“I know what you’re doing.”

The voice startled him and he turned, dropping his arms to his side. Mulder stood there, dark and shadowed, staring at Jim with a knowing gleam in his eye, his hands shoved into his trench coat pockets and his face looking as worn as Jim felt…his hair askew, his tie crooked… Jim tilted his head at him, as if to say he didn’t understand. Mulder’s expression said he wasn’t buying it.

“Don’t do this, Jim,” he continued adamantly, “Just go home,” this was spoken with a certain kind of desperation that caught Jim off guard, and something about Mulder’s advice sounded like the things Jim had once wished he could say to his younger self…things Jim might say to his little brother… Mulder’s advice rang like the advice of someone who’d lived this all before. “Standing out here won’t help anybody, and we aren’t going to find them tonight,” he finished quietly, down-trodden as if the entire situation was his fault. Jim chewed for a moment on his lower lip and stuffed his hands into his pants pockets, accidentally mirroring Mulder’s pose, his eyes fixed on the ground.

“I just,” he had to stop to clear his throat, “I just thought she might show up,” he admitted, feeling ridiculous and wishing none of this had ever happened, part of him cursing Angela and her stupid diseased cat. Mulder nodded and pursed his lips.

“She won’t,” he told him firmly, and Jim found himself unable to move, finally sinking into a blank kind of nothingness. Up until this moment he’d been wracking his brain for something he might have missed, obsessing over the words he’d heard her speak before she’d gone missing, considering staking out the basement like he was some kind of old-time detective. But now, all of that seemed pointless. Everything seemed pointless. He sighed. “Go home and get some sleep. Let me do my job,” Mulder instructed. Jim nodded, reaching up to rub at his eyes and moving toward his car in resignation. He would go home, even though he knew he wasn’t going to get any sleep. Mulder followed suit, opening the door of the Taurus and rolling his eyes when he looked down and saw Scully’s cell phone sitting on the passenger seat. And just as Jim was folding himself into his SAAB, Mulder called out to him. “Hey Jim, call me if you think of anything else,” he requested, “I’ll be up all night,” the promise fell from his lips like a practiced prayer as he sat down with heavy limbs, slamming the door of the Taurus and turning the engine.

Jim huffed a humorless laugh.

“Yeah, me too,” he mumbled to nobody in particular.

***

The night was long and black, the hours ticking by slowly as Scully sat motionless and trance-like, her eyes fixed on the wall across from her and her hands resting lifelessly in her lap. She didn’t sleep because her mind was too awake, making rest as evasive as a cockroach in a storage closet. So instead, Scully found herself pondering Pam and the things she had confessed…pondering Mulder and the way that he was rooted so firmly inside of her…the way that they were so alike, and the way that they were so very different.

She was sure he was lying awake right now, staring at the motel ceiling the way she stared at the shelter wall, his stomach empty, his eyes glazed over, trying to find some piece of the puzzle that he’d missed, trying to figure out a way to save her because he would know instinctively that there was no real way for her to save herself.

She thought he had timelessness inside of him…she thought he had an unintentional intensity that gripped an iron fist low and tight in her stomach. She thought he was Heathcliffe and Don Quixote, all stormy eyes and illusions of windmills, all foundation-less arrogance and unreasonable romance. She thought he was impossible and imperative both at once, making her unsure whether she should roll her eyes or wrap her arms around him. She sighed.

She usually tried to avoid these romantic, Mulder-heavy thoughts, because he was just so suited to romance…he was just so made to be seen romantically that it seemed like a dangerous path to tread. However, she had nothing but time at the moment and Pam Beesly had planted a significant seed of doubt in her mind.

What if she was foolish to ignore the truth of her emotions in favor of their work? What if she was making an epic mistake by reminding herself of the files every time he made her breath freeze in her lungs? What if, when it came to putting professionalism first, she was just…

Wrong?

And so now she considered her feelings.

Now she thought of the way that he was long and lean and draped perfectly in navy blue Armani. She thought of the way that his stare was sometimes heavy on her skin during late nights and long cases, his self-control slipping and drifting away to let her feel the truth of his emotion. She thought of his hands and how much she loved the way they always seemed to linger at the small of her back…how much she wanted to tell him that his hand owned that certain piece of skin and bone…

She blinked a slow blink and licked her lips.

For a woman who was so full of pride and who so blatantly controlled all of her own thoughts and actions, she was shocked by how much of herself she would hand over to him if he asked. She was shocked by how much of her belonged to him already.

She considered the way that he had kissed her that morning…the way that he had been full of desperation and the way that he had breathed her name into her mouth, he had given it to her like it was a testament or a declaration.

She thought resignedly that she would never be satisfied by another man. She thought decidedly that she could heal something inside of him with just the touch of her hand. She thought impatiently that if she could just get out of this bomb shelter she would explain to him the way that the files would still be there if they gave into this thing that was between them…

And as the sun rose over the city of Scranton, she thought helplessly that she was definitely in love with Fox Mulder.

And there was nothing she could do about it.

***

He paced the cage of his motel room like he could solve this case by treading the stained brown carpet and chewing on the inside of his cheek. He’d abandoned his tie hours ago, but still wore his steel gray dress pants and his oxford shirt, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He knew the facts of the case, at this point, like the back of his hand, and he was certain someone was lying…someone was leaving something out, and that one thing would be all he needed to find the kidnapper and put him in jail. He knew Scully had been in the basement and he knew that the basement didn’t make any kind of structural sense, but he was pretty sure Scully would say you couldn’t just have an excavation team dig up a building’s foundation in the middle of the night, and he was pretty sure she’d be right, so there wasn’t much he could do about that at the moment.

So he just had to wait. And unfortunately waiting was not one of Mulder’s many skills.

About every two hours his pacing would stop cold and he would think What if something went wrong and she’s injured or…

But he would shake himself and he would tell himself that that was a completely unfounded fear and she wasn’t dead because he would be able to feel that and if he just kept thinking he could figure out where she was and this could all be over.

He rolled his eyes at himself. He’d only accepted this case because she hated small towns, and he thought the irritated crease she got in her brow and the aggravated pinch she got in her voice in places like Scranton, Pennsylvania was amusing. He thought he’d watch her huff and puff for a few days and then they would solve the case easily and go back to chasing conspiracies in D.C. He hadn’t predicted this…and now the sun was coming up and in the light of day he felt like even more of an asshole than he had during the night.

He couldn’t even start to think about the fact that he’d kissed her. God, sometimes he was just sure the universe was pointing a finger at him and laughing like…

His mind went still as his phone started to blink and chirp and jump around on his bedside table. He stared at it warily and inhaled a deep breath, glancing at the clock to see that it was quarter to four and there was no sane reason anybody would be calling him at this hour…

He picked the phone up and flipped it open.

“Yeah?” he answered, impatient to find out what the reason was for this call and who was on the other end.

“Agent Mulder?” the voice asked breathlessly, and he nodded.

“Yeah who’s this?” he asked, his mind humming with the kind of outrageous possibilities that only floated through a person’s head at 3:45 in the morning.

“Hi, um, this is Jim Halpert?” Mulder sagged a bit in disappointment and sighed. Why he thought the kidnapper would be calling his cell phone in the middle of the night he didn‘t know, although he guessed it probably wouldn’t have been the first time. He licked his lips and focused.

“Jim, what’s up?” he asked, perching on the edge of the bed and stifling a yawn. Jim cleared his throat on the other end.

“Uh I just, I thought of something,” he muttered, his voice gravelly and tired. Mulder sat up a little bit straighter.

“What?” he asked, unsure whether he was asking Jim to repeat himself or asking Jim to elaborate.

“I thought of something I forgot to tell you.”

*** Saturday Morning, 7 AM ***

“Morning.” The greeting was ice and granite, and Bob Vance looked up in startled curiosity.

“Good morning,” he returned, the dark circles under his eyes showing his deep-seeded unrest. Mulder scratched his eyebrow and approached the older man with a kind of anxious step that was evidence of the fact that he’d been impatiently waiting for a reasonable hour to ask certain questions, and hopefully get certain answers. The parking lot was empty except for their two cars, and their breath puffed out into the atmosphere in visible little clouds. Bob Vance frowned.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Mulder murmured, his voice sounding a little bit less than sincere, “I need to speak with Michael Hanover,” he proclaimed, “And his contact information was left out of the file you gave us.” Bob shook his head in confusion.

“Who?” he wondered, and Mulder sighed out his impatience.

“Michael Hanover. One of your sales reps. Jim Halpert called me last night and informed me that he spoke to Mr. Hanover in the parking lot right around the time Christina Macavoy went missing and I haven’t interviewed him yet,” he explained. “He might know something.” The confusion still didn’t drift from Bob’s face and Mulder felt the coil of anxiousness in his stomach tighten and start to crack. He knew something was off about this…he’d been thinking about it since 4 AM and was almost certain this was the key to finding Scully and Pam and the eight other people who had gone missing.

“Michael Hanover? Michael… oh!” Bob finally exclaimed, and the air fled from Mulder’s lungs in another sigh. “You mean Trout,” he assumed. Mulder’s stare was unwavering and impatient, unwilling to offer smiles or comfort in the early morning sun. Bob nodded with a furrowed brow. “Well his information wasn’t in the file because I fired him,” he stated matter of factly and Mulder felt himself lean forward in disbelief.

“You fired him?” he repeated dumbly. Bob nodded.

“Yeah, about a month ago,” he confirmed, his voice solid and sure. Mulder nodded.

“I’m gonna need any information about him that you‘ve got,” he spat, and Bob nodded again, his eyes wide as Mulder turned away, his trench coat floating out into the chilly morning air and his arms pushing anxiously through the doors of Scranton Business Park. He punched at the up button on the elevator and stood there impatiently, tapping his foot as Bob Vance finally caught up to him, and as Dwight Schrute pulled his Pontiac Trans Am carefully into the parking lot.

***

It was Saturday, but Dwight had reasoned that he had things to do around the office. He figured he could do something for Michael or maybe clean the kitchen or…

 Really he thought maybe the Federal Bureau could use his help.

He climbed out of his car and looked around the parking lot as if it were the Delaware River Bank and he was George Washington himself, strategizing an attack plan and wondering at the fate of his country. Looking around with a tilted head and squinted eyes, his hands settled squarely on his hips, he gave a solid and firm nod to nobody in particular before heading inside…

And into battle.