Author's Note: Super short, super sweet chapter. Thanks to IAmLoisLane for beta-ing. Thanks to you guys for reading. Don't hesitate to leave a review if you love it or you hate it or whatever in between :)
A half hour after he'd left, Mulder returned to Nathan's office alone. Scully had waited patiently at the desk, reading through some more websites, searching futilely for some clue that would lead to a less insane explanation. She stopped her pursuit as Mulder walked in and closed the door behind him. Scully glared at him.
"Oh, what?" he asked. "You can't blame me for hearing the guy out, can you? I mean, it's kind of an interesting story, isn't it?"
"But, you don't believe it," she said it as half question, half statement in an attempt to force some reason onto him. She knew it was no use. Of course, he believed.
"Considering I'm the one who came up with it…"
"No, Mulder. The things you came in here saying? He'd already said them to me. It was his story… as false as it may have been."
"Uh… I don't know about that, Scully. I mean, his version—"
"I thought it was your version—"
"The soul mate angle actually makes the most sense… or at least more sense than anything else any of us have come up with, right?"
Scully stood and walked over to lean on the desk in front of him. They had a momentary standoff before Scully folded her arms and sighed. "Come on, that man was crazy."
"Well, you think I'm crazy about fifty percent of the time."
"Fifty percent of the time?" she asked skeptically. "Mulder, on the crazy front, you're batting damn near a thousand."
Mulder inhaled air over his teeth. "God, a baseball reference, Scully? Maybe you are my soul mate—"
"Mulder—"
"One of those platonic soul mates Ansel Holmes was talking about, of course," Mulder lied. He was more interested in flirting than confessing his love. For now.
"Uh huh," Scully replied, the smile only touching the furthest corners of her mouth.
"We should go to a game sometime. Take a weekend trip up to New York to see the Yankees play. Huh?"
"No," was all she said. She had to keep it short to keep it convincing.
"What's the matter, Scully? You have more necessary things to do with your time than watch a few overpaid guys slap a piece of horsehide with a stick?" Mulder asked as playfully as he dared. It was almost amusing to him how unpersuasive her "no" had been.
"All I know, Mulder, is that it's one hell of a time to be thinking about baseball," Scully said as she tilted her head back and stretched her neck. "I mean, how did we get from soul mates to the Yankees?"
"Didn't you know, Scully? Love and baseball… they're intrinsically linked.
