They rose quite early the next morning with the sun, a tangle of limbs half in and half out of the bed sheets.
He hummed against her neck. "I could get used to waking up like this," he said groggily.
"Me too."
He pushed a lock of hair out of her face and kissed her soundly, morning breath be damned. Soon, too soon, she pushed him away.
"We need to get up and go. We don't know how long the drive is and we're probably going to miss our flight as it stands anyway."
"What better reason to stay here and reprise last night?" he countered.
"Get up, Mulder," she said, getting out of bed to search for her clothes. They got dressed in companionable silence, but not without Mulder trying to cop a feel or two. It couldn't be helped. Scully opened Pandora's box.
After checking out, they got directions. They really weren't too far off, maybe a four-hour drive. If they put the pedal to the metal, they'd make their eleven o'clock flight.
It was about two miles down the road when Scully realized they were going the wrong way. "We should have taken a left out of the parking lot, not a right."
They turned around and drove back in the direction they came. In the morning, the desert was pleasantly warm, not quite cool, and the soft blue of the morning sky made the scene tranquil.
"Shouldn't we have passed The Oasis already?" Mulder asked. "We've gone like four miles. We definitely should have passed it."
Scully looked at her map. He was right. They were on the correct road, and they definitely should have passed their hotel already. But they hadn't.
"Scully, what was it that Sheriff Juarez said about the case? I wasn't really listening. Tangible illusions, right?"
"Mulder, you can't be serious. I'm sure we passed it and we weren't paying attention."
"Come on, Scully! Think about it! A hotel in the middle of the desert that wasn't marked on the map! It has to be the only major landmark around. Why wouldn't it be on the map?"
"I don't know, because it's new?"
"That place wasn't new. It looked like it hadn't been updated in a decade."
"Scully," he said, taking her hand in his as they drove, "I think we might have just become victims six and seven."
"Don't be ridiculous. The Oasis was real. We were there. See, the car is even full of the gas we got from there."
"I'm not saying it's not real, Scully. I'm saying it's just not always there. It's there when it needs to be: a mirage."
She was speechless. What he was suggesting was crazy. Impossible. But then, so were most things he suggested.
"I think we should go back to Arenilla and re-interview the other victims. We'll need to call Skinner for a later flight out, tomorrow or even the next day."
She wanted to protest. She wanted to tell him that it was all ludicrous, but there was something to it, even if she didn't know what it was. The Oasis had been real, it had been, right? She was seized with a moment of panic.
"Mulder—Mulder…what happened last night…you and me. That was real, right?"
He turned his head slightly as not to take his eyes totally off the road.
"Of course it was. Why wouldn't it have been?"
"Because if the hotel wasn't real, I just thought…"
"The hotel was real, Scully. This is real," he said, gesturing between them. "We are real."
"Good," she said, squeezing his hand.
A couple more days in Arenilla wouldn't be so bad, she thought. They'd definitely run into Linda again, but you know what? She could eat her heart out.