you look like a hillbilly husband

Credit: @mulder-krycek on Tumblr

A/N
artwork by @spengs / @spengsart who makes m/k stuff that makes me want to cry into my pillow. high school au will be my death.

i wanted this to be a silly piece but then it turned into... well, this. idk what happened. don't blame me. not beta'd, cause i'm a lazy bastard.

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Mulder was on the phone, walking the floors of his apartment. He'd been holding the clunky, plastic cordless piece to his ear so long, there was heat and sweat between his skin and the receiver. He'd had just about enough of talking into it, as did Scully, who listened intently on the other end but Mulder had... just a few more points to make before he hung up the phone.

"Furthermore," he continued on, making a leisurely pace from out his kitchen into the small room connecting it with the living room, "it's unlikely that anyone from the Merkle house has ever been witness to, or experienced themselves, any form of telepathic or para-telepathic abilities. Scully, did you know, in 1951, a doctor by the name of Joseph Culpepper began work on examining the hereditary connections between telepathies? Not only did Dr. Culpepper discover that a family member of a telepathic is four times as likely to be a telepathic themselves but that they were also able to--what Dr. Culpepper called 'melding'--into the minds of their family members, creating a brain pattern so perfectly in sync, it defied all known medical logic?"

"Uh... huh," Scully sounded incredulous. He could tell. She went on, "So, if the Merkle family aren't telepathic than there's no X-File here, Mulder."

"Dr. Culpepper later went on to amend his statements regarding the telepathic family he'd been studying. He called them 'Family X', how fitting, right, Scully? Anyhow, Culpepper went on to say that he did not believe Family X to be really telepathic, at least not in the true sense of the word, and instead, upon closer inspection, determined that their high-end functions were not the result of a global cerebral synapse flair with external stimuli but instead found that it was purely a response to continual, familiar hormonal responses. Namely..." Mulder trailed off for only a moment, to see if Scully was following.

"... when their family members were around," Scully completed and there was, Mulder heard, a tiny spark of interest in her voice. Just a tiny one but it was there.

"Exactly, when their family members were around."

"Mulder, are you suggesting that the Merkle family is--" there was hitch of laughter, like she couldn't believe she was giving credence to the idea, "is not telepathic with... the outside world? Just each other?"

"That's how Georgia Merkle knew where to find her sister Rebecca. And that's how Anthony and Wynn knew exactly how to play the law enforcement. They didn't have to be together to match their stories--they figured it out silently. They had a whole conversation and we didn't even know about it."

"Why didn't we get any of that on the charts? Wouldn't we have seen some sort of reaction?"

"We recorded the brain scans of each one individually. Who knows how far the connection goes? Maybe... maybe they have to be near each other? Maybe they were just too far away? Family X refused any more tests after Dr. Culpepper's second study was published and then he passed shortly after. Unfortunately, no one has thought to take back up his research."