The car tasted like fallout.
Knife cloaked silence settled to the base of the car like rodeo dust. Neither of them moved. Outside the vehicle, lightning bugs flickered, creating the illusion of a distant metropolis.
Mulder eased up and away from the hot window he'd been greasing with his forehead. He flicked his eyes to Scully, tossing his cards in defeat. She was already looking at him. It had been about a week, and no sign of their suspect. It was ridiculous.
The redhead sighed in exasperation, and pulled the lever on her seat so she'd fall back. "I know what you're thinking, Mulder." Scully extended a blind arm into the dark in front of her. This was pure routine. Click! Fumbling with the passenger compartment, she materialized a wrinkled napkin, and began smearing the lipstick off her lips. "This assignment feels asinine to me, too. But we have to do it. Kersh isn't too happy with your little chase, recently." She flashed a hand into a ray of streetlight to gesture to her ear.
That case had been a real headache, Scully thought. But she'd never say that to him-she knew the effect being held captive had on a person. It wasn't joke material.
Scully nodded towards the daisies planted at the Bureau's entrance that the car sat aimed at. "I wouldn't doubt our placement is relevant to the suspect at hand at all. Kersh just wants us to keep an eye on his new garden."
Scully jokes were rare! Mulder normally savored them like sweet chocolate. But he made no sort of indication that he had even heard her. She turned to the daisies once more. Mulder couldn't see her smile.
Time crawled at an ant's pace across a football field. Both agents' eyelids began to droop. The car was off now, no consistent hum or vibration to jolt them. Blue shadows and dark grey of pavement began to melt together. Then the lightning bugs began to dissipate somehow, as if they themselves had a curfew to attend to. Scully's hand fell back into her lap. Like they had a nice home to return to. To revisit a tiny family with seemingly excessive appendages, and...
"What time is it?"
His voice startled her.
"Hmm?"
"My watch is dead."
Scully squinted, bringing her wrist closer to her eyes. The glass on her analog wrist watch weakly glinted in the faint streetlight.
"11:11."
Mulder was quiet for a split second. Scully felt his head turn to her.
"Make a wish, Scully."
"Mulder."
"I've already made mine."
That quick? Her car seat launched back up to a sitting position.
"Oh, and what's that?"
"Well I can't tell you, otherwise it wouldn't come true," Mulder said, his grin resonating very clearly through his voice. "But I trust that you know what it is already."
"...Do I?" She asked him playfully. Though her question was less at him, and more at herself. "Is it, 'I wish I'd get off this jerk-off assignment'?"
"Nice pun, but no. Nope." He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel to keep himself more alert. "Did you make a wish?"
At that, Scully heaved a sigh that reverberated off the car's interior too loudly. Now her face matched her hair.
"C'mon, Scully. You never believed in the whole 11:11 thing? Not even when you were a kid?"
Scully gripped his arm, in an attempt to cease his incessant finger tapping. Warm silence filled the car like hot milk.
"I'm not saying that I didn't make a wish."
"But you implied it."
"What?"
"With your sigh. That was your skeptic sigh."
"Thank you for confirming that for me, mr. psychologist. I'm so glad you have that degree," she teased. "Anyway, I trust that you know what my wish is." A giggle bubbled in her throat, and red hair fell in front of her face messily. She didn't bother to fix it.
He knew.