#post regularly

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Mulder and Scully spend their entire first week back at work fixing all the issues of their run-in with Perlieu: going to hearings, giving statements, collecting evidence. Scully spends several hours touching base with the team on that serial killer case, clarifying things about the autopsy reports and doing a couple more. Mulder calls in cleaners to at the very least get all of the destroyed furniture out of the house; he'll worry about new furniture later. He couldn't bear to pick things out without Scully, and that's a bit of a sore subject personally anyway. He's spent a decent amount of time kicking himself for that little comment about the furniture, and he's not quite done yet.

He spends his spare moments in the office reviewing and re-reviewing the Willoughby files. Noting similarities of sightings, trying to collect more information on the Holly Smith death. He halfway considers calling John Doggett before deciding against that; he probably shouldn't be asking for any favors from the guy. He combs through the Bureau system for any mention of Ian or Marion or Jared Caruthers. He hasn't decided whether or not to officially reopen the file on Willoughby and the Specter, mostly because Ryan still refuses to explain why he needs Mulder to look into his parents’ murders. He's communicating through email now, sending Mulder a list of recent sightings he's heard about in Willoughby, but every time Mulder asks why they're corresponding, he refuses to answer, and just sends more sightings.

Things remain awkward with Scully. She's amicable, of course, and he likes to think he is, too, but a new distance has sprung up that barely makes sense in the wake of everything else. She doesn't ask to have dinner with him, or ask him to come over, and he doesn't dare bring it up. They spend weekdays from eight to five together, and that is the extent of it, aside from a few friendly texts. He doesn't know how to fix things, and he's not sure she does, either. At one point, he said he would take what he could get, and he never, ever wants to push her, but he's not sure he can take being only Friendly, Too-Close Co-workers anymore.

By Sunday, Mulder is bored stiff, with no cases on the horizon and no Scully to do nothing with. He takes the Willoughby files home for the weekend, but he nearly has them memorized by now, and he doesn't want to read over them for the millionth time. He could probably use a pair of fresh eyes, but he doesn't want to ask Scully, considering how their last conversation about Willoughby went. And so Sunday is the day he finally breaks down and drives to Willoughby to see if he can get a copy of the Caruthers murder file.

(He texts Scully before he leaves, just in case she decides to drop by. He doesn't want her to panic if she were to come home and find him not there. And besides that, he doesn't want to feel like he's hiding things from her. He lingers awkwardly in the driveway, leaning against the car and nudging his sunglasses up and down the bridge of his nose until Scully answers, somewhat hoping she'll want to come along. But she just tells him to be careful and let her know if he needs anything, and so he leaves it at that.)

Sheriff O'Connell isn't at the station when Mulder arrives—the receptionist says he and his family are on vacation—but Deputy Jacobs is there, and he's fairly nice to Mulder about the whole thing. He photocopies most of the file for Mulder to take with him, curious about why Mulder wants to investigate again. “Just a lingering curiosity,” Mulder lies. “Boredom, you know. Have there been many sightings lately?”

Deputy Jacobs shrugs. “A few. Maybe more that haven't been reported. But nothing major since last year, as far as I know—since that stuff with the school, and Joy Seers's car accident.”

Mulder nods. “The activity seems to be somewhat restricted to the fall and winter, right?” he asks after a beat, his eyes falling on a photo of the crime scene. Bloody floor and scratch marks in the woods—from fingernails, he guesses.  

“Somewhat,” says Deputy Jacobs. “In my experience.” They stand in silence for a few minutes more as he copies the last of the papers. He doesn't speak again until he's bundling the papers into a folder; he says, casually, “Jared Caruthers is due for parole soon, you know.”

“What?” Mulder says, caught off guard.

“Jared Caruthers. The murderer.” Deputy Jacobs waves the file around for emphasis before passing it to Mulder. “Getting paroled for good behavior. But who knows if he's going to come here.”

“Hmm.” Mulder takes the thick folder and tucks it into his bag. “What are the people around town saying?” he asks knowingly.

Jacobs laughs, a sharp barking sound. “Some say he's gonna come for Ryan and finish the job,” he says. “Others say he and Ryan are going to team up and go on a killing spree. I think it's all bullshit.” He motions to the bag with his chin. “Let us know if you find anything, Agent Mulder. And tell… what was your partner's name? Agent Sullivan?”

“Agent Scully,” says Mulder.

“Agent Scully. Tell her I said hello.”

Mulder nods, silently wondering if he'll have an avenue to tell Scully that Deputy Jacobs from Willoughby says hello. He thanks the deputy and leaves.

At home that night, he reviews the case again. He doesn't remember much from when he and Scully reviewed it back in 2015, aside from the basic details. He's able to piece together the details from the investigative reports and witness testimonies.

The murders took place on May 19, 2002. According to Ian Caruther's co-workers, he left the office at five o'clock, the usual time; one coworker in particular noted that he seemed somewhat nervous, and reacted strangely when asked how his brother was doing (in reference to the death of Holly Smith), which surely only added to the suspicion towards Jared. Jared and Marion's whereabouts were unknown, as Marion was still staying at home with the baby (she was a teacher, and had taken a year's worth of leave) and Jared had recently been fired from his job. From the hours of five to ten, no one saw the Caruthers. There was no sign of them until the first 9-1-1 call, time-stamped at approximately 10:27 p.m. The call made by Jared. The transcript reveals nothing of the emotions in the actual phone call, whether or not Jared was hysterical, fearful or calm and collected, but Mulder can't help but read it as hysterical. My brother's been hurt. Please, I need your help. It's him and his wife… I think they've been stabbed… oh, Jesus Christ. Willoughby Woods Apartment Building, please hurry, oh fucking Christ.

The second 9-1-1 call was placed around ten minutes later, made by a neighbor. This transcript lays out the scene more carefully: the neighbor returned home from a friend's house and ran into Jared in the hallway, reportedly covered in blood. The neighbor asked if he needed help; Jared ran away. A few steps further, and he came across the bodies, bloody and prone in the hallway. He took their pulse to no avail; both were very dead. He could hear the baby crying.

The police responded to the scene and pronounced Marion and Ian Caruthers dead on the scene. They'd been dead for only an hour or two. The baby was found unharmed. An examination of the crime scene found candles—some lit, some unlit and overturned, some arranged in a circle around a Ouija board, religious paraphernalia like a Bible, crosses, a bowl shattered on the ground in a puddle of water. Mulder peruses the crime scene photos with interest—the scene certainly suggests a deeper involvement with the Specter. He vaguely remembers hearing something about things like this at the crime scene a couple years ago, remembers thinking that was significant. He paper-clips them together and sets them aside for another look.

Jared Caruthers was spotted buying explosive materials in a hardware store two towns over before being found and apprehended in the old cemetery down the street from the apartment. He had changed clothes, but the shirt he'd been wearing at the time of the murder was found in the trunk of his car with Ian and Marion's blood on it. Skin residues were found under his fingernails, also matching the DNA of the victims. The blade of the knife stuffed under his seat had been wiped clean of blood, but his fingerprints were still on it. (They found traces of Marion Caruthers's fingerprints as well, but that's mostly skimmed over.) One testimony reports that, when they cuffed him, Jared began to weep. (“But I dunno if it was out of guilt, or cause he got caught.”)

He refused to say anything, but they had more than enough evidence to convict him. He eventually signed a statement confessing to the murders. Supposed open-and-shut case, and Mulder still has no idea why Ryan wanted him to look into this.

He goes back to the crime scene photos, the fuzzy images of a scene that looks like it's right out of a horror movie. It's the fact that he keeps coming back to. Had Jared Caruthers planned this, in an attempt to pin the murders on some supernatural force? Or had the Willoughby Specter interfered, somehow? Joy Seers believes the ghost is demonic, and after his own encounter, Mulder can understand why. And he knows Ryan doesn't have any lost love for the ghost. But what does he think the ghost's involvement in his parents’ deaths? Does he suspect that his parents weren't murdered at all?

Mulder has copies of the autopsy reports, but that's never been his strong suit; he'd love to ask Scully to look them over. He tucks the cluster of papers back into the folder and scribbles a note to himself to review the crime scene photos.

He's settling into the couch to watch TV for the night when he gets a call from Skinner about a case in Henrico County.

---

Sunday night, Scully goes to bed early. She hasn't been sleeping well, either from paranoia or from a general sense of unrest, and she's trying to catch up on rest while they don't have a case. (She halfway expected a follow-up text to Mulder's announcement that he was driving down to Willoughby to the day to pick up a file, gently prodding her to come along, but it never came. She admits she doesn't love the idea of looking into the Willoughby case again, as paranoid as she's been this past week, but she expected Mulder to ask her to accompany him. She supposes he must still be upset about what happened the other week, and is mostly telling her where he's going as a formality. She told him to be careful.)

She spends Sunday evening watching a documentary on National Geographic; she's tempted to text Mulder a few times, out of the familiar twinge of missing him that she gets when they don't stay together (which they've done at least once or twice a week for almost a year now; this may be the longest period that one of them hasn't stayed at the other's house), but she holds off. She watches the documentary, and then she goes to bed, breaking her usual habit and taking a sleeping pill. She halfway thinks she deserves it, after a week of near-constant jumpiness and anxiety.

She has strange dreams. Strange, shadowy dreams that leave her with a sense of dread. There's someone that she's looking for that she can't find, and she has no idea whether it's Mulder or William.

Scully wakes up suddenly to a sharp, shrill sound, jolting in bed as if awakening from a bad nightmare. She's shivering, the tension hard in her muscles; she can feel the aches and pains from the Perlieu ordeal again, the bruises stinging. She groans, blinking blearily, and rolls over on her stomach, and the source of the sound becomes clear: Daggoo is standing on the edge of the bed, barking furiously at the door.

Scully shakes her head hard, running her fingers through her hair and sitting up in bed. She scoops up Daggoo and shushes him firmly, sets him down on the other side of the bed. “You hush,” she says firmly, reaching over to turn on her lamp. Her fingers slip on the switch, hearing the empty click with no accompanying light. She flips it a few more times, cursing under her breath: burnt-out bulb. She climbs to her feet, shivering as her feet hit the cold floor, heading for the door to get another bulb; she might as well change it now.

But she freezes in her tracks when she hears the creaking of floorboards on the other side of the door. It takes a second or two for her to remember that she's alone, that Mulder isn't here and the house is empty, and her breath catches in her throat in fear.

Footsteps creak on the other side, slow squeaking footfalls. Daggoo stands on the bed, growling at the door.

Scully forces herself to take a deep breath, another. Forces herself not to think of the cruel smile of a dark figure in the hallway of a Willoughby hotel. Walks carefully, quietly to her dresser and retrieves her gun from her holster. She walks to the door with her weapon held out in front of her, shushes Daggoo quietly and pushes the door open abruptly. “Federal agent, I'm armed!” she shouts, aiming the gun. But the hallway is empty.

Breathing uneasily, Scully steps out into the hall, the automatic lights flickering on. (Why the hell didn't her friend who rented her the house put automatic lights in the bedroom?) She doesn't bother turning them back off, like she’s done so often out of irritation. She walks the house, lights coming on with a soothing regularity, clearing every room, and finds the whole place empty. Daggoo paces the house behind her, growling under his breath. Scully checks every room twice, checks the cameras and the security system, and there is nothing. No intruder. No alerts. No signs of anything walking around the house except for her and the dog.

Scully blinks tiredly, rubbing at her eyes. She must be going insane. She doesn't want to consider any other possibilities. She reminds herself that she is nowhere near Willoughby, Virginia. She reminds herself that ghosts don't exist. They don't.

She scoops up Daggoo, restless and wriggling, and walks back to her bedroom. The lamp is still burned out, but she doesn't have the energy to change it. She shuts the door firmly, places the gun on her bedside table, climbs into bed and screws her eyes shut. She's exhausted. She just wants to go to sleep. She doesn't want to think about ghosts, or intruders, or anything of that sort. It's your imagination, she tells herself firmly as Daggoo curls dutifully into her side. You're imagining things.

She burrows in under the covers, ignoring any temptation to call Mulder or to recheck the house. Ignoring the slow squeak coming from the bathroom door down the hall swinging open, slow and eerie as a horror movie cliche. It's the house, she tells herself, the mechanics are malfunctioning. That must be it, because she can certainly hear the hinges squeaking painfully slow, but there's no intruder, she checked. And there is no such thing as ghosts. She grits her teeth and slides further under the covers like a child trying to hide, her eyes remaining shut even as her hand itches to grab for her gun.  

She can hear another door creaking, and she caves in and reaches for her phone, opening her messages from Mulder without a second thought. They've been together for years, she should be brave enough to tell him that she's hearing things, even if it's irrational. But she pauses when she sees her most recent unopened message from Mulder. Skinner's given us a new case. Not Willoughby. I'll have the details tomorrow morning at work.

It's professional enough to make her take pause, make her shake off this silly fear. She works her jaw back and forth and texts back, See you then, pretending she isn't disappointed at this new distance between them. She's being ridiculous. The house is malfunctioning, that's probably the thing she mistook as footsteps earlier. They'll start a new case tomorrow, and it'll get her mind off of Willoughby and the Specter and the break-in. She'll be back to normal in no time.

She turns off her phone screen and lays back against the mattress. It seems as if Daggoo has calmed down, fallen asleep curled against her, and she strokes a hand over his belly before closing her eyes and concentrating on the sound of their breathing. It's almost soothing, the steadiness of it, and she can feel herself slowly drifting off to sleep.

She bites back a startled yelp when she hears the bang of the doors slamming closed, Daggoo breaking into angry, yipping barks again. She pulls the covers over her head and rolls over onto her side.

---

Scully doesn't sleep well, despite the sleeping pill. She's absolutely exhausted the next morning, but she gets up and goes into work anyway, because what the hell else is she going to do? She's imagining things, or there's something wrong with the computer that runs the house, but she cannot let herself linger over these things. She eats her bagel and drinks her morning coffee, packs a bag for a few nights out of instinct, drops Daggoo off at the neighbor's, and drives to work.

Mulder's thumbing through an unfamiliar file when she comes in, sitting at the desk, lost in the work. (They still only have one desk, through no fault of Mulder's; he's called upstairs multiple times about another one to no avail. Scully is a little thrown by the fact that no one has managed to scrape up another desk in the two years they've been back, but it hardly seems to matter. They take turns with this one, most of the time, and it isn't as if she isn't annoyingly used to the whole thing.) “That the new case?” Scully asks, shutting the door behind her.

Mulder looks up from what seems to be a photo, his eyes softening a little like he's happy to see her. She swallows back any discomfort at their chaste, nearly formal exchanges yesterday, and offers him a small smile. “Scully, hey,” he says. “Yeah, I'm just… going through the details of it all.”

Scully steps closer to the desk, motioning to the photo in his hand. “Is that the victim?”

He looks down at the photo and nods. “Mm-hmm.” Swiveling the photo to face her, Scully sees a young man with a swelled, bruised face. “Arkie Seavers, age 20,” says Mulder. “Currently a resident of the county jail.”

Scully takes the photo to examine it herself. “What does the other guy look like?”

“Funny you should ask,” Mulder says, motioning to the photo. “Arkie there wasn't in a fight. Car crash, head-on collision into a tree. Drunk as a skunk.”

“He's lucky to be alive,” Scully says as she takes a seat.

“You have no idea,” says Mulder.

“Not wearing a seat belt, I suspect.”

“To hear Arkie tell it,” Mulder says as he gets to his feet and rounding the desk to stand near her chair, “he didn't have time to fasten his seatbelt, 'cause he was too busy beating a hasty retreat from the boy he says caused the accident.”

“And who was that?” she asks.

“You're looking at him,” says Mulder.

She raises her eyebrows questioningly  at him, maybe even a little playfully. “No. Not me,” he says, just a little bit playful back, and points at the photo in her hand.

“What, he blames himself?” she asks, looking back at the photo.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“I don't get it, Mulder,” she says.

Mulder picks up a side view of the victim, holding it up for effect. “Arkie, our hapless road warrior, is driving by his lonesome, down the highway to hell, when he sees another Arkie—” He scoops up another mug shot, framed opposite of the first one, and mimes the situation with the two photos as he continues: “—across from him, who grabs the wheel and crashes the vehicle.”

“Well, you did say he was drunk,” says Scully, rolling her eyes a little.

“Yes, and I know what you're gonna say about seeing double and all those hackneyed bromides about not giving the kids the car keys—”

“20 is hardly a kid,” she interrupts.

“—but circumstances bear a curious similarity to the stories told by other good folk who didn't share Arkie Seavers' luck of the Irish, and who also reported seeing their doubles right before dying.” He sits back at the desk, across from her, and passes her a bundle of photos.

“And how did these people die?” she asks.

“Each by their own hand.”

“After seeing their doubles?” She thumbs through the photos, briefly noting that the state of the bodies do seem to suggest suicide.

“According to all reports issuing out of Henrico County, Virginia.”

“Reports issued by whom?”

“Friends, relatives. A doctor.” He nods towards her.

“And the medical diagnosis is…?” she asks.

“A rare form of schizophrenia.”

She chuckles a little. “Right. So rare I've never heard of it.”

“Well, correct me if I'm wrong, Scully, and I know that you will, but schizophrenics have been known to hear voices and have reported hallucinations similar to the ones Arkie reports,” he points out.

“Hallucinations, yes, but not necessarily grabbing the wheel of a car and ramming it into a tree,” she points out right back.

“Well, they didn't all die from car crashes into trees,” he says. “Seven died from hanging, four jumped off a tall bridge, um, three—”

She looks at him in astonishment, that he didn't think to mention this before. “This is a mass phenomenon.”

“Precisely my thinking, Scully, which is why you and I are gonna jump on I-95 South this morning and get back to our bread and butter,” he replies, getting to his feet and grabbing his coat.

Her eyebrows raised, she gets to her feet and sets the photos down on the desk. “We seem to have a habit of getting into cases of mass, supposedly supernatural phenomena in small Virginia towns,” she comments.

“Precisely, Scully. Bread and butter.” Mulder is pulling on his coat at the door; he waggles his eyebrows playfully at her. “Got to bring home a paycheck somehow, right?”

“Are you getting reimbursed for road trips to Willoughby?” she asks, and she means it to sound playful, but she's worried it comes off as the opposite. She clears her throat, adds in what she hopes is a light tone, “Has Ryan Caruthers clarified why he wants you to look into this again? Do we need to reopen the Willoughby file?”

Mulder shakes his head. “He just wanted me to investigate the murder of his parents,” he says. “I'm considering it a side project.”

“Mm.” She bites her lower lip as she gathers her things, pretending she isn't relieved, just a little. “Focusing on more relevant things?”

“Exactly.” He smiles a little at her, and she smiles back, strangely nervous. She wonders, briefly, if she should tell him about the weird things she heard last night before deciding against it. It was just a computer malfunction, it's not important. And she doubts Mulder will really care about issues with the house she's living in separately from him.

They leave the office together, side by side, ride the elevator up to the parking garage.

---

They end up driving to Henrico County separately. Scully still isn't quite sure how it happens. One minute, she's commenting on the distance away from the county—a little two hours, close enough to drive but far enough that they'll have to get a hotel—and the next thing she knows, Mulder's commenting on how it might even be more efficient to take two cars, in case they have to split up a lot, and she can't tell if he's kidding or not (she thinks he might be, but it's honestly hard to tell), and she's agreeing that it might be efficient. And then the next thing she knows, they're exiting the parking garage in separate cars. It happens so fast it stuns her.

The drive is too long, too quiet. Scully starts an audio book on Audible just to fill up the silence. She looks in the mirror every few minutes and sees Mulder right behind her, and she's just left wondering how this whole thing happened. She still can't believe she reacted that way on the couch, after everything that happened.

The two of them drive straight to the Henrico County Jail to talk to Arkie Seavers, and from there, they go to the crash site. Despite Arkie's history of DUIs and drugs, Mulder seems to believe his insistence that his doppelganger is responsible. He counters Scully's logical arguments with the point that Arkie probably doesn't have the wherewithal to make it up. They go to the local psychiatric hospital, where they discuss things with a doctor there, who classifies the other recent deaths as similar to Arkie's incident in the supposed involvement of doppelgangers. They speak to a patient named Judy whose walls are plastered with games of Hangman, who claims to play telepathically with her brother. Scully's not so sure she believes that part of it, but Mulder locates a game of Hangman with an answer of Arkie on the wall, and she can't quite dismiss it as a coincidence, despite Judy's denial of knowing Arkie Seavers.

By this time, it's getting late, and when Mulder suggests they call it quits for the day, Scully certainly isn't going to argue. They head to a local restaurant for dinner, but there must be some kind of local event, because it takes them an hour and a half just to get food. By the time they finally reach the local St. Rachel Motel, it's past 11:00, and Scully is exhausted.

They ring the doorbell, and hear a shouted, “Coming!” from somewhere inside. A woman appears behind the sliding glass door, pushing it open.

“Hi, we'd like a couple rooms,” says Scully, almost automatically. They haven't  shared a hotel room on purpose since Willoughby; they've stuck to the formality of separate ones. And she certainly doesn't  expect that to change, especially in the wake of all their newfound awkwardness.

“Do you have reservations?” the woman asks.

“No,” Scully says. She senses what's coming; of course they wouldn't be able to get a room in this tiny town after she barely slept the night before. Just their luck. “Uh, do you have any rooms?”

“I've had a cancellation,” says the woman. “It's just a suite.”

“We'll take it,” says Mulder, speaking for the first time since they've gotten here. No hesitation or anything of that sort. She turns to look at him in shock—although she's not sure what the source of the shock is. Because of this strange new distance, because she thought he was angry at her for pulling away? Because the last time they were offered only one hotel room, he seemed nervous and looked to her for answers, offered to go somewhere else? She isn't sure how to react, isn't sure if she's eager or terrified. She thinks of holding her phone in her hand the night before, wrestling with whether or not to call him. He looks back at her with a degree of surprise, too, and she doesn't know why. A degree of awkwardness, maybe, and that makes more sense.

“There's a pullout sofa,” the clerk assures them.

“Okay,” says Scully, because what else is she supposed to say? She's made Mulder up a bed in the guest room, told him goodnight from her bedroom door and lay alone between stiff, cold sheets wishing he was there. The same way he’s made up his guest room for her. This is no different, is it? Maybe this is the push they need to get back to the place they were in a week ago.

She looks back over at Mulder as the woman walks away, and he's shaking his head  innocently, maybe even a little apologetically. “Just trying to get some shut-eye.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” she says, walking past him. She doesn't know what else to say. Doesn't know if he's upset with her, doesn't know how to make things right with them. She wishes to god she did. She misses him, misses the way she felt those nights in Willoughby where they fell asleep holding hands. She almost wishes there wasn't a pullout sofa, but at the same time, she's relieved there is.

They get up to the suite, a two-roomed thing with a bedroom and a joint bathroom and living room. Door between the couch and the bed. Mulder is trailing behind her, drops his suitcase in the corner of the room. “I can take the couch bed if you want,” he says, noble as he always is.   

“Don't be ridiculous, Mulder,” she replies immediately, combing her hair out of her face with her fingertips. “With your back problems, and everything that happened with Perlieu…”

“My back is fine, Scully. And besides that, I've gotten in the habit of sleeping on the couch every now and then.” She turns to him in surprise, her eyebrows raising. He shrugs. “Couch at home folds out. Closer to the kitchen and the office. Aside from the nights we fall asleep on the couch… sometimes I sleep there because it's easier. More convenient.”

He sleeps on the couch sometimes when she's not there. She didn't know that. She swallows. She wants to ask him to share the bed. She should ask, she should make some effort to close this gap between them, but the words are caught in her throat. “All the more reason for you to take the bed,” she says instead.

“Come on, Scully, I'm used to it.” He smiles at her gently, and she thinks about kissing him, touching his face and asking him to stay, telling him that she's sorry, she's so sorry, and she doesn't want to sleep alone.

She twists her hair away from her face, says briskly, “I'm going to take a shower.” She can feel his eyes on her as she goes to the bed, unzips her suitcase and removes her pajamas. It is too late, near midnight, and her bones are aching, old bruises sore and fatigue clouding her mind.

She takes a hot shower in the other room (why the hell would they put the bathroom in the room that is not the bedroom?), and Mulder is sprawled out of the couch bed when she gets out, gray t-shirt hanging on his frame. It makes a sudden lump rise in her throat. “Nice digs?” he asks, and she nods, unable to speak. “You should get some sleep,” he offers. “We have a meeting with Arkie and his lawyer first thing in the morning.”

She's still tempted to ask him back to the bed, but sleepiness outweighs her need for him, and she ultimately decides against it. Not tonight. Maybe it's because she's tired or maybe it's because she's scared, but whatever the case, she isn't going to go any further. She doesn't know how he feels towards her right now, she doesn't know how how to make things right. “Right,” she says. “God knows we could both use some shut eye.” The reason, according to Mulder, that they'd taken the damn hotel room.

“Right,” he says. He's looking at her warily, almost nervously, but still smiling.

She smiles back. She can't help it. They're still too scared to do anything, but this might be enough for now. They can pretend that nothing’s wrong. “Good night, Mulder,” she says, stepping closer to the couch bed. She brushes a hand over his shoulder before crossing to the door.

“Good night, Scully,” he says, just before she closes the door.

---

Scully's so tired that she can't see straight, but nearly as soon as she lies down, she finds herself restless. She sleeps in fitful snatches, tossing and turning, jumping at small noises. Silly fear from what happened the night before, she tells herself, but telling herself that doesn't make the fear go away. She shifts from one side to another, trying to focus on her breathing, the buzz of the air conditioning, anything but every small, mundane sound, when she hears the footsteps behind her. Startled, motivated by the fear lingering from the night before, she flips over in a panic.

She finds Mulder standing there, sheepish and apologetic. “Mulder,” she sighs wearily, lying flat on her back in defeat, “what are you doing?”

“That bed nice and comfy?” he asks, waggling his eyebrows.

“Mulder, go back to sleep,” she chides, because she's not in the mood for a discussion right now. She doesn't care if he goes back to the couch bed or climbs right in beside her, she just wants a good night's sleep.

“I wish that I could, Scully,” he says. “They just found Arkie Seavers dead in his jail cell.”

She sits up in bed in astonishment. “You're kidding,” she says.

“I'm afraid not. They didn't give many details, but they wanted us to come down and check it out.” He gives her a small, apologectic smile. “I'm sorry. Maybe we can come back and catch a few more winks after we check out the crime scene.”

Scully yawns as she climbs to her feet, rubbing her forehead. “Is that a promise?”

“What's wrong, Scully? Haven't been sleeping well?” His voice is genuinely sympathetic, soft and warm in the way that reminds her of why she almost texted him the other night.

“That,” she says, reaching out to open her suitcase, “is an understatement, Mulder. But I'll be okay.”

“I'm sorry, Scully.” He presses his hand briefly to her back before crossing the room to exit. “Meet you in twenty minutes? I'll buy you some coffee.”

She stretches, biting back another yawn. “Sure. Thanks, Mulder.”

He smiles at her gently before closing the door. It's enough to make her forgive him for sneaking up on her, enough to make her want a lot of things.

Arkie Seavers is indeed dead, strangled with his own belt. Scully is ready to classify it as a suicide, and even Mulder admits that it's a possibility. But he seems to be firmly attached to the idea that Judy Poundstone and her brother are responsible. He cites them as their main two suspects. He keeps his promise, takes them back to the hotel to let her sleep, but he suggests that they go interview the siblings tomorrow.

“That sounds like a reasonable next step,” she says as they re-enter the hotel room. “I can go visit Judy before I do Arkie's autopsy tomorrow afternoon.”

“Sounds good.” He bumps her elbow against hers lightly. “Right now, though, you should get some sleep.”

She smiles a little, just a little. Their detour to the jail was hardly a welcome interruption, but maybe she can finally get some sleep now. “Thank you, Mulder. Do me a favor and make sure I don't sleep too late.”

“I'll wake you up by eight,” he says teasingly. “Maybe nine.”

“Eight,” she says sternly—there’s no need to be unprofessional. “We can grab some breakfast before we go interview the siblings.” She's tempted to suggest they just interview the twins together instead of splitting up; it might not be very time-conservant, but it seems to make more sense.

“Good thing we thought to drive separately,” Mulder says before she can. He sounds a little awkward saying it, almost sad—like he regrets suggesting they drive separately in the first place—but still, he says it, and so Scully keeps her mouth shut. “That'll make tomorrow much easier.”

Scully yawns, rubbing at her eyes. “That's true,” she says sleepily.

Mulder opens the door, looking back over his shoulder. “Good night, Scully,” he says, for the second time that night. “Or… good morning, I guess.” He chuckles softly.

Scully chuckles, too, reaching down to unfasten her necklace. Her fingers accidentally curl around her ring where it hangs around her neck. “Good night, Mulder.”

The door closes softly behind him. Scully changes quickly and climbs back into bed, her eyes straying back to the door like a magnet. She slips her hand under her hair and unfastens her necklace, sliding the ring off, and closes her hand around it instinctually before setting it down on the bedside table and setting her cross down beside it. She touches the ring with the tip of one finger before curling up under the comforter, letting her eyes slide shut.