X-Files Sculder Fanfiction | The Beginning of the End

Chapter 2

Scully's POV

After our little song fiasco I found it extremely hard to keep my eyes open, despite it being the middle of the day. I didn't want to ruin Mulder's 'fun road trip' but I honestly couldn't help it... I'm not sure what came over me.

"Wakey wakey." A faint voice whispered into my ears and almost startled me.
"Huh?" I shuffled up sleepily in my seat and realised the car was standing still, and the temperature felt as if it was above 100°.
"Had a nice sleep?" Mulder chuckled. "We're here." I gazed around to see not a lot except hills and hills of burning sand.
"Oh God... I'm really sorry I-" I stopped all of a sudden once I realised my jacket was gone. "Where's my..?"
"Oh, your jacket? Once we got fairly close the temperature rose and you looked flushed, so I took it off." He reached over and pulled out my jacket from behind his car seat and gave it to me.
"Oh, thanks... well, anyway, I'm really sorry I ruined your 'fun' car journey Mulder." I put a pair of sneaky air quotes on the 'fun' and his reaction was totally worth the effort.
"Nah it's fine. We probably would've just spent the whole time chatting about nothing." He lightly chuckled and I wrapped my jacket around my waist.

"So, ready to get to work Scully?" We both hopped out of the car and flinched as the hot sand poured into the tiny holes in our shoes.
"Well yeah Mulder, but I can't see anything but miles of sand and a tiny little shack. Where are we going?"
"Um, I may have forgotten to explain something." Mulder squinted to shield his eyes from the sun and walked along side me. "The road ends back there so we're gonna have to walk a little way." I glanced up at him and hoped he would say he was joking.
"How far is 'a little way' exactly?" I stopped and folded my arms.
"Mm, just... a few miles or so."
"Seriously? In this sweltering heat?" My skin felt like it was burning from the supreme contact with the sun.
"It's not that bad Scully, we've walked further than this before." He stopped to rummage around in his backpack for a second before pulling out a white bottle. "Here, put on some somescreen." I put some up my arms and a few specks on my nose and cheeks, and eventually we carried on with out little trek through the desert.

Mulder's POV

In just under 2 hours we finally got to the village. Scully looked extremely worn out (as was I, though I tried my best to hide it.)
"My God Mulder! That was... exhausting..." She had to rest on my arm to keep her balance properly.
"Hm, it was alright." I lied. "We should probably go talk to the mayor before we check into our hotel."
"Hotel? I thought this was a little village."
"I never said it was a 5-star hotel.." I laughed. And it really, really wasn't according to it's reviews.

It didn't take us very long to find the City Hall because there weren't many buildings around. We got a few funny looks as we entered, mostly just from the villagers, but we were eventually greeted with a friendly smile from the mayor. He had fairly scruffy chestnut hair and he was definitely a big guy.
"Howdy partner!" I was the first to walk through the huge brown door, and Scully soon appeared from behind me. "Hm, partners... indeed..." his eyes had drifted so swiftly from me to Scully I began to feel a little uneasy.
"Ahem."
"Hm?" He quickly snapped out of his trance and looked back at me. "Oh, right. I'm so glad you got here so soon, more incidents are being reported almost every day now."
"Incidents, sir?" Scully pondered.
"Yes ma'am. Sightings, and weird ones at that."
"And by sightings you mean..."
"Ufo's. Aliens. ET, whatever you wanna call it." The whole time he was talking his eyes were glued on her... was it just me who noticed that? Whatever, I just tried to ignored it.
"And you say these 'incidents' have some sort of connection with other parts of the world?" I butted in.
"It's just like I said to your FBI colleagues Mr Mulder, whenever one of the village folk see something and report it, something disastrous happens somewhere thousands of miles away - it's ridiculous."
"You mean you don't believe it?"
"Of course not, the idea is pure nonsense. But I do believe people round here've been seeing the things they said they saw."
"And have you seen any of these... whatever they are?" Scully raised one eyebrow suspiciously.
"Not as yet, no." He layed cautiously back in his chair and crossed his legs, kinda like what I do back in D.C.

As the conversation went on and we asked more of our questions, I began to get the feeling there was something he wasn't telling us - or didn't feel the need to tell us... by the looks of her face, I'd say Scully picked that up too.
"Well sir, we really ought to be getting to our hotel now, but we'll speak to you more tomorrow morning." I stood up from my seat and shook his sturdy hand.
"I'll be up bright and early." He smiled. "M'lady." He lifted his hat and winked at Scully, who was ever so slightly blushing...

We made our way outside and then to the big double doors of the hotel, walking silently the whole way there.
"Good morning sir, name please?" The woman at the reception was dressed in a fancy golden-white suit, (which really didn't match the creaky old falling-apart hotel) and hardly ever looked up from her desk.
"Mulder." I replied.
"Rightio then..." she shuffled through some papers and clicked her computer mouse a few times before handing us our room keys. "Mr and Mrs Mulder, you'll be in room six."
"Actually..." Scully put her hand up on the desk, "We're not together." I scratched the back of my neck awkwardly and watched as the receptionist clicked through her computer a few more times.
"Well I'm very sorry, but I'm afraid I'll need your key back then miss. This room is registered under Mr and Mrs Mulder and we don't allow guests, especially not at this hour."
"Wait, what?" Scully looked up at me, "did you register me as 'Mrs Mulder'?"
"No! No no no! Under relationship I ticked other and wrote in that little box thingy 'FBI partner', their system must have just ignored the FBI part I suppose."
"Ugh." Scully dropped her heavy bag on the floor and gazed at the cranky receptionist again. "How much is your cheapest room?"