He had just put his coffee mug down on the desk when he heard it-Scully's laugh. Ears strained, the only other thing he could hear was the low murmur of a man's voice.
Mulder had just taken steps towards the door to get a closer listen when the door flew open, Scully momentarily surprised by how close he was.
She was followed by a young man wearing a suit who wore the unmistakable grin of someone who had just made Dana Scully laugh. "Agent Jacobs. We were just talking about you!" The man held out a hand to Mulder, who merely looked at him and then back at Scully.
Scully cringed even before he managed to get the words out, feeling Mulder bristle.
"Why?"
Agent Jacobs looked momentarily confused at this monotone question that sounded slightly threatening somehow. As he opened his mouth to reply, Scully cut in.
"Agent Jacobs wants to talk to you about crop circles, Mulder."
"Why?"
Had they been alone, Scully may have placed a hand to Mulder's chest now, which occasionally managed to bring him back for whatever silent conversation he was having with himself in his mind. As they had company, she merely raised an eyebrow at him and cocked her head slightly.
"He's interested in the crop circles that have started showing up in Idaho." Scully sighed.
"Why?"
"Mulder."
Both agent's heard the warning in her voice, and Agent Jacobs cut in quickly before whatever situation was beginning could gather steam. "My father was a farmer, and crop circles showed up once when I was about 9. I'm new in DC, but when I saw on the news about Idaho, I had to come and see you. I heard you're just about as interested in them as I am."
Mulder glanced at Agent Jacob and then back at Scully, raising his eyebrows slightly before he turned away from them.
Just as Scully offered an apologetic grin, Mulder switched the lights off.
"I've got a slideshow set up for Agent Scully. You can sit in."
As Agent Jacobs scrambled for a chair in the darkness, Scully rolled her eyes. "Another slideshow. Goodie." Sarcasm dripped from her words.
When the projector lit up, it showed that Mulder now wore a small smirk. "She lives for my slideshows."
Scully was sat on another bed in another hotel that was probably infested with bedbugs instead of her own clean bed again.
"And then Jacob said-"
"Who's Jacob?" Scully interrupted his speech to ask.
"Agent Jacobs." Mulder offered with a mouthful of some disgusting wrap he'd found in a vending machine. She'd opted for a bottle of water and a granola bar.
"…His name is Jacob Jacobs?" Scully asked with a laugh.
"Is there something wrong with that?
"Not at all, Fox Mulder."
The corner of Mulder's mouth twitched at this, and she knew that for once she was going to get away with teasing him about his name. "As I was saying, Jacob said that the pattern in his father's crop circles have been repeated in the same area at least 2 times since then."
"And? It was in the news, Mulder. People copied it."
"That's what I thought, too. So I looked further afield. Scully, there are 10 patterns that seem to repeat over and over again. This one in Australia, this one in rural China.." Mulder began to pass photos to her, and Scully began to zone out.
She could be in her own bed in clean sheets, and yet here she was in a dirty hotel room with Mulder, and why? Because of some man made-
"What were you laughing at?"
Scully realised Mulder had stopped his excited rambling and was now looking at her curiously.
"When?"
"Just before you and Jacob walked into the office this morning. You laughed."
"I don't remember, Mulder, it was hours ago!"
Mulder shook his head just a little. "You don't laugh often enough to forget that quickly."
Scully opened her mouth to protest, but she couldn't. She knew it was true. "It was nothing important."
"What was funny, Scully?"
Scully huffed, unwilling to answer but knowing Mulder was like a dog with a bone and wouldn't let it go, and she was too tired to think of something else to tell him. "He asked me if you were really as weird as people say."
Mulder tilted his head and his eyes narrowed a little. "That's why you were laughing?"
"I wasn't laughing at his words, as such." Scully shuffled the files on the bed, beginning to make a neat stack.
"Then what?"
"I asked the same thing in my first day, and I supposed I just realised how much has changed since then, that's all."
"You don't think I'm weird anymore?"
"No, you're definitely still weird, Mulder. I just think maybe…sometimes…I'm a little weird now, too."
When there was silence, Scully glanced up to find Mulder smirking. Before he started to speak, Scully held up a hand to stop him talking. "I'm going for a shower, because we need to leave here at 6 to go and look at your crop circles."
It wasn't until the adjoining door was shut that Mulder called out, "Hey Scully!"
"What?" She called back through.
"You've always been weird to me."
Shaking her head, a smirk on her lips, Scully walked into the bathroom.