully’s bare arm brushes against his every time she raises a slice of pizza to her mouth to take a bite.
He’s barely paying attention to the show, just keeps kind of looking her out of the corner of his eye as she watches the television, her face intent on the figures on the screen. She glances over at him and catches him staring, her eyebrow quirking up in a silent question.
“I think Holman’s in love with Sheila,” he blurts out, just to say something.
“What makes you say that?” she asks and he can tell she’s trying not to smile.
“Think about it, Scully. All of these weather events—with the exception of his mother’s death—somehow involve Sheila’s romantic dalliances. Her marriage, her divorce, her engagement to Daryl. It’s why she thought she was responsible for all of it. When, really, it was Holman’s frustration with these things—his passion for her—manifesting itself in his ability to control the weather.”
“Even if that were true, Mulder, what good does it do us? Or him?”
“How can you say that, Scully?” he asks. “If Holman’s in love with Sheila, and all of his bottled up tension and anxiety are creating these weather anomalies, admitting that to her may allow him to redirect his abilities. Focus on being with her instead of causing heart-shaped hail or freak tornadoes or mid-summer snowstorms.”
She just stares at him for a few beats and he wonders if her eyebrow is going to get stuck like that one day. “So what are you saying, Mulder?” she says eventually. “That a cow fell through your roof last night because of Holman Hardt’s intense sexual frustration?”
“Well, I’m not sure I’d phrase it exactly like that,” he says, marveling at her ability to always make his theories sound even more absurd than they already are. “But I do want to go over to the station to talk to him tomorrow morning before our flight. See if maybe I can convince him to tell Sheila how he really feels. Before someone other than Daryl Mootz or an errant cow gets hurt.”
She doesn’t say anything, just rolls her eyes and looks over at the TV. A new episode is starting, Burgess Meredith wondering why people won’t just leave him alone to read. Mulder sits up a little straighter. This is, without a doubt, his favorite episode of all time. “Hey, Scully,” he says excitedly. “Have you seen this one?”
She squints a little at the TV and shakes her head. Her hair’s still a little damp, the ends curling and sticking to her skin.
“Well then, you’re in luck,” he tells her, grabbing another slice of pizza and bumping his shoulder against hers. “It’s one of the best episodes of television ever produced.”
“Is that right?” she says, sounding amused.
“Hell, yeah,” he says seriously.
She laughs a little and when he looks over at her, she’s smiling at him—a real smile, the kind she rarely ever manages—and Mulder is starting to think that coming to Kroner is one of the best decisions he's ever made.
**
By the time the episode’s over, they’ve finished the pizza and Scully is kind of half-leaning against him, her head resting against his shoulder.
“So,” she says once the credits stop rolling and a commercial for dog food comes on. “That’s your favorite episode?”
He nods at her, even though he’s not sure she can see him from this angle.
“It’s sad, Mulder,” she says, like she expected something different from him. She sounds kind of sleepy and relaxed, and it’s like she’s a whole different person, not his partner who just spent two hours typing up case files in her somber black suit.
“I guess,” he says with a shrug. For some reason he’s just really glad that she’s watched it.
She yawns hugely and rubs a hand against her eyes and he realizes that it’s almost midnight and she probably wants to go to sleep.
“I can turn this off, if you want,” he says, gesturing vaguely at the television. He’s suddenly very conscious of the fact that they’re going to be sleeping in the same bed tonight.
“No,” she says sleepily. “That’s okay.”
He nods and swallows hard as she pulls back the covers and slips under them. She moves down so that she’s laying more flat on the bed. Mulder keeps his eyes focused on the show. He’s not sure what’s even going on at this point, but it seems to involve a talking doll of some sort.
He feels her fall asleep a few minutes later, her breathing slow and even, and she’s somehow shifted so that she’s laying with her head kind of on his chest. She’s warm and solid against him and he really has to force himself to focus on the TV.
**
A couple of hours later, Mulder wakes up with a start. The Twilight Zone is over, replaced by a grainy old Godzilla-ripoff—something involving some kind of large lizard-looking thing stomping on cars and destroying cities—and he fumbles on the bed next to him for the remote, clicks off the TV.
The room is suddenly very dark and he squeezes his eyes shut tight for a second and shakes his head, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the lack of light. He’s still on top of the covers, kind of half-sitting up and Scully’s asleep next to him, still laying with her head on his chest. He’d like to pretend that she looks comfortable, but the truth is, it looks like she’s going to have one hell of a crick in her neck if she stays like that for much longer. So he reaches over and brushes his fingers gently down her cheek and whispers, “Scully” against her ear.
She doesn’t wake up, just makes a quiet sound in the back of her throat and kind of nuzzles her face into his shoulder. Jesus. He takes a breath and says her name again, a little louder, but he doesn’t touch her again.
And this time she does wake up, blinking sleepily up at him, the corners of her mouth turning up in a little smile, like she’s glad to see him.
“Hi,” she says softly and her eyes look very, very blue, even in the dark of the room.
“Hey,” he replies and brushes a strand of hair behind her ear. They’re just kind of staring at each other, and this is getting weirder and weirder. He clears his throat and looks away, nodding at the blank TV screen. “Show’s over.”
“Oh.” She follows his gaze, her forehead crinkling a little as she looks over at the TV. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he says quickly. She still hasn’t really moved, her body is still pressed against his, and he’s not sure what the protocol is here. It’s just—it’s very quiet with the TV off. The only sounds he can hear are the low hum of the air conditioner and Scully’s breathing.
“Um,” he says because he feels like he needs to say something. “I need to get up early if I want to meet Holman tomorrow morning before our flight, so...” he trails off.
“Mulder,” she says seriously, and he finally looks down at her. When he does, she puts her hand against his chest and uses his shirt to pull him down a little, so that they’re face to face. He doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until she kisses him softly. Her lips are soft and dry and she tastes like pizza and he’s got no idea why this is finally happening now, happening here, but he doesn’t think he’s going to ever be able to stop.
They just lie like that for a while, kissing like a couple of kids, and then she moves her hand down his chest, down past his stomach, slipping it inside of his boxers and taking him in her hand and oh god, oh god, they’re actually doing this.
She runs her tongue along his bottom lip and, Jesus Christ, he’s not sure how much of this he can take.
“Scully,” he says, kind of breathlessly. She still has her hand inside his boxers and her breath is warm and sweet and he just doesn’t want this to be a mistake, doesn’t want their whole partnership to come crumbling down because he couldn’t control himself in a crappy motel room in Kroner-fucking-Kansas of all places. “We don’t have to—“
She kisses him again before he can finish, her hand flexing against him. Somewhere, somewhere really far back in his mind, he realizes that this is probably a bad idea, that they’re partners and this could end badly and the most important thing in his life could get incredibly fucked up if he lets it. But Scully’s still kissing him, kind of biting his lower lip, and somehow it’s better than he ever thought would be.
This is it, he knows, his last reserves crumbling away. The tiny part of his brain that’s still thinking clearly, that’s not clouded by lust and the thought of Scully naked, makes one last ditch effort to give her an out, let her know they can stop, that things can go back to exactly like they were.
He pulls back a little and opens his eyes and she’s staring right back at him. “Scully,” he says again, gasping as she brushes her thumb against the tip of his cock. His hips buck against her hand and she smiles.
“Shut up, Mulder,” she says, still smiling against his mouth. He smiles back, her breath warm against his lips, and she doesn’t have to tell him twice.