what_wings_dare | 🅧 Please explain to me the scientific nature of 'the whammy'

"Nearly, I think," she muses. "Admittedly I've only gotten a good look at one other one. I think it's proportional, she's about your height."

It's strange to talk about it. Scully is about as comfortable as she's going to get, she thinks, with her other body, but the fact of the change still bothers her. The very idea of something being done to her; her body changed against her will for someone else's aims, it never sits well with her. The physicality bothers her less and less, but on principle she still thinks: it's not her.

She's not sure-- and she doesn't want to ask-- what he thinks about the fact that it's a snake. Her tattoo is something of an open secret, but she's never shown him; there have been enough moments when he could have seen it, in the course of one decontamination or another, some injury, some half-remembered moment. There might be pictures in the crime scene materials from Philadelphia. But there are too many good reasons not to talk about all that.

So she just sighs.

"You'll get to see eventually, I'm sure."

"I think that's up to you." She's right that he probably will get to see, probably when that week comes around - but if she really hated the idea, he'd try to stay away.

It might be the tea or the company, quiet conversation or the fact that they're touching, but his mood is evening out again. Everything still feels off, he's still sitting in a form that bothers him more than he could have possibly imagined, but he can live with it. Sitting here with Scully, it's all survivable.

(As for the relationship this form has to her tattoo...well, that's a question for when she seems a little more comfortable talking about it.)

She's sure the touching helps, but not so sure it's a question of synchrony; the irony of being here so long alone is, Mulder has long been the person who offers tactile support and affection, and here where it's a literal physical need she's had to learn to let herself relax around someone else. She's had lovers who touched her less than her partner, at least outside the context of sex.

His tacit offer to stay out of her way is endearing, but the truth is when she's a snake she wants nothing more than to curl up around a warm, willing body and doze off in the sun, but that's a whole other can of worms to try to explain. She reaches to brush his grassy hair off his forehead.

"You should try to get a little more sleep."

He's shaking his head as soon as she finishes the sentence. Trying to sleep sounds like a death sentence right about now. If it works, it'll be fitful at best, and if it doesn't, he'll be alone in one place with all his thoughts - and right now, he can't think of much worse. "It's nearly morning. I'm fine."

Compared to some of his forty-eight-hours-without-sleep adventures, this is fine. Probably. Completely normal.

"I can entertain myself if you're tired." Since it's just occurred to him that being woken by someone else's night terrors probably wasn't her idea of a good time.

Fine and normal are two wholly different questions in their lives, especially when it comes to Mulder's sleep schedule, which is frankly usually neither.

"I'd feel better if you'd try," she says, instead of trying to force it. She stretches, and lets the motion tip her over to rest on a discarded pile of blanket. She's absolutely serious about taking the couch for the rest of the night, such as it is; maybe if he tucks himself into the bedroom to stay out of her way he'll pass out accidentally, which would be all the better.

Mulder watches her shift and stretch out, knowing that this is a ploy to get him into the other room - and knowing, too, that it's going to work. She doesn't run the way he does, endlessly to the point of exhaustion (and sometimes beyond). He can't ask her to sit up with him until the sun rises.

"Why don't you sleep, Scully," he says. When he stands, there's a slight creak, like a tree in strong wind. The mugs, he leaves on the coffee table, but when he passes her, he pauses, running a hand lightly along her hair. "Don't worry about me."

Of course she's going to worry about him. When does she not?

Scully has always been good at dropping off to sleep in odd moments and strange places; she offers a drowsy smile up at him. With the shock wearing off, the outlandish appearance doesn't register as much. He's just Mulder, in every way that matters; the faint, beachy scent of dry grass and wild roses isn't what she thinks of as him but it's familiar and soothing nonetheless.

She means to wish him good night, sort of, but all she manages is a vague hum as she curls onto her side to doze off.

Mulder turns out the light, and a mild pang of guilt hits him. She's out here on her couch, despite the fact that there's a perfectly good bed one room over - but she's not so deep a sleeper that he can pick her up and carry her back to it. Not tonight, at least.

Which is to say, he doesn't sleep. He walks into her bedroom, looks at it like he's studying a crime scene, and tries not to think about the way the bedclothes smell like her when he sits down on one side of the mattress. It's not going to work. There's something stirring in him, so deep that he can't tell if it's a product of his mind or the transformation or both.

He moves as quietly as he can, back into the kitchen, and then to Scully, and then the door. When she wakes, there's a beach rose at her fingertips and an empty bedroom a few paces away, the front door shut but unlocked.

She should, perhaps, have expected this. Had only just resisted making a joke about tying him down, and clearly she should have just done it.

As soon as she sees the flower she knows, but she checks the apartment anyway; it's small, it's quick. And then, with no idea of where he might have run off to, she turns her attention to her palm pilot.

Now that she knows what she's looking for, turning up his account is easy enough, so wherever he is, his phone is buzzing.

You cannot just leave like that.

Scully, I'm okay.

Good.

You still can't.

Then I'll leave a note next time.

For God's sake, Mulder.

Where are you?

[ Six months. Six months. She'd thought he disappeared. She thought he wasn't really here at all. She's gonna kick his ass. ]

Scully, it's okay. I'm not going to leave.

[ Can he make this promise? Does it matter? ]

A park in the Emerald district.

I'm coming.

[ Mulder she will put a fucking tracking device in you, don't test her. She's fairly sure she could find a way. ]

In the wooded part.

She'll find him sitting on the ground, in the center of a tangle of rose bushes. They'd started growing on their own, and then he'd pushed them onward, trying to figure out the capabilities that seem to spring from his knotted hands.

His fingers have grow longer, less human, as he's worked. He hasn't noticed.

The last time Scully came down here, dripping with love-lies-bleeding and bittersweet, coughing up flower petals signifying solitude, she'd been thinking of him and trying not to think of him. Now she's searching.

Mulder is usually easy to find in a crowd; he's tall, he dresses like a fed, he carries himself with the unconscious confidence of his station in life, a fact she takes advantage of often, drafting behind him or letting him follow close behind to part the throngs on her behalf. It takes much longer this time; the paths are winding and, as she discovers, he's half-hidden among the thorny branches, looking like he's going to take root right there.

"Mulder," she calls, once she spots him. Is it just the morning light making him look-- she doesn't want to say more monstrous, but perhaps that's the only way to put it. Less himself than in the soft lamplight of her living room. Like when he loses himself on a particularly bad case.

He glances up at his name, but slowly, as if he's only half in this world beyond the rose bushes. And maybe he is - his thoughts are far away, even with his palm pilot buzzing occasionally. The magic of what's happened to him has caught him, given him a way to live in this changed form without wanting to break it down into compost. He's transfixed.

"Scully." She's angry at him, and he knows it. He can't really blame her. "I couldn't stay in there."

The great thing about angry is that it's fundamentally the more energetic fraternal twin of scared.

"You should have woken me up," she argues, as steadily as she can manage. There's a paper back clenched in one hand, a convenient prop to focus on. She holds it up.

"I got us coffee." But he's going to have to slither out of the woodwork to get it.

"I can only drink so much herbal tea." Being bundled off to bed, a wayward child in her home, a third time was in the cards, and he couldn't stand it. Leaving her proof of his existence and finding an outlet for the overwhelming desire to do something had seemed fairer for them both.

Apparently, it wasn't.

When he stands, he's thinner somehow, the branches behind him more full. They're growing the tender green leaves of early springtime. One long leg steps over the ring of roses he's created, and then the other, and he's standing before Scully. "But coffee sounds okay."

There's a deep, bewildering stab of fear: this is how she loses him. It's not the inhumanity that bothers her but the wilderness, the sense that if she'd slept another hour maybe he wouldn't stand to meet her, maybe he'd sink into the fertile earth and stay there. It's not a rational fear, she tells herself; but she doesn't know.

Her gaze stays locked on his until he's in front of her, when she looks down to rustle the coffee cups out of the bag, handing one over.

"There's a bench up this way." She'd rather keep his feet on the pavement if she can. She gives him a considering look, not quite meeting his eyes; she hasn't bottled up her worry, knows it will break like a wave if he looks too hard at her.

"How's your manna?"

The hand that grips the coffee cup is slender at the fingertips, nailless, his pinky a twig with another, smaller twig branching from it. A leaf bud marks the middle finger of his other hand. Mulder tries not to look at either of them. He can forget the wrongness when he's doing something else, but not when he stares at himself.

It's easier to look at Scully, even if doing that comes with a guilt that sits in his chest and waits to be acknowledged. He doesn't regret leaving, or even choosing not to tell her; he regrets that he wasn't here before, hasn't been here long enough to keep her fears at bay.

"Fine, I think." He's able to sit on the bench, if closer to the edge of the seat than usual. "Yours?"

It's an utter embarrassment to be so plagued with a fear of abandonment. She knows it's unreasonable-- it isn't his fault that he hasn't been here, and if he disappears again it won't be on him, either. But she can't help herself. The pounding of her heart when she woke up alone hasn't fully subsided.

"I think I could use a little," she says casually. It's not untrue. More, she can see what he's been doing and she knows how hard the exhaustion can hit, and suddenly, after heavy use of powers. Exploring the undersea caverns of Marilla had been a delight, but she'd definitely needed some contact to recover once they'd come back to the beach.

She scoots a little closer and hooks her arm around his without asking. Deal with it, Fox. Certainly it's somewhat bolder than she'd be at home, but maybe her time here has socialized her to be more openly touchy-feely; or maybe she's just that worried about him running himself into the ground, potentially more literally than usual.

It's not really about the manna, he thinks, and he doesn't really mind. When he slips his arm out of her grasp, it's only so he can wrap it around her shoulders and pull her a little closer. He's already inclined toward touch as a general rule - blame a chilly early life, maybe, a dad who believed in handshakes over hugs - and if Scully needs the closeness, then closeness is what she's getting.

Somehow, it makes him feel more like himself, too. He can't explain it. He's just here, and when he's capable of typing on a keyboard again, his field journal is getting a major workout.

"Better?" he asks, after a bit, glancing down at her.

God, that really is better.

He tugs her closer and she lets him, leaning into the embrace, not even bothered at the arboreal texture or the way a stray twig catches a strand of hair. Wrapping her hands around her coffee cup she lets her eyes fall shut and focuses on the solid, certain sense of his presence beside her.

This is the sort of thing she lets herself indulge in, now and then, and tries not to think about whether they're crossing the line they perpetually toe. It's different here because everything is at a baseline so permissive, the value on contact and intimacy overriding the social mores people come in with. Passerby aren't likely to think twice.

Certainly they must be synched-- at least in some low-level way-- but she doesn't feel conscious of any difference.

"Better," she affirms, but doesn't pull away.

[ n a m e ; ]	Dana Katherine Scully
[ c a n o n ; ]	The X-Files
[ g a m e ; ]	spicy times in noctiumrp

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