~February 26, 1993~
Scully was digging through the hall closet, trying to find a pair of shoes that hadn't been destroyed by their hyper dog. Her 29th birthday was a few days before, and Ellen was taking her out with some other girlfriends for a night at the bar. No. That sounded like something 22-year-old Dana would do. They were having a girls' night. At a bar, it just so happened. It actually didn't matter what she called it because if she wasn't able to find a nice pair of shoes, she swore she wasn't going.
"Are these pretty Mommy?" Anna asked behind her, holding a pair of water sandals that Scully hadn't seen in years on her hands. After witnessing her mother's predicament, and wanting to defer the anger she would undoubtedly have toward her puppy, Anna was pitching in as much as she could in Scully's hunt for shoes.
"They're not right for this occasion. But thank you for helping." Anna scampered away to find more shoes, and despite the situation, Scully smiled. Her daughter was a truly lovely little girl, and she was very proud of her. Moments like these were validation that even though they sometimes struggled, they were doing a good job.
Though he tried not to show it, Mulder sat grumpily at his desk, pretending to be typing a report. He hadn't personally told Scully that he didn't want her to go out, but he had dropped subtle hints. Like he'd hidden her favorite pair of shoes. And he'd protested about having to watch Anna and Trent that night. Yeah, he knew there was a special place in Hell for losers like him. The real problem he had with her going out was not that he didn't want her to have a good time, but he didn't want her to meet somebody else. He knew all too well what women talked about in bar settings, and that men preyed on them in that situation. Hell, he'd been one of those men before he met Scully, and he'd had countess one night stands with women he'd picked up in exactly that manner. He didn't want to say he didn't trust her, or even insinuate that he had any claim over her. But the thought of Scully, his Scully, being some chump's one night stand… it made his blood boil. Mulder didn't know if she had told Ellen about their situation, or if she'd told anybody, and if she didn't, Ellen wouldn't have any problems picking out someone for her to go home with. It was just her busy, boisterous way. And Mulder didn't have any idea how to express his worries to her.
"Mommy! Mommy I found some shoes!" Anna's voice carried up the stairs from the basement. Damn, she'd found where he'd hid one of Scully's favorite pairs of heels.
"Oh, thank you so much baby!" Scully exclaimed once she saw the pair her daughter now had on her hands. Black toeless strapped sandals with a 4" heel. They were the first pair of shoes she'd bought that had made her feel truly sexy. Funny… she'd bought them right after she started having sex with Mulder.
Shortly after Scully had slipped on those heels, the doorbell rang, signaling that Ellen and Trent were there. She walked over to answer it, and Mulder could not help himself from staring at her gorgeous figure. As a rule, Scully never wore red, feeling that it clashed with her hair, but the red low-cute blouse she sported made his mouth water. And her jeans were impossibly tight. Mulder was straining not to rip those articles of clothing off of her right there. It was going to be a long night.
"Dana! You look wonderful!" Ellen squealed as she entered their home. She was wearing something very similar to Scully herself, and Mulder seriously considered following them to the bar with a baseball bat, just to ward off any interested guys.
Eight-, almost nine, year-old Trent quickly removed his shoes and ran into the office. Towards Trent, Mulder wasn't the father figure that Anna knew him as, but he was a strong male role model. Sometimes when Mulder had the idea to take Anna to the park or to the movies, he'd call Ellen to invite Trent along. He knew the child well enough to consider him important in his life. He cared about his emotional and physical well-being, and it was the best situation for everyone involved.
"Hey Mulder," Trent said, leaning against his strong arm.
"Hey Trent buddy. Are we going to have fun tonight?" Mulder tried to sound excited. He was still eyeing Scully, though, silently pleading with her to be considerate of his feelings during her outing.
"Yeah, do you wanna play basketball?" Mulder had introduced Trent to basketball, and now it was something that they bonded over.
"It's kind of late to play basketball, bud, and I think Anna wanted to watch a movie."
"Ugh, it's not going to be some dopey girl movie is it?" Trent groaned. He had mixed feelings toward Anna. The age difference between them made it difficult for them to connect sometimes, but at the end of the day, he played the protective big brother role well. And Anna idolized Trent, wanting to do everything that he did.
"No, it's about a dog. I think you'll like it."
As Trent nodded in submission, Scully came down the step to Mulder, ready to say goodbye.
"Alright, we're going to leave. You got things under control?" Scully asked.
"Everything's ship shape, Scully. After you leave we're going to turn the bathtub into a swimming pool and ride mattresses down the stairs."
"As long as they're in bed on time," she told him, wrapping her arms around his neck in a hug. Ellen had seen them display affection toward each other on more than one occasion, and it still shocked her that neither one of them was interested in pursuing a romantic relationship. She knew that if she had a man wrapped around her finger like Mulder was wrapped around her friend's, she'd have no problem jumping his bones.
Her smell was driving him insane. It was like she sprayed straight pheromones on to her body instead of perfume. Without thinking, he pressed a wet kiss to her forehead as they moved apart.
"Have fun, but be safe," he whispered.
Both of their eyes were closed, and Scully nodded. He had an effect on her too. It made her seriously reconsider her birthday plans. Anna wrapping her arms around her leg was enough to bring her out of her reverie, though. Just barely enough.
"I love you Mommy," Anna said in a little whine. Mulder gave her ten minutes maximum into the movie before she was fast asleep. Good thing she'd already had a bath and put her pajamas on.
"I love you too. Be good for Mulder. Don't even think about fighting with Trent."
She agreed, yawning, and went willingly to Mulder. It wouldn't be long before she was curled around him in sleep.
"Bye you two. Bye Trent," Scully said, and after a few more goodbyes from Ellen and Mulder, went out the door.
"Alright kiddos, let's put the movie in," Mulder sighed after standing silent for a few moments.
Scully, Ellen, and mutual friends Heather and Kate had arrived at the bar ready to have a good time. Upon hearing that it was Scully's birthday, the bartender did a round of free shots with them, then treated them to a free pitcher of beer. A few mixed drinks had also been passed around, but all of them still had pretty level heads. They had calmed down a bit since getting there, and were sitting at a private table having a conversation.
"I would give anything to be 29 again," Ellen said regretfully, pushing the wrinkles she thought were on her face up.
"I would give anything to live with that delicious man you call Mulder," Heather said, probably the most drunk out of the four. Ellen and Kate agreed, though, raising their glasses and taking a drink. Scully, though, just nursed her beer, used to their conversations taking this turn. She got constant flack for living with Mulder and pretending to be just friends with him, and admittedly, she kind of enjoyed the attention. She knew Mulder was attractive—extremely attractive—and she wasn't used to having the type of life that people envied. Despite all of this, Scully had never once confessed to her friends that she was in a sexual relationship with Mulder. She knew they would make a bigger deal of it than it was.
"Are we going to have this talk again?" Scully asked, pretending to be tired of it.
"Dana, what we're all just trying to understand is how you could possibly ignore Mulder's obvious attraction toward you. I mean, it's so blatant," Ellen told her.
"He's not attracted to me. Yeah, when you live with someone for as long as Mulder and I have lived together, you develop a comfort with them that you can't find with anyone else. But don't confuse that with attraction," Scully tried to convince herself what she was saying was true.
"Please, Dana, the man worships the ground you walk on," Kate said.
"We have a lot of respect for each other. And there's a lot of things that I couldn't do if it weren't for Mulder. But we're just… not right for each other."
"What in the world is not 'right' about Mulder? Does he snore? Does he chew with his mouth open?" Heather asked in a silly manner, suggesting that these were things she could live with.
"I'm just… I'm not his type," Scully admitted regretfully to herself.
"That's stupid, Dana, nobody has a set 'type.'"
"Well if he doesn't, why hasn't he asked me out yet? Why hasn't he asked to be something more than friends?"
"Maybe because you don't make yourself readily available toward him. That respect thing you were talking about, Danes, it can be good but it can also get in the way. Maybe he respects you too much," Ellen insinuated.
"Now that's stupid."
"Ma'am," a young bartender came up to their table carrying a tray and referring to Scully, "a gentleman at the bar sent this over for you."
It was a white Russian, one of Dana's favorite drinks. She accepted it, then turned to see a bald, but strapping man looking over toward her. He wasn't bad looking, but he was no Fox Mulder.
"If you don't have any feelings for Mulder, why don't you go over there and talk to that guy?" Heather suggested.
"Because I can't just go off and flirt with every guy who shows a little bit of interest. I have a daughter."
"You have a Mulder," she said plainly. Normally, her friends poking into her relationship with Mulder wasn't something that bothered her. But Scully felt that night that she had something to prove; maybe she could forget about Mulder in the process.
Slamming her drink down on the table, Scully rose and made her way over toward the man at the bar. But it was like an outside force was pushing her toward him while her rational side fought back tooth and nail.
"Hi," the man said, not even trying to be discreet about the once-over he was giving her.
"Hi. Thanks for the drink."
"No problem. I heard someone mention it was your birthday, and a beautiful woman like you deserves a free drink on her birthday."
"That was very thoughtful of you."
"Well I'm a thoughtful guy. A thoughtful guy named Jason, by the way."
"Dana," she smiled, taking his hand.
That was the beginning of Scully forgetting her friends and her life for awhile. It was so nice to sit at the bar with Jason, a man who knew absolutely nothing about her, being flattered and flirted with. She was definitely proving something to her friends, but she wasn't proving much to herself. Not when her mind showed her glimpses of Mulder as Jason brushed her hair behind her ear or took her hand in his.
Jason was a nice enough guy, which made it hard for Scully to notice just how much she was drinking as she tried to keep up with him. While he was seemingly unaffected by the amount of alcohol he was putting in his body, Scully wasn't a regular drinker, and she could start to feel herself get woozy.
Thankfully, Ellen and her other friends could see her posture begin to change throughout the night. At around 2 a.m., they came up behind her.
"Hey Danie, it's time to go home," Kate said gently, taking her hand.
"But I'm having fun. And I'm not thinking about Mulder."
"Sure you aren't. It's been a good night, Dana, but if we let you keep drinking you're going to hate us tomorrow."
"Want me to call a cab for you ladies?" Jason asked, disappointed that his night with an amazing woman like Dana was ending, but knowing that her friends were right.
"That'll be great," Ellen said, eyeing the man herself.
Jason parted ways with the four women at the cab, but not without exchanging numbers with Dana. He knew she was someone he wanted to see again. Scully, however, could only think of going home and crawling in bed with Mulder.
Mulder had left Anna and Trent to sleep end-to-end on the couch, of course with Sadie snuggled up to Anna's side. Despite however tired they both had claimed to not be, they had been out before the movie ended. Mulder continued to watch it, though, needing to keep his mind off of the woman he loved.
He was still up, sitting at the computer facing the window, when at 2:30 a cab pulled in the driveway. It idled there as Ellen, Kate, and Heather walked Dana to the door. Luckily, Mulder was right there to catch her as she stumbled through it.
"Thanks for bringing her home safe," he told the other women, though he doubted they would remember their actions in the morning. They told him it was no problem, then left, as Mulder and Scully promised they would take Trent home in the morning. After the door was shut behind them, Mulder was left with Scully clinging to him, barely able to stand.
"Did you have a good night?" he asked, putting one arm behind her back and one arm behind her knees and lifting her up. She mewed into him like a kitten as they ascended the stairs.
"No. They made me talk to another guy."
"Who made you?"
"Ellen and Kate and Heather. I d-didn't wanna."
"Who was the guy?"
"J-Jason," she slurred.
"Was Jason nice?" Mulder asked in a tone he would have used with Anna. Drunk Scully was cute.
"Yeah. But he's not Mulder."
Nothing she could have said at that point could have made him feel more secure. Pulling back the covers and taking her shoes off before laying her in bed, he couldn't help a wide grin from spreading across his face. She thought about him when she talked to other men. Just like he thought of her when he did… anything.
"Well you can't blame him. Mulder's a pretty cool guy," he laid down next to her and snaked his arms around her.
"Mmm," was all Scully could manage to murmur before drifting off. Mulder tucked her securely under his chin and tightened his arms, vowing to her to always be there to make her feel loved and protected.
The next morning, Scully woke up with a headache. But it was tempered by the man holding her closely. As clearly as if he had spoken his true feelings to her, she felt the security he had promised to provide to her the night before emanating from his body. And it allowed her to slip back into dreamland once more.
"Anna, quit feeding the dog your Cheerios," Mulder warned Anna as he tried to clean up the kitchen. Breakfast with two kids under ten was always hectic, but there was no way he'd wake Scully up to help him. She'd had quite a night, it had sounded like, and the last thing he wanted on his hands was a tired, upset, hungover Scully.
Trent was just about to push his eggs on to Anna's plate when the phone rang. As long as they didn't make a mess, Mulder could care less if Anna ate Trent's eggs, so he went to answer the phone.
"Hello?" he answered.
"Hi, is Dana there?" a strange man asked on the other end of the line. Mulder's breath hitched in his throat. He knew exactly who this was, Jason. Last night after she'd gotten home and told him she'd talked to another man, Mulder had to admit, he was a little worried. But shortly after that she'd said 'he wasn't Mulder,' restoring his sense of a relationship with her. But things couldn't have been that bad if she'd given him her number.
"Um, no, she's sleeping. Who is this?"
"This is Jason. We met at the bar last night. Who are you?" the man asked, at the end sounding a little angrier than Mulder would have liked.
"I'm Mulder. I live with Dana," he stated, leaving so much more than that off the table.
"Okay, well, would you tell her I called?" Jason asked, sensing he had been played. In a way, he had. Scully had only been using him to forget about Mulder at her friends' insistence, and it hadn't worked all that well either.
"Sure," Mulder lied. Of course he wasn't going to tell Scully that Jason called. And if she wanted to call him back, that was fine, and she would find out the truth. But until then, Mulder wasn't going to willingly put someone in between him and Scully.
Even though the fact that the man had gotten her number had already put a damper on his day.
Maybe she didn't care for him as much as he had assumed last night. After all, she had been pretty drunk.
"Who was that?" he heard Scully ask as she proceeded to come down the stairs. For being hungover, as he knew she was, she looked great.
"Nobody," he answered shortly, then left the room altogether in order to focus his mind on other things.
That night, the pair was laying in bed. Mulder was still up, trying to read through a case. Scully wasn't asleep either, only laying there frustrated. She didn't know if it was the events that transpired the night before that were making her feel this way, but she was… horny, to put it bluntly. She flipped over on to her back, sighing heavily.
"Can't sleep?" Mulder asked, not even looking up from the file. He'd been a little distant all day.
Instead of answering him with words, Scully knew the best route to take in this situation would be to just take what she wanted. However, reaching her hand down his boxers that night was apparently not the best move to make.
"Whoa, Scully, not tonight," he said, jumping about a mile in the air.
"What? Why the hell not?" she asked defensively. He'd never ever rejected her advances in bed.
"Because I'm trying to read," he said, lying through his teeth.
"That's never stopped you before."
"Look, I just don't want to have sex tonight, okay?"
"Fine," she huffed, throwing herself back to her side of the bed. She only continued to lay there for a few moments, though, before she got up abruptly and went to the bathroom. Mulder assumed it was to take care of herself, and it was the hardest thing for him to do in the world to ignore her while she was so in need. But he was still hurt, and he knew it was a bad idea to have angry sex. She would notice.
Mulder thought that Scully left for the bathroom to relieve her own sexual tension, but he had squashed any sexual thoughts she'd had that night when he shied away from her advances. She slumped over the sink as soon as the door was locked and began to cry softly.
About fifteen minutes later, she emerged from the bathroom to a sleeping Mulder huddled very close to the edge of the bed. He really didn't want to be near her. This almost sparked a whole new round of tears from Scully, but instead, she grabbed her pillow and made her way to the guest bedroom—Mulder's old bedroom.
What she didn't notice was the wetness on his own pillow. He desperately wanted her, but it was becoming increasingly clearer to him that he would never have her.
