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Because God hated Dana Scully, she only discovered after her shower that she'd forgotten to take a change of clothes into the bathroom with her. The only way out of this situation was through. Mulder had seen her in worse states of undress, anyway, she reminded herself firmly. It wasn't like her to feel so embarrassed about it; the case must really be getting to her.
Scully wrapped herself tightly in her towel and exited the bathroom with as much faux confidence as she could muster, given the circumstances. Mulder, who'd been sticking his head out of the window like a dog, glanced over at her and then quickly averted his eyes. He was polite like that. She tried to tell herself she wasn't feeling a twinge of disappointment.
Scully usually slept in boxers—she liked the feeling they gave her, calm and centered and a little rebellious, taking something that hadn't been designed for her and making it hers anyway—but obviously tonight, boxers alone would not do. Luckily, she also usually packed a backup pair of pajama pants, in case she got cold. Unluckily, for this trip, she'd packed the pair Melissa bought for her as a Christmas gift the year she'd met Mulder. Nothing could be done. She had to resign herself to her fate.
When she approached Mulder, he glanced back over at her and did a literal double take. "Scully, your pants have little aliens on them," he said urgently, as if she might not know.
She didn't bother dignifying that with a response. "Enjoying the weather, Mulder?"
There was a bit of rascally energy to him when he smiled, the kind of look he often got when he was about to drag her off on another adventure, or when he thought he had just the ace up his sleeve that would prove her wrong once and for all. "It's probably the most perfect night this town has ever seen."
She hummed in acknowledgment, walking back to her suitcase to start packing things up for tomorrow. Their flight wasn't till noon, but it never hurt to be prepared. "That's nice to hear," she replied. "Of course, it's probably just a coincidence."
"Was it a coincidence when a tornado destroyed their high school on prom night, Scully?"
"Kansas is in the heart of Tornado Alley, and prom is typically in the heart of tornado season. If anything, I'd say it's strange that we don't hear about tornadoes interrupting senior proms more often."
"How about when it snowed on Sheila's wedding?"
"Also not entirely unheard of. Freak weather is a common occurrence in this part of the country. It's because of the flat terrain. Warm, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico meets cold, dry air from Canada with no mountains anywhere to block it, creating unpredictable, quickly-changing weather that, yes, can result in unexpected snowfall."
There was a spark in his eyes that said he was enjoying goading her on like this. "How about the heart-shaped hail?"
"Hail often comes in irregular shapes, depending on the growth conditions within the stormcloud. It's very rare for it to actually be a perfect spherule. Factor in confirmation bias, and it makes perfect sense that a person would say they see hailstones resembling hearts on Valentine's Day."
"C'mon, Scully," he whined, finally breaking. "Do you really believe Holman's emotions had no influence over the weather? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense that he was causing it, instead of it just being a whole bunch of increasingly improbable coincidences?"
She stayed silent as she climbed into bed, thinking of how best to phrase her point. "I believe Holman's emotions influencing the weather is one possible hypothesis for the bizarre weather events in Kroner," she finally said. "It's a hypothesis that makes a lot of sense, even, and explains a lot of things well. But from a scientific perspective, it's not a good hypothesis, because it's unfalsifiable. There's no way to prove it's not true that Holman influenced the weather, which means there's also no way to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it is true. It's like the idea that we live in a simulation or that there was an advanced civilization on Earth millions of years ago or that there's a tenth planet orbiting the Sun that's undetectable by our telescopes. It's impossible to test any of those. That makes it a matter of belief, not science."
"Alright then," he said, climbing wordlessly into the other side of the bed. "What's your non-scientific opinion?"
She stared at him. "Asking me to have a non-scientific opinion is like asking you to have a non-paranormal opinion."
"Try it," he said, goading her again. "Surely there must have been a time in your life before you knew what an unfalsifiable hypothesis was when you thought about these kinds of things. I mean, you believe in God, don't you?"
Fair point. She thought carefully. "Well, from a purely non-scientific perspective, with no regard toward what can be tested or verified, and given everything else we've seen so far, I think that while it might be a ridiculous idea, it is theoretically possible that Holman could have had some influence over the weather."
Mulder beamed and pumped his fist into the air. Scully shoved him, as punishment for making fun of her, and he went tumbling off the bed with a yelp.
"If you wanted me to find someplace else to sleep, you could have just said so!" he complained from the floor.
"No," she said, trying and failing to stifle her laugh. She hadn't even pushed him that hard; he was such a klutz sometimes. "Come on, get back up here, Mulder. The bed's plenty big for both of us."
She reached out a hand to help Mulder back onto the bed without thinking. But that was a mistake, because as soon as he'd leveraged himself back onto the bed, that meant he was sitting there less than a foot away from her, clutching her hand and staring at her. There was a strange, almost lost look on his face. Scully's breath caught in her throat. She realized his lips were parted slightly. She realized she was looking at his lips.
They both pulled away at the same time. Scully was sure her traitorous cheeks were blushing, damn them. She busied herself with tidying the covers and flicking the light switch off, giving him a quiet but firm, "Good night, Mulder." And to think, she'd almost had enough fun talking with him that she'd forgotten to feel awkward about the accommodations.
It was out of the question to lay facing him. Laying away from him would've made him think she was uncomfortable with the arrangement (she was, but she didn't need him feeling bad for her over anything). The answer was clearly to lay flat on her back and stare at the ceiling.
Of course she would've been more comfortable not having to share a bed with Mulder at all, but she'd gone through the careful calculus in her mind and decided it would have been more obvious to make him take the couch. (Obvious of what? She wasn't concerning herself with following the train of thought far enough to find out.)
And anyway, it wasn't like they had never done this before; she'd fallen asleep on his shoulder or his couch or even in his motel room by accident countless times and never had any problem with it. She was usually entirely comfortable with him, almost eerily so. She was just letting Sheila's words get into her head, making her think about things she normally never thought about, things she'd packaged neatly into their own little boxes in her brain and set aside to mull over at a later date (preferably never, if she got her way).
Like that time he'd almost kissed her in the hallway. How his careful hands had felt cradled around her head, how his breath had felt ghosting against her mouth. That was exactly what she was supposed to not be thinking about.
"You know, we'd have time before the flight tomorrow to check out some local legends," Mulder said hopefully into the darkness.
"Other than the Rain King, what local legends do they have in Kroner, Kansas?" Scully said, almost surprised at the exasperation in her voice. She wasn't actually mad at him. It was just that her entire body had started buzzing like an electric heater for some reason.
"Nothing more around here, but we're only an hour or so's drive away from the Eldridge Hotel in Lawrence, which has supposedly been haunted ever since guerilla confederates burnt it down in the 1860s. And that's right by Stull Cemetery, which is rumored to be a gateway to hell. They say there are witches buried there."
Scully had heard the cemetery story too; she was pretty sure she'd seen a clipping from the student newspaper a while back. "Probably just drunk college kids with overactive imaginations."
"Well, if ghosts don't get it up for you anymore," (and why did he always have to phrase things like that, anyway?) "then we're only a few hours away from Lake Inman, which is where Kansas's resident cryptid, Sinkhole Sam, lives. It's a fifteen foot long worm-snake-fish that emerges from underwater subterranean caverns to spook fishermen."
"A few hours' drive?" she said skeptically. "Knowing you, we'd probably miss our flight and Kersh would have our asses."
"Spoilsport." She didn't need to look over at Mulder to know he was rolling his eyes.
Here was where she was supposed to call him a name in turn, but she didn't currently have enough air in her lungs for that, so she stayed silent. The awkwardness dragged on.
There was no way she was getting to sleep any time soon. She closed her eyes tightly, wondering if counting sheep would help. She only got to about three before she got distracted by the sound of Mulder breathing. She tried again and managed five before briefly and baselessly convincing herself that their feet were brushing under the covers.
Why was everyone so convinced there was something between them, anyway? She knew they certainly had a unique relationship, but trying to pin a specific label on it was like looking a gift horse in the mouth. A month ago, she hadn't been thinking are we just friends or are we secretly in love?, and she'd happily let him cling to her like an octopus when she'd fallen asleep going over case files in his apartment. Today, other people had thrust the question upon her, and now she was strung out on a live wire wondering if their toes were touching. This was why her feelings should stay in carefully packaged boxes where they belonged.
"It's awful, isn't it?"
"What?" Scully asked, feeling miserable.
"Having feelings so powerful you could destroy a whole town with them." She wondered if she could will him to stop talking with her mind. "I mean, imagine it from Sheila's perspective, right? That's a whole lot of pressure to put on one person. What if she leaves him one day and he's so upset that Kroner gets flooded off the map?"
Well, that was a curious way to look at it. Mulder had been trying to give Holman advice the whole case, but here he was empathizing with Sheila's side of things, too. Trust Mulder to put himself in both person's shoes. He had more heart than he'd ever known what to do with.
"But according to you, it was his unspoken feelings that expressed themself in the weather, not just his feelings in general, right?" Scully asked. "He couldn't admit why Sheila's wedding upset him, so it snowed all through the reception. He couldn't admit why he felt guilty over Daryl Mootz, so it rained wherever he went. If that was the case, then even if Sheila left him, there would be no issue as long as he expressed himself to her clearly. That's easier said than done, of course, but it wouldn't put any pressure on Sheila."
He clucked his tongue. "I guess not any more than this kind of situation already does."
"Love confessions are fertile ground for people getting hurt," Scully agreed, "even before you bring extreme weather phenomena into the equation."
"You almost can't blame Holman for waiting so long."
"No," Scully said, watching Mulder's profile out of the corner of her eye. "You can't."
It was at least another hour before she finally fell asleep.