Disclaimer: "coffee grounds, pizza crusts, former yappy dog, spit-covered roll of masking tape, weasel body, stilettos, styrofoam pottery shards, partial rat body parts, unused catheter, stuffed cat puppet, used vaccine vial, broken snowglobe.....Ken, do we have to inventory EVERYTHING in the prop room?"

The moving van dropped further and further back, until at last it was lost from her side view mirror as the Benson Brothers van slowed and veered away on the exit ramp. Scully relaxed into the mini-van's plush bucket seat, comforted by the knowledge that the borrowed accoutrements for 'playing house' were on their way back to a nameless showroom to await future requisition by the FBI. It occurred to her that somewhere there was a small group of damned souls assigned to select the furnishings for undercover operations. Better illusory living through carpentry, to coin a phrase. Certainly the selected furniture and trappings had been inoffensive, impersonal, and forgettable.

A lot like playing house with Mulder, actually.

With a barely audible sigh, she turned her attention back to her laptop and the jump she'd gotten on the paperwork for the Arcadia case. Their alternate identities had to be closed out, Rob and Laura's contingency credit cards terminated, cash accounted for, and receipts tendered. And the mini-van turned in, Scully reminded herself, as she caught a corner-eye glimpse of Mulder playing with the myriad dashboard controls.

Her window snaked down about two inches, then powered up to close again.

"Sorry."

Scully nodded absently at Mulder's apology, focused on deciphering his scrawl on several scraps of paper. She shook her head and leafed through the crinkled stack of slips.

"Mulder...what date is it on your home planet?"

"Geez, Scully, and here I was worried that we don't talk anymore."

"Mulder, I've got receipts here for ...what, the 7th? ...and this one is dated the 9th. Correct me if I'm wrong, but today is the 28th."

"Oh, that. Well, it was Frohike's idea."

Silence overflowed the first moment and fairly flooded the next thirty seconds.

"Frohike." Scully pronounced the Lone Gunman's name as if it had seven syllables.

"He didn't want me to forget your birthday."

"Frohike. Didn't. Want. You. To. Forget. My. Birthday."

"No. I mean, yes."

"Mulder, you *didn't* forget my birthday. The card was very nice and quite touching. And ten days early."

"See? It worked."

Wordlessly she reached for her Sig Sauer, then changed her mind and pulled back her hand. "Already used that one today," she mumbled, remembering that her slow and deliberate check of the clip in her weapon had been the only way she'd gotten Mulder to stop whistling the Dick Van Dyke Show theme. His last note had been like the minor key whimper of a depressed kazoo.

Mulder got the hint anyway.

"Frohike suggested I set the date ahead on my watch. That way, I'd have extra time to get you a card."

Scully nodded, then looked askance at him.

"Mulder, your watch is set ahead *eleven* days. You gave me the card *ten* days early."

"That's because I always miss your birthday by a day, Scully."

Muldersense, she acknowledged wryly. Bottle it...and you'd still have an empty bottle.

"And this?" Scully moved her hand so that the ring on her finger flashed splinters of light in the air.

"That little trinket, Honeybunch? It's nothing compared to the sparkle of your eyes," Mulder declared with a thoroughly sappy smile.

Mulder and she had spent all of the 23rd in pre-operation briefing sessions at the San Diego field office, and Scully had pretty much written off her birthday as a lost cause. Then, at the end of a pleasant and relaxed dinner at their hotel's restaurant, Mulder had fished around in his jacket pocket, gotten down on his knee beside her chair, and whispered "Marry me," taking advantage of her shock to slip the ring on her finger.

The impromptu audience of restaurant diners applauded, which seemed to be a signal for the waitstaff. The all-too-perky crew set a sparkler-crowned cake in front of Scully, and sang "Happy Birthday," pausing so that Mulder could fill in--

"Happy Birth-day, dear Laura"--

The flushed cheeks, shy smile, and acute embarrassment had been perfectly in character for Laura Petrie. The broken heart, however, belonged solely to Dana Scully. It was only after she was safely alone in her room that she let the mask slip and the tears fall. It was stupid, really, to base any fantasies of the future on moments of closeness long gone. After a good cry, she felt numb, distant from her feelings. Which was just as well, given that she would have to wear the ring as part of her cover for several days.

Another Mulder joke. Nothing serious. It's just a job, Dana. Pick up the pieces and go on.

The faux-carated refugee from the Home Shopping Channel spent the night in the ashtray on the nightstand.

It had all been a game to Mulder, Scully thought sadly. He'd prattled endlessly on the ride to Arcadia, but she'd tuned him out, lost in her memories of countless moves from one Navy base to the next. Half of her childhood had been spent either packing her cherished belongings into cartons or happily hauling them out again in another Navy cracker box home. Occasionally there had been the mad scramble to 'make weight,' like the year Mom and Dad had bought the bunkbeds for the boys. Scully laughed quietly to herself, remembering that it wasn't until she'd left for college that it had hit her: Moving Day didn't always smell like PineSol.

Arcadia wasn't your normal life. Moving Day at Arcadia had the odor of gift basket sausage and cheese, half-empty Tropicana cartons, and post-modern landfill. The take home lesson from Arcadia wasn't any insight into the great mystery that was Mulder, but that Mulder did not seem out of place ankle-deep in garbage mulch. She could see him in her mind's eye, the poster child for Martha Stewart's next chic project of processing landfill through a Cuisinart.

Scully drained the last of her orange-pineapple juice and put the empty bottle back in the cupholder. Its glass could be recycled, redeemed. She wasn't sure that the same could be said for her heart.

It's just a job, Dana. Pick up the pieces and go on.

She slid the ring off her finger and pressed it into the palm of Mulder's hand, closing his fingers tightly over the ring.

"Mulder, give this back to Evidence, OK?"

He didn't say anything. She waited, the road music of the tires filling the pause, then turned away to watch the blurred world bleed past in stereo, the immediate view through the window and the receding miniature version in the side view mirror carrying its own Zen-like legend. When the world she wanted was unattainable, the admonition 'Objects are closer than they appear' was a vicious taunt.

Mulder took the exit for the rest stop and passed up the five rows of parking spaces nearest the building for a space in the shade of a tree planted in a thin median strip.

"Scully?"

"I'm fine. I don't need a pit stop. If you're tired, I'll drive."

"Scully." His voice bid for her attention. She knew what she would see in his eyes if she looked -- serious Mulder, not self-flagellating Mulder or frivolous Mulder.

"It's not from Evidence, Scully. I thought...Skinner might assign us to other undercover work, and this would come in handy."

She watched the wind tumble a burger wrapper along the curb.

"No, Mulder." She strove for regret without bitterness. "To you, it's a game. Playing house. It's not real. It's imitation, like the ring. It's something bright and shiny and $19.95 if you call this special number right now. It's fake."

She heard him sigh.

"Scully, are you done with this?"

She turned to see him holding the empty juice bottle. At her nod, Mulder shred the bottle's paper label with his thumbnail. As the label fluttered into the footwell, Mulder held the bottle in one hand and with a sharp, sudden motion he scored the bottle's surface with the gem.

The ring's stone left a deep, jagged path in the side of the bottle, accompanied by wild music that only broken glass could sing.

He pressed the ring into her palm in tender silence, taking the time to collect his thoughts.

"It's not fake. It's not imitation. It's real."

Mulder paused, then looked into her eyes once more.

"It's not a game, Scully."

She watched the light play through the facets of the diamond as Mulder took the mini-van back onto the highway. Deep in the stone, she was sure, there were tiny images of Mulder, etched in light, seemingly distant but strangely much closer than they appeared to be. It was a reflection of life, really, a mirror of their recent relationship.

Scully thought for a moment, then slipped the ring onto the finger that spoke of no promises, no commitments. She favored Mulder with an easy and contented smile, which earned her a shy nod and crooked grin in return. In a mirror, you're always looking back, she realized. Objects may be closer, but you're still looking back, into the past.

It was time to look forward, to face the future.

-END-
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