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Mulder doesn’t go to bars.
He’s too busy with his courses and his own conspiracy research and well, Scully, but she’s no longer talking to him. So somehow, he ends up alone in a bar on a snowy Friday night. He doesn’t have any other friends.
This is her bar. He’d never been inside, least of all with her, so maybe he chooses this one out of all of the ones near campus because he hopes to catch a glimpse of her… Or it’s just the cheapest. Either way, he’s already downed three beers and his judgement is becoming impaired. The bartender is popping a fourth lid off a new bottle when he spots it.
Coppery hair.
He’d recognize the color anywhere, even in the dimly lit room and with the bright red of the exit sign shining atop it.
Her name echos his head ScullyScullyScully , as he stumbles out of his chair at the bar. The spiked leather jacket has his mind reeling because he hasn’t seen her in two weeks and now he’s so close. His hand finds her shoulder a little too roughly and when she turns his heart nearly stops, but sinks instead. She's just a little too tall, her nose too crooked, obviously having been broken along the way at some point. She quirks her eyebrow in a way that Scully would.
He flashes her a drunk, lopsided smile. She must find it charming, because fifty-five seconds later they’re in a hallway just shy of the bathrooms, mouths locked in a heated kiss. With his eyes closed he almost believes his own thoughts trying to convince him that this is what Scully would be like.
She pushes him away five minutes later when he whispers Dana into her ear.
A week later he ventures to the same bar, orders the same crappy beer and settles into his previous spot, eyes now roaming the dingy room.
The next girl is the right height, but her hair is too brown and her eyes are hazel, far from Scully’s glacial blue. He supposes it won't matter in the dark. She leads him to her apartment. Ending up on the couch, his sweater on the ground, her bra out from under her own shirt and her nails digging into his shoulders, pulling him in, he decides to ask about the name this time. It lands him outside on his ass, rain soaking his skin and through his sweater laying beside him on the concrete as he tries to figure out how she'd gotten him out so fast.
Getting into a cab, he’s a little dazed. The driver laughs at him and asks about a breakup.
“Yeah, something like that,” Fox replies as the car pulls away from the curb. A few minutes in, he’s aware enough to smell it in the air. Scully . Her recognizes the smoke of her shitty cigarettes, something savory underlying the harsh nicotine permeating his lungs, like the scent of burning marshmallows. When he can pull himself out of the fog the fragrance brings him, he tells the cabbie to take the long way round. He doesn’t care about the tab he runs up, if he keeps his shortcuts to himself he can allow himself to drift off, pretend that the seatbelt is her arms and that he has her close.
The third girl has the cold blue eyes, the hair, she's the same height, hell, she even has similar sharp nose to Scully's. Her arm is broken, but he can look past it. It would be so like Scully to break her arm in a fight. The only thing that's really off about this girl is her lips. They are too symmetrical, not imperfect and oddly mismatched like Scully’s. Hers are bright red like she's been sucking on a jolly rancher, it's not the same as the pale dark sugary sweet dusk of Scully's mouth. She slaps him when he asks and all he can do is smile back. That reminds him of her too.
Laying on his naked, stained mattress (he hasn't done laundry since he last saw Scully a month ago), he stares up at the glow in the dark stars she'd bought and stuck up there for his birthday months back. You weren't supposed to attach anything adhesive to the dorm walls. Scully always was a rebel like that.
He sighs. It's as though he can feel her cold hands brushing against his warm ones and hear her silent laughter as one of his ‘ridiculous’ cult alien movie plays on his laptop in front of them.
How had he fucked everything up so badly?
He figures he's got nothing else to lose as he unbuttons his pants. A few minutes in he stops, angrily letting his head hit the pillowless bed. Not even his memory does her justice.
None of the women he tried smoke the same shitty cigarettes or have the tiny planets Scully has tattooed sparsely across her body, they lack the familiar constellations of her freckles. None of them compare, but he'll do anything to get even a glimpse at those familiarities. He worries he's running out of girls in this town, but everyone's starting to look like Scully to him these days (or maybe he’s just forgetting the actual slope of her nose and the color of her eyes,lips,hair). Maybe he'll start on the guys when he's turned himself into a creep with the ladies.
But then, he spots her. He’s sure of it. It has to be Dana. The hair is exact. Curly in all the same places and colored just so. The brief glimpses he gets of her lips and nose through the other bar patrons are a match. She moves herself in the same slow elegant fashion and that has him pushing to get to her. When he’s staring her in the face it’s off, but not by much. If he’d never met Scully’s sister he’d assume this is what she looked like. This girl is as close as he’s gotten.
He asks the dreaded question before it goes anywhere, not wanting to lead anyone into anything unexpected.
Her eyes roam all over him predatorily and she gives him a smile before giving him an unexpected response. “You can call me anything you want."