Jubilee Park
10:43am

Mulder pulled up in front of the small white house. It wasn't hard to find seeing as it was the one surrounded in yellow police tape. Scully got out of the car first and crossed the street.

"Where are you going?" Mulder got out and pocketed his keys, following her.

Scully stood in the middle of what looked like an old driveway. The land was flat and filled with overgrowth. The area was swampy and smelled bad. Scully scrunched her nose and began breathing out of her mouth. "Pretty cool hangout spot," she walked over to the other side of the paved surface where a willow hung over, its eaves long enough to touch the ground. Scully stepped inside the curtain and called out "Cigarettes. Someone's been here."

"I think a lot of people have been here." Mulder observed charred wood from an old fire, beer cans, and other assorted garbage.

Scully began bagging each cigarette butt individually. "Let's see if these are all from the same person or not." She looked at the little white house through the bushes. It wasn't exactly across from the lot they were in, but up the road just a little bit. "Mulder?"

"Yeah."

"Can you go inside the house and look out the front window? I wanna try something."

"Sure." Mulder could see what she was getting at.

He crossed the street and jogged across the lawn and up the stairs to the front door. Scully watched and took out her phone, dialing his number she waited until she could see him in the front window and hit send.

"Mulder." He answered.

"Yeah, it's me."

"Oh."

"Can you see me?"

"No."

"Well, I can see you."

"Oh yeah? What am I doing?"

"You're standing with one hand on your hip, pulling your coat away to the side."

"What am I doing now?"

"You're uh, you're, ew Mulder grow up!"

"What?"

"I'm coming over there." Scully hung up her phone.

"I'm not doing it for real."

Mulder put away his phone when he realized Scully wasn't on the other line anymore. A few moments later she came in the front door. He was still standing by the window.

"So what are we looking for?" Scully asked.

"Anything police may have missed. If we can match the DNA from those cigarettes to anything found in the house then we'll know this was all premeditated. He was watching from over there until the time was right."

"Is this her bedroom?" Scully opened the door to a large empty room at the front of the house adjacent to the living room.

"No, her room is the one down the hall over here." Mulder led them to a smaller room at the back of the house. "Nice two bedroom place and she picks the smaller one."

"I can see why she picked this one," crossing her arms she faced him and explained "More privacy from the hallway, when she comes out of her bedroom she's not stepping into the main stream of the house. Not to mention it's right beside the front door, it feels safer to be at the back, plus the back faces west, so the sun won't come streaming in at 6am. And it's closer to the bathroom."

"I would have picked the large room. I thought it was a closet until you opened the door."

"The other room was empty. She didn't have a roommate?"

"No, she lived alone. But I can imagine she was looking for one. She may have placed an add in the paper."

"There's a Washington Post in the car."

Mulder and Scully sat in the car. Scully watched over Mulder's shoulder as he looked through the classifieds "roommate need. Jubilee Park, clean, quiet, reliable, preferably student, female. 555-1043" Mulder read aloud and handed the paper to Scully. "That's her. If the suspect saw this add he may have answered it. And it could be how he knew she was alone."

"There may also be some record of him being here, or calling. Mulder we should get these down to the crime lab," she waved the baggies she held in her hand. "We'll be able to get a hold of some phone records there too." Scully buckled her seat belt, ready to go. Mulder folded up the remaining newspaper and started the car.

Scully Residence
10:43 pm

Mulder hadn't expected it to be such a long day, and he hadn't wanted it to be a long day either for Scully's sake. She had trouble staying awake in the car the entire way home, under any normal circumstances she would have let herself fall asleep. But now falling asleep would be showing weakness.

"Do you want to come up?" Scully asked before he could when they pulled up to her building.

Mulder kept the car running and shook his head. He wanted more than anything in the world to go up to her place. He didn't want to be a phone call away, he wanted to be able to be in the next room, only steps away from her when she needed something, and it wasn't just that he was worried all the time. He wasn't worried, worried wasn't the word he was looking for. He wanted to be there, he wanted to be around her all the time, he hated even having these thoughts, but she may not be around one day.

Mulder spoke before his thoughts completely overcame him, "I should just go home, you need sleep", the words buried the lump he had in his throat.

"Mulder, I don't mind. I don't want you to leave. Going home and worrying all night about whether or not I made it up the steps okay, or that I didn't fall in the shower, or trip and bang my head while I was putting on my pajamas." Her voice was soft and sincere the whole time, but Mulder could tell that she was making fun of him.

"I don't mean it like that, when I ask to come up all the time."

"How do you mean it to sound?"

"I mean it to sound like I miss you when you're not around."

"You never missed me before."

"I did. I did miss you before. It's just now it's different. Before I missed you, but I knew I would see you again tomorrow, or next week, or in a few hours. I can't, I will never accept that one day you might not be there tomorrow."

"Mulder, that won't happen. I'm not going anywhere, not any time soon."

"It will be too soon."

"Mulder, I'm not going anywhere, because you can't live without me, so I have no choice." She smiled and rubbed his back and leaned in closer, "God will just have to understand that I need to stay here and watch over you."

Mulder forced a smile and cupped her face in his hand, he gently rubbed her cheek with his thumb. Scully brought her hand from his back and placed it on his hand. "Come on, turn the car off."

Oh, I'm getting there. I am hoping nobody will be upset when I leave the investigation part behind, because I am finished with that. Now we go into MSR. --Pete-sa