jowls: (Default)
old man mulder. ([personal profile] jowls) wrote 2023-02-05 08:03 pm (UTC)

It's an obvious follow-up question, one he definitely should have expected, and he's still surprised. There's a petty, bitter part of him that thinks oh, now you're interested in what I'm doing with myself? - and perhaps it's a triumph of time and therapy that he can recognize that it's the thought of a lonely jackass.

There's a difference between saying, Hey, Scully, let's try this sushi place and Hey, Scully, go on a date with me. There's a fig leaf of respectable friendship on the former, a kind of dating chicken that feels strangely like the old days. And there's a more difference yet between best date I've been on in years and let me tell you about my intense failure of a love life.

"My, uh, head-shrinker," the one he still can't believe he keeps on speed-dial, but here they are, living in the unimaginable future of 2018, "suggested I 'try getting out there again.'"

He doesn't do the finger-quotes, but they're implied in the tone of his voice: As if I was ever 'out there' in the first place. Scully will know. And she'll probably know to wait through a pause while he tries to figure out the least pathetic-sounding way to tell this story, because he'll look like he's still ready to say something, even though he's also changing lanes and making a face at the douchebag-mobile pickup that wouldn't let him in.

"That was - is this the exit? - it was about two years after -" you left me - "everything.
I think the last time I actually went on one was a month before Skinner called us."

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