Scully takes the file in her hands once again and reads it for the 100th time. Sally Anderson, 28, found dead and without her left arm right in front of her mother's house. Last person to see the victim alive: her lifelong partner, John Davis.
She doesn't really know why she read the info again since she knows everything by heart by now. She knows that the file states that Sally was the fourth victim in a serial killing that has only presented four clues so far:
each victim was found with a missing limb;
all victims have been women, but there doesn't seem to be any pattern.
all victims died during an unexplainable snowstorm, which also caused an unexplainably thick fog;
the killer seemed to be heading north, leaving Mulder and Scully right at the center of where they think he (or she) will strike next.
She replays all four clues in her head, trying to see if something clicks.
Nowhere. They are literally in the middle of nowhere in every way.
She sighs again, looking at all the files and autopsy reports laid out on the bed where she is sitting with her legs crossed, every single piece of them trying to tell her a story she isn't seeing, or perhaps that she doesn't want to see.
Bloody footprints in the snow, several women dead, several missing limbs.
Bloody non-human footprints, she corrects herself in her head. Bloody non-animal footprints, she adds. There is nothing in known science that could fit the size and the shape of the footprints found in the snow. Not to mention that said footprints came to a halt at some point, leaving no tracks of where the killer might have gone after satisfying his or her need to kill and rip people apart. Maybe they are aliens' footprints and Mulder has surprisingly not come up with that theory just yet. She chuckles thinking that, at this point, even aliens might be a plausible explanation. Maybe she's really been spending too much time with Mulder.
"Find anything?"
She shakes her head while looking again at all the pictures and stories laid out in front of her.
"Nope."
She raises her head to look at him and observes as he plays with his bottom lip between his fingers absentmindedly as he looks at her. He really should stop doing that; she should really find a way of preventing her eyes from following his fingers every time.
She tries hard not to think about it, but she can still remember the smoothness of his bottom lip under her thumb, the desire she saw in his eyes when she let her mind get carried away and her hands just followed its lead. It happened a couple of weeks ago, but sometimes she catches herself thinking about it a lot more than she should.
She clears her throat to try and compose herself and she observes as he straightens up on his chair, as if she has awakened him from his own daydreaming as well.
Mulder stands up and walks to the small radio beside the bed, turning it on for the 400th time as if in hopes that this time it will work. But as the other 399 times, the only thing they can hear is static, much like the static they hear every time they try to make a call. He sighs in frustration.
"I wish we at least knew how long this snowstorm is going to be around."
She nods in agreement.
"When you said we had to share a cabin in the middle of nowhere, this was certainly NOT what I was expecting."
She jokes, but she can't help sighing too. She closes her eyes and rolls her neck around to try and dissolve the tension – both the tension of the day and the one she felt building up due to the implications of her last statement. Thankfully, his reply is just a suspicious, sly smirk.
"Do you think we will survive the night without a fire?"
He points to the small fireplace on the opposite side of the room, watching as the remaining flames disappear in front of their eyes.
"Hopefully…"
One almost-frozen-to-death experience in Antarctica was enough for a lifetime, she doesn't need any other free samples of how it feels to die of hypothermia.
He sits by her side on the bed and she can almost hear the gears turning inside his head, trying to make sense of whatever it is that is happening in this off-the-beaten-track place. They have been doing this all day, taking turns in looking at all the evidence they have, narrating the case to each other to see if something they missed would come up suddenly, but it is now the middle of the night and still no luck. The only thing they can really do is wait and hope that the killer is deeply asleep somewhere and not out in the snow looking for his next victim. So far, all victims have been killed during daylight, so maybe they still have a chance. What worries her more is the sudden snowstorm that wasn't supposed to exist, but somehow it does. Maybe the killer is changing his pattern and is now willing to kill during the night as well. She can only hope she is wrong.
Mulder sighs again and, by the way he runs his hands through his hair, she knows he is frustrated with yet another thing that he can't control.
"Maybe we should just put everything away and try to get some sleep. We're no good if we can't think straight." He closes his eyes and then shakes his head, leaving his hair disheveled as he runs his hand through it one last time. "Besides, we can't leave this place anyway so… Maybe all this will make sense during our sleep and we will wake up knowing exactly who to arrest and where."
She chuckles at the thought that it could REALLY be like that for a change. Why can't things be easy for them every once in a while?
She uncrosses her legs and hops out of the bed, starting to gather all the photos and files and wishing they could magically rearrange themselves in an order that would give them all the answers they need. Magic. Have they considered magic?
She giggles at her own thoughts and realizes she has been working too hard. Her brain is already suggesting things she doesn't even believe in.
She picks up the last piece of evidence from the bed and looks at Mulder again, realizing he is smiling back at her.
"Sometimes I wish I could still read minds, Scully, especially when you laugh for apparently no reason."
Oh, Mulder, I'm glad you can't.
She sometimes wonders if he peeked inside her mind when he was in the hospital and what he thought of what he saw. She wishes she were brave enough to ask. Maybe one day she will. Right now, she just settles for a simple reply.
"Now you know how I feel when you create theories in your head and don't share them with the class."
He chuckles softly and doesn't look away. She wishes he wouldn't do that because she can't look away either. She has to do or say something before it gets too much to bear.
"I call dibs on the bed."
This seems to get him out of his trance. He struggles with his words for no more than two seconds before replying.
"Damn, Scully! Why are you always faster when it comes to the good stuff, huh?"
Not all the good stuff, Mulder. Not all of them.
She just smirks at him instead of saying those words and, again, she's glad she can keep all her thoughts to herself.
He stands up and goes to the bathroom while she changes into her pajamas.
When she climbs back into bed, she hears his voice.
"Are you dressed? Can I come out?"
She smiles before she answers that yes, he can come out. It's not like they haven't seen each other naked before, but she likes it that he tries to respect her privacy when there is an option.
He walks back into the room, gives her a quick, tired smile and then crawls into a sleeping bag on the floor. She feels kind of selfish that she gets the big bed while he has to sleep on the floor, but she also knows that there are cases where she is the one sleeping on the floor when they have no choice but sleep in the same room. They have a good partnership, after all.
She waits until he gets into his sleeping bag and gets comfortable in there to turn off the lights.
"Good night, Mulder."
"Good night, Scully."
She pulls the comforter up to her neck and realizes the temperature has dropped even more, so much so the comforter will probably not warm her for longer.
She thinks about the case, about the snowstorm, about unknown bloody footprints in the snow, about people dying mysteriously and how they were not fast enough to prevent the killing of the last victim. She also thinks of how cold she is feeling. Obviously, her thoughts make it extremely hard for her to sleep, even though she can feel the exhaustion of the day in her bones. She turns in bed to try a more comfortable position and sees Mulder on the floor, his sleeping bag moving in ways it shouldn't. It takes her a while to realize that he is trying to get warm and that the moving the sleeping bag is doing is due to his body shaking.
"Mulder?"
"Yes?" He says, his voice shaking a little too.
"Why don't you come sleep with me?" She only realizes what she has said when she hears Mulder chuckle. She admonishes herself for not choosing her words more carefully and she feels like telling herself to shut up forever, but Mulder is giggling and already on his way to bed, so she tells him to shut up instead.
"I'm not saying anything, Scully, I'm familiar with Freudian slips."
"It's not…" She starts, but she knows any explanations would only make things worse, so she doesn't finish her sentence.
She moves to the side and watches as he slides in easily beside her, as if this is something they do every day.
It would feel good to do this every day...
She pushes her thoughts away before they can go any further because, once again, she is having ideas she shouldn't.
She closes her eyes and hears him settle beside her.
"Hey, Scully, you know what's funny?"
"What, Mulder?"
She tries to sound annoyed rather than amused, but she isn't sure she is successful.
"We are compatible even in bed."
Excuse me?
"What do you mean?" She asks instead, a little too suspicious of where this is headed.
"You always sleep on the right, I always sleep on the left."
She chuckles in spite of herself.
"One less thing to fight about, I guess."
They stay in silence for a few moments and she thinks he's fallen asleep, but then she hears his voice again.
"Do you think we would fight a lot if we were a couple?" She hears him turning on his side to look at her and she has to fight back the urge of doing the same.
She tries to pretend she's already falling asleep.
"Does it even matter?"
Her answer is her way of trying not to think of the implications in his words, that he thinks about the same things she does sometimes.
"I guess not..." he says in a low voice, sounding too disappointed for her not to notice.
She tries to focus on sleep again, but her brain immediately feeds her with images of people with severed limbs and bloody non-human footprints in the snow. And she is suddenly very cold again.
It takes just a few seconds for her to decide.
She scoots closer to him, feeling his body heat reassure her of her decision immediately.
His eyes jolt open in surprise as she wraps one arm around his waist.
"Scully...?"
He is certainly confused by her action, she can see it in his eyes, but she can also see amusement in them. She finds it funny that confusing each other seems to be their favorite hobby.
"I'm cold. Body heat. You know how it goes."
She closes her eyes again as she takes a deep breath, pretending not to feel anything when the smell of him enters her nostrils and then takes over her lungs.
She can feel him relax against her and one of his arms carefully wraps around her waist too. She could certainly get used to this.
"I thought body heat only worked when two people were naked inside a sleeping bag." He whispers.
She chuckles.
"It's still not raining sleeping bags, Mulder."
"And that, for me, is just more proof that god doesn't exist."
She just smiles because although part of her wants to continue this conversation, another part of her doesn't want to push her luck. Sometimes she wonders why they keep shutting each other out when they clearly want the same thing. Maybe she's the one shutting him out.
She pushes her head into the crook of his neck almost unconsciously, finding it simultaneously funny and amazing that every piece of his body seems to fit perfectly well against hers, even with their height difference.
She hears Mulder sigh and tries not to think about the goosebumps she suddenly feels on his skin under her fingers. She didn't realize when she did it, but her hand is now under his shirt, respectfully resting on his side. If he asks, she'll just say it is for body-heat purposes. But he doesn't ask and she is glad.
Before she knows it, she's deep asleep, pushing all the conflicting thoughts to the back of her mind.