Often, when she sat in the passenger seat of whatever car they'd hired to drive through Middle America, she considered the strange turns that life could take. She had spent years studying, dedicating herself to becoming a medical doctor, and now here she was; in a dusty hatchback on a dirt road with her best friend, while he ran his mouth about frogs being extra-terrestrial lifeforms.
She chose to believe he was just messing with her. She chose to believe that a lot.
She clutched a case file in her right hand, her left trailing down the page to guide her eyes as she read.
"Mulder!" She said, drawing his eyes from the open road and his thoughts from the frog they had seen over an hour ago.
"Yes, Captain?"
"Exactly what part of this case interests you?" She asked, curling her tongue behind her teeth in a well-practiced way to stop herself from adding 'you jackass' to the end of her sentence.
"Do you need to ask?" He questioned. She rolled her eyes.
"Well, Mulder, I'm torn. It looks like a regular armed robbery, but with my Mulder-Vision, I can spot at least three things you'd be leaping on."
"Oh, Scully, talk dirty to me." She stared at him, face a blank, composed mask. He crunched a sunflower seed between his teeth and wiggled his eyebrows. She broke with a roll of her eyes, the corner of her lips twitching into a laugh.
"Number one: the assailants used bows and arrows, which may be to avoid their guns being traced, or it could be that they're vengeful spirits from the seventeenth century." She said, deadpan.
"Interesting, and worth exploring if we get a minute, but no." Mulder replied, visibly considering the idea. Scully knew him so well that the slightest movement of his knuckles on the steering wheel was enough to show her what he was thinking about. She carried on with her theories.
"Number two: the cash register at the store that was robbed ended up with marginally more money than it should have had, potentially due to an employee giving out incorrect change, but definitely more likely due to a benevolent, Robin Hood type ghost stealing cash from chain stores for the pockets of the little man."
"Oh man, if only. Fight the system, Scully." He raised his clenched fist from the steering wheel to punch the air.
"Number three: one of the witnesses is selectively mute, likely temporarily from shock, and you've connected that to other cases of shock-induced mutism in the state and decided that there's something in the water."
"Not something in the water, no." Mulder replied, his tone conveying how ridiculous the idea was.
"Oh? Something in the air?" She deadpanned.
"Can you feel it coming in the air tonight?"
"Mulder!"