~~~~ October 13, 1996 ~~~~

The streets were black and slick with rain, oncoming 
headlights cutting through the gloomy night and nearly 
blinding her as Scully waited to make a left turn into the 
tiny parking lot.  Finally there was a break in traffic large 
enough for her to squeeze her Corolla through, and she took 
the only space left, the one farthest from the door.

Large, fat drops plopped onto the back of her hand as she 
hurried into the wine store.  The crowded lot had yielded 
only two other customers, an older man with a bushy gray 
beard and a sweater vest, and a younger man with a fresh 
haircut and wire-rimmed glasses.  They both glanced up at her 
as she came through the door on a gust of wind-swept rain, 
and then turned their attention back to the wine racks.

Behind the counter, a man smoked pipe tobacco and read the 
newspaper.  A blob of gray cat sat next to him, its eyes shut 
and its mouth turned up in a satisfied smile.

The floor was concrete, with traces of sawdust near some of 
the wine racks.  Scully wandered among the narrow aisles and 
studied her many choices.  Stooping low, she found some 
overlooked Burgundy from 1987.  She touched a fine layer of 
dust that had gathered on one particularly old bottle.

Just pick one, she said to herself.

Usually it did not take her twenty minutes in the store to 
decide on a bottle of wine.  But here, making a selection was 
tantamount to saying she was going to the party.

She had the Burgundy in hand when she hesitated again near 
the register.

It's either this or go home alone, she thought. Three nights 
running, she had awakened in a cold sweat, muttering German 
and trying to rub away the shooting pain between her eyes.

The cat began licking its paw as the clerk rung up Sculy's 
purchase.  At the last moment, she added a tall gift bag with 
a Harlequin pattern on it.

"Special occasion?" the man asked as he took her credit card.

"Mmm," she said, not really wanting to elaborate.  She still 
couldn't quite believe she was going.  

Twenty minutes later, however, she was underground at the 
Gunmen's self-made bunker, ringing their bell and staring 
into the video camera lens.  She didn't hear anything on the 
other side, but since they had a bank vault for a door, this 
wasn't too surprising.

The vault swung open and a thin man with thick glasses stood 
there with a beer in his hand.  "Whoa," he said, as rock 
music blasted from behind him.  The room was dark but lit 
with a black light, making the label on his beer glow an 
eerie white.

"Who is it?"  Mulder stumbled into the frame from stage left.  
His work shirt and tie had disappeared and in their place he 
sported a black T-shirt that read, "Party Animal."  

Scully let her eyes follow the claw markings down his chest 
to the rim of his knees.  

"It's you," he said, sounding pleased as he took over the 
doorway.  This was when she noticed he wore a leopard-print, 
cone-shaped party hat.  "I didn't know you were coming."

"Frohike invited me."  She cradled the wrapped wine against 
her middle and resisted the natural inclination to grip it by 
the neck.

"Well, come in, come in."  He touched her arm as she passed 
by into the lair.

She shuffled a few steps and stopped, waiting for her eyes to 
adjust to the low light.  The place smelled of pizza, alcohol 
and at least one cigar.  She gasped when Mulder's hands 
closed over her shoulders.

"Let me take your coat," he said as his warm fingers brushed 
against either side of her bare neck.

She turned and held the bottle.  "Where should I...?"

"Over there on the table."

As she worked her way through the bodies, she wondered if 
Mulder knew all of these people, and if he did, why they had 
never come up in conversation.  A guy with a goatee and a 
shirt that read, "Live Funk or Die," nodded at her in passing 
and she clutched her wine a little closer.

Byers tended the punch bowl in his ubiquitous brown suit.  
"Agent Scully," he said with a broad smile.  "How delighted 
we are that you could come.  Help yourself to some pizza."

She cast her gaze at the boxes lined up like hopscotch 
squares and despaired of finding a single vegetable under 
their greasy lids.

"Wow, you brought the good stuff," Byers remarked as he drew 
the wine from its colorful sheath.  

"I didn't realize there was going to be so many people 
here..."

Just as she said the words, someone jostled her from behind.  
She lurched forward into the table, but Mulder materialized 
to catch her elbow.  "No table surfing this early in the 
evening, Scully," he murmured near her ear as he set her on 
her feet again.

"Who are all these people, Mulder?"

"Lovers and other strangers," he replied, taking a sip from a 
red plastic cup.  

At her widened eyes, he grinned.

"I don't know half of them," he said as a young woman with 
black, stringy hair, a leather bustier, and a lot of eye 
makeup appeared at his side.  She braced herself heavily on 
Mulder's arm as she stretched across in front of them to 
select a glass of punch.

"Thanks, Johnny," she said to Byers, and blew him a silent 
kiss before washing like the tide back into the sea of 
bodies.

"Angela does our graphics," Byers explained. 

"And our fake IDs," Langley said as he wedged between Mulder 
and Scully to get to the pizza.

"You boys all look over twenty-one to me," Mulder said, a 
teasing glint in his eye.

"But do I look like security at the Hubert Humphrey 
Building?" Langley replied over the music, and Byers looked 
at the ground.  Langley nudged Mulder in the ribs.  "It's 
your go, birthday boy.  You're holding us all up."

Mulder finished the rest of his drink and wiped his mouth on 
his bare arm.  "I'll be right there."  He grabbed a pizza box 
with one hand and her with the other. "Come on," he hollered, 
tugging her through the main room towards the back.

She followed, stiff and squinting against the crowd and the 
noise.  When she saw they were heading for a large black 
curtain, she braced herself for what sort of illegal activity 
might be lurking on the other side.

Up close, the curtain was actually a green army blanket that 
had been hung with nails over the doorway.  Mulder shoved it 
aside and urged her into the room ahead of him.  

There was a pool table with balls scattered across it.

"Sweet holy Moses, it's Scully!"  Frohike jumped down from 
his stool with a pool cue in hand.  He shooed some other guy 
from his perch.  "Get off of there, Sheff.  The lady always 
gets the one that doesn't wobble."

"As if there's ever been a woman back here before," Sheff 
grumbled as he moved.  He wore a bowler hat and over-large 
smoking jacket.

"She's on my team," Mulder declared from behind her.

"Mulder, I haven't played since college, and I wasn't very 
good back then."

He bent low, so close she could smell the beer on his breath.  
"That was before years of FBI target training."

Scully was dubious.  By his logic, she should be allowed to 
pull out her SIG and shoot the balls into their pockets.  
This would be a version of the game she could handle.  

"We'll just rack 'em up again," Frohike said, laying his cue 
aside.

"Sure, start over," Mulder agreed.  "I'm already kicking your 
collective asses in this one."

"It's not good manners to humiliate the birthday boy," 
Frohike shot back. 

"Oh yeah?  What's this then?"  Mulder gestured at his odd hat 
and gaudy T-shirt.

"The only present you're gonna get."  Frohike removed the 
rack from around the balls and stepped back to retrieve his 
cue.  "Just to show you how sportsmanlike I am, you can 
break."

"Suit yourself," Mulder said.  He turned to Scully.  "Hold 
the pizza."

She stood there with the box in hand while Mulder stretched 
himself across one end of the table.  A sharp crack later, 
and the balls tumbled and caromed over the green felt.

"Scully and I'll be solids," he said, sinking an easy one.

Langley looked at Frohike in disgust.  "At least we don't 
play him for money any more."

"Chicken?" Mulder asked as he banked a shot off the far right 
corner and the ball dropped into the nearest pocket.

"You know, if she's on your team, you have to let her take a 
shot," Langley said.

"Sure," Mulder said easily, extending the cue to her.

She set the pizza on top of a stool and reluctantly took up the 
slim wooden stick.  It was practically as tall as she was.  

The remaining balls all seemed impossible to sink, either 
ensnared in the corner or nestled among their striped 
counterparts.  

"Did I mention Scully was a physics major?" Mulder asked 
innocently as she studied the table.

"If she's a ringer too, I'm out of here," Sheff replied.

"There's a difference in theory and practice," Scully told 
him.  She took a deep breath and bent over the table.

"Don't hold it so tight," Mulder said as he came up behind 
her.  "Keep your left hand loose, see?"  He reached down and 
tickled her palm to slacken her grip on the cue.

The motion pressed his hips into her backside, and she winced 
as her caught her squarely across the giant bruise she had 
hidden under her pantsuit.  Mulder caught her sharp inhale 
and backed off immediately.  "Sorry," he said.  "You okay?"

She nodded, feeling exposed and embarrassed.  "Just sore," 
she muttered for his ears only. 

Gerry Schnauz hadn't hurt her much, but the hard tumble onto 
the parking lot concrete when he'd knocked her out had left 
her with a nasty bruise and a sizable lump on her head.

Mulder rubbed her non-tender hip in a subtle, affectionate 
gesture of understanding.  "Just line yourself up with the 
shot," he said.  "Keep your elbow loose and try to catch the 
ball on the left side."

She bent down again and closed one eye.  The balls loomed 
large from this angle.  She tested the shot twice, gently 
pulling the smooth cue between her fingers before finally 
letting it tap the white ball.

It snapped forward and nudged her target ball in the right 
direction, but it stopped short of dropping into the pocket.

"Ah ha!" Frohike declared as Scully straightened again.  "Our 
turn."

"Sorry, Mulder."  

His hand closed over hers as she tried to give the cue back 
to him.  He squeezed.  "This way we get to eat pizza," he 
said, and stood the cue up against the wall.

The slice he handed her was lukewarm but the sauce was spicy, 
and God be praised, it at least contained red and green 
peppers.

"Where did you learn to play pool so well?" she asked him as 
they stood on opposite sides of the pizza box.

"Pub crawling in London.  A bunch of us would go out after 
classes, and the losing team always had to buy the next 
round -- I quickly found out how expensive it was to be a 
loser."

In the end, her ineptitude was not enough to overcome his 
skill, and the Mulder/Scully team beat the geeks three games 
in a row.

As the hour grew later and people started to leave, someone 
turned the house lights up and Byers opened the wine that 
Scully had brought.  "Sorry about the stemware," he said as 
he handed her a plastic cup.

Frohike was showing Mulder his latest video game, something 
that involved running around inside the earth and shooting 
lava monsters.  They offered her a turn, but she settled with 
her wine on one side of the couch and contented herself with 
watching.  Between the party hat on his head and his chortles 
as he made lava men disintegrate, Mulder resembled an over-
grown child.  He sat cross-legged in front of the TV, his 
cone hat blocking her view.

She smiled and laid her head down on her arm.  Her eyes must 
have been closed because she heard voices but the faces were 
gone.  "Apparently our hosting skills have fallen farther 
than we'd thought."

"Should we wake her?"

"Let her be."  This was Mulder.

Not sleeping, Scully protested, but somehow the words stayed 
in her head.  She drifted in this nebulous state, feeling 
movement around her and bits of phrases that incorporated 
themselves into her dream woven narrative.

"We took the P600 from the Hewlett-Packard model and spliced 
it into pepperoni leftovers."

"I hate pepperoni."

"The original song was like a lame version of Gilligan's 
Island."

In her mind, she pictured Mulder in a fisherman's cap and a 
red sweater.  Get us off the island, little buddy.

She felt cold all of a sudden.  Did someone open the door?

"Hey."  A gentle touch on her arm made her start and open her 
eyes.

Mulder knelt in front of her.  His hat was gone and he wore 
his overcoat.  He smiled at her with infinite kindness as she 
stretched and righted herself.

"Time to go home," he said, laying her heavy wool coat over 
her lap.

"Do we have to?"

She looked around and saw the party had ended totally.  The 
long table had been folded away, and she caught a glimpse of 
Byers in an apron washing dishes in the galley kitchen.

"We don't have to go home, but we can't stay here," Mulder 
said as he tugged her to her feet.  "The guys are getting 
ready for bed, and rumor has it Langley sleeps in the nude."

She shuddered and put on her coat.  "Best hurry then," she 
agreed.

"We're out of here!" Mulder shouted.  "Thanks for the gala!"

Byers poked his head out of the kitchen.  "Many happy 
returns, Mulder."

Frohike emerged from the back wearing pajamas and a nightcap.  
"Aw, what'd you wake her up for?" he said.  "I thought she 
was spending the night with us."

"Good night, Frohike," Scully said, and Mulder steered her 
toward the door.

"I cleared out space in my bunk and everything!" Frohike 
yelled after them.

Outside, the rain had stopped but the cold night air was 
still saturated with moisture.  Scully hunched her shoulders 
let Mulder cut the wind with his larger frame.  "If you 
really don't want to go home yet," he said, "I know something 
else we can do."

His words misted in the air, hanging between them for a 
suggestive moment before vanishing in a rising curl of steam.  
He had his hands in his pockets, his hair on-end and his 
cheeks were ruddy from the wine and wind.  She wondered if 
this was how he'd looked a dozen years younger, slouching 
around outside some London pub.  

"It's three in the morning," she said.  "What's there to do 
at this hour?"

"It's just down the street," he answered, nodding in the 
appropriate direction.  "We can go in my car."

Rain had beaded on his roof and she touched her finger to it 
while waiting for him to unlock the doors.  She rejoined the 
drops with a swirl of her finger, the bits of water clinging 
to one another until they became a tiny wave that slipped 
over the edge to trail down the window.  

Inside, Mulder turned the heat up to a roar and she held her 
fingers over the vents as he navigated the quiet street.  
Most of the buildings were dark, save for a few illuminated 
business signs.  She didn't see a soul walking about.

When the car slowed, she looked up to see where he was taking 
them.  "IHOP?" she asked as he pulled into the lot.

"Where else are you going to get pancakes at three a.m.?" 

There was an eighteen-wheeler parked near the chain-link 
fence at the back, and a few other scattered cars.  Mulder 
stopped them under the branches of a low-flying tree, its 
limbs bending and swaying in the wind.

"I haven't been in one of these in years," Mulder said as he 
held the door for her.  "I drive past this one all the time, 
but I've never stopped here."

"You went pub crawling, I went here," she said as they took 
an orange booth.  Her hip gave a twinge of pain when she slid 
across the bench seat, but she ignored it.

"You were an IHOP groupie?" Mulder asked her from behind a 
plastic menu.

"We would bring our study books and drink their never-ending 
coffee.  The only drawback was the waitress smoked like a 
chimney.  I remember she had breasts that practically bumped 
the counter and this bright blue eye shadow.  Never kicked us 
out, though, despite the fact that we couldn't really leave 
her a big tip."

Their waitperson for the night turned out to be a male named 
Steve, or so the gold pin on his shirt labeled him.  He had 
apparently lost fifty percent of his hair and one hundred 
percent of his interest in the job.  He chewed gum and barely 
looked at them as they made their selections.  Mulder opted 
for pancakes, and Scully ordered the French toast.

"So," she said when their coffee appeared.  "Was it a good 
birthday?"

He checked his watch.  "I guess it's officially over, huh?  I 
have to be thirty-five now."

"Beats the alternative," she said as she turned the mug 
around in her fingers, warming them.

"You know, I remember on her sixth birthday, Samantha came 
downstairs and told all of us she wasn't going to be six.  
She liked five so much, she decided she just wanted to stay 
there.  Dad said, 'So then you want us to cancel the party 
and the cake?'  And of course she didn't.  She wanted the 
party and the presents, but instead of six, she just wanted 
to turn five again."

"So what happened?"

"Mom convinced her that if she was turning five again, we'd 
just have to rewrap her presents from last year.  She decided 
six was okay in a big hurry after that."  He shook his head.  
"God, she'd be, what now?  I guess thirty-one next month.  
It's hard to imagine."

"I know what you mean."  Off his look, she said, "Melissa 
used to drive me crazy when we were kids because she was 
always the older one.  She got to go to school first, she got 
to stay up later, she wore make-up and went on dates and all 
that stuff before I ever did.  I remember I used to think 
that I could catch up, but she said no, she was always, 
*always* going to be the older sister.  Oh, I just wanted to 
kick her in the shins when she said that."  She took a breath 
and leaned back in the booth.  "Well, next year I'll be as 
old as she was when she died.  In all likelihood, I'm going 
to end up the older sister.  Isn't that odd?  I can't fathom 
it.  Even when we didn't speak all that often, I knew she was 
still out there, living ahead of me in time.  I never 
realized how much comfort the idea gave me until she wasn't 
here anymore."

Mulder reached across the table and briefly squeezed her 
hand.  They parted when Steve returned with their food.

"Pancakes are one of nature's most perfect foods," Mulder 
said as he poured syrup over the top of his stack.  "They're 
warm and fluffy and you put liquid sugar on them.  Plus, 
they're round.  Round food is always best."

She raised her eyebrows.  "I had no idea you were particular 
about the shape of your food."

"I think round food feels better in your stomach.  Maybe I'll 
write a book -- the Round Food Diet.  For breakfast you can 
alternate between pancakes and Cheerios.  Oh, and eggs.  
They're almost round, right?"

"Mulder, you're nuts."

"Nuts!  See, another round-ish food.  They can also go in the 
book."  He eyed her plate.  "Are you going to eat all that 
bacon?"  

He had shared enough meals with her to know the answer was 
"no."  She liked bacon, but it was so unbelievably bad for 
you that she rationed herself to just 2 strips.

As he reached for her plate, she pulled it back.  "Bacon's 
not round, Mulder."

He lifted up from the seat enough to reach her.  "No, but the 
pig was," he said as he chomped down on the crunchy strip.

They ate and chatted for nearly an hour, when she started 
yawning again.  She gave Steve an overly-generous five dollar 
tip to make up for all the times she'd had to stiff Beverly 
back in the day.

Mulder dropped her off back near the Gunmen's place, and got 
out with her when she went to her car.  She unlocked it and 
turned around one last time.  "Happy birthday, Mulder," she 
said, tugging affectionately on the end of his sleeve.

He cupped the sides of her head and for a breathless moment 
she thought he might kiss her.  But his lips settled low on 
her forehead and between her eyes, right where Schnauz had 
touched, right where he'd said the howlers lived inside her.

"Thank you," Mulder whispered before his mouth touched her 
skin.  She closed her eyes and smelled the wet wool from his 
coat.  He pressed a lingering kiss to her head and then 
dropped away.  

Later in bed, she touched the spot again, as she had for 
several nights in a row, probing for something she couldn't 
name.  She pulled the covers up to her chin, shut her eyes 
against the arriving dawn, and slept. 

~~~~~~

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