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

"Huh. I thought I'd be stuck like this for the rest of the week." So yeah, he's taking the amulet off - probably with Scully's help, given the state of his hands - and he actually has motivation to try to sleep tonight. The thought of changing back is growing more appealing, the way it probably ought to have been in the first place, enough so that he wishes he had it in him to try to nap. Maybe he could outwit the amulet.

When she mentions she hasn't tried it out herself, he laughs. "You never purposely turned yourself into a monster? Say it ain't so."

"It's only a week when it's the week. Assuming you change, even-- not everyone does, and some don't every time."

She fidgets aimlessly with the strange jewelry before slipping it into a pocket.

"Or during the week, you could use it to change to something different, if there's one that's particularly uncomfortable."

She settles back against his shoulder.

"I thought it would be useful to have it for research, I just haven't found a question to justify it, yet."

If he really wanted to see, she thinks, she'd try it tonight; it's not so bad, though she's not eager to invite nightmares. But she can't imagine he'd take the offer. Besides, tonight he absolutely needs to get some damn sleep.

"And if you come up with one, you have a guinea pig to experiment on." Which is to say: Mulder's willing to volunteer for another tour of duty if he needs to. In the meanwhile, he finishes off the dregs of his coffee - he's been sipping it all this while, holding it precariously between his twig-fingers - and sets the cup next to him on the bench.

A moment later, he glances down, realizes he's netted both of them with dark green leaves and little white flowers. With a gesture at their shoes - "Too bad neither of us wants to open a florist's. I can't stop growing things."

She'd like to say she wouldn't force him to do this again, but.... she might ask, if they had a worthwhile question. Maybe not this particular one. Maybe once he's got a feel for the transformations in general.

She leans over to look down, and laughs.

"You could probably do that without being a dryad." She picks up one foot and tries to shake the growth off. Hopefully not another ruined pair of shoes.

"We can see if I can get you into the lab, run a few scans. Make the most of this," she says, plucking idly at the rough texture of his arm.

The flowers come off her shoes without effort, their roots all still in the ground. But Mulder can't resist pointing out, "Could be worse, you know. They could be growing out of your mattress."

If he'd stuck around and fallen into plant dreams, would he have woken to a garden springing up around him?

The mention of the lab has his attention. Curiosity always wins, after all, or almost always - and he wants to take as much advantage of this form as they can manage. "Think they'd let us in this early?"

(Is it early? He lost track of time sometime around when he left Scully's apartment.)

She'll take flowers growing out of her mattress over flowers growing out of herself; morning glory wreathing her wrists, bittersweet trailing down the back of her neck, creeping reminders of solitude. Maybe she'll get lucky and no one will mention that to him.

"We can walk through the park first," she suggests. Getting in shouldn't be an issue but this early it would probably cause a stir.

And it seems to be good for him, being out in the fresh air, in nature. In fact that's exactly what she'd advised: to find what this other body wants and try to accommodate it, the same way she craves company and warmth as a naga.

He's loath to let go of Scully, having grown entirely comfortable where they are - but the vague instinct to put down roots, whether literal or metaphorical, is easy enough to overcome. (This is the only problem with synchrony with her, he thinks: at some point, it stops. And it's definitely the fault of synchrony.)

"Give me some time to photosynthesize," he jokes, except it isn't really a joke. With the sun on him, he's got the feeling he could live on it, if he stayed like this. Coffee in the morning, maybe some small meal at night - probably for the sake of having dinner with Scully, to be honest - and the light pouring down on him for everything else. He stands up, reluctant, and offers a hand to her before remembering what it is right now. Delicate sticks, just a little horrifying when he focuses on it, and not something that's likely to pull her up.

In the course of their partnership, she has seen Mulder lose himself in any number of cases. Knows his tendency to disappear into some other mind is part of why he isn't a profiler anymore; he goes too deep too easily, but it gets results, and he has never been good at protecting himself when he could give himself up to some better cause.

If there's anything in his current form that scares her, it's that: he feels tenuous, like she could lose him to the undergrowth if she doesn't keep a firm grasp on him. A changeling child made of driftwood, left behind when the other was taken, seeking a chance to trade back.

Thank God he didn't try the spider thing or he'd be webbing the buildings by now, probably.

She stands under her own power and then threads her fingers through his branch of a hand, trying not to look too careful but trying to be as careful as she can. If he breaks one now, will it regrow? Or will he wake up tomorrow with his ring finger ending at the knuckle?

"I spend a lot of time basking," she admits, maybe to remind him that this, too, shall pass; that he's not the only one even if he's the only one right now.

"On a flat rock?" It's teasing, but the kind he thinks (hopes) Scully won't mind. Even with the X-ray in the back of his mind, he can't quite put the full picture together: skin and scale and muscle, not just the bones of a snake-woman. He finds himself picturing her far smaller than twenty feet long, gives her the pattern of the coral-snake ouroboros tattoo she pretends she doesn't have - but all along her body, face included. A snake with red hair, is basically what he's imagining.

And considering he's turned into a tree crowned with beach grass (and more roses budding at his hairline, threatening to circle his head like a crown), he can't exactly judge.

Speaking of his physical form, his fingers still bend, but they're elongated enough that they might as well remain stick-straight. A few steps away from the bench, he pauses, frowning down at their hands. "Hold on a second."

They grew with magic, albeit unconsciously, and at some point, like Pinocchio, he'll become a real boy again. There's no reason he shouldn't be able to pull them back a little, right? Detransforming, untransforming, whatever you want to call it - that's part of this process, too. Closing his eyes, he concentrates on them, on a sort of I just want my hands back demand of the universe. And after a moment or two, they're shifting, sliding through Scully's fingers and becoming more recognizably hands. No longer purely stick, only five per hand now, the leaf dropping off of his finger and drifting towards the walkway. They're not human, but they're at least what he woke up with.

"If I could find a rock large enough," she says blandly. Long Scully is long, as it turns out. "In the grass, on the beach." Take a moment to enjoy that one; like a serpentine mermaid, a redheaded ouroboros twined on the edge of a tropical sea with slit-pupiled eyes and too many hands skimming over her own scaled, muscular form.

She watches curiously, fascinated and a little horrified at the way his flesh shifts. It's like a time-lapse of a bonsai tree in reverse.

"Impressive," she murmurs. Please don't ever do that again Mulder, it's awful.

Mulder imagines it more vividly than he normally imagines anything, and certainly more intensely than he intends to. Unknowingly true to reality, for that matter, with fewer scales than he'd originally pictured, as though someone pulled the memory from Scully and plunked into his head. It's...well, it's a lot of things, fascinating and uniquely inspiring in ways he's not letting himself examine in any detail.

He tucks the thought somewhere in the back of his mind, with the rest of the intellectual curiosities he's encountered as an agent, and makes himself focus on pruning his hands instead.

When he opens his eyes, he's grinning - but there's an edge of weariness to it. Becoming more human takes more energy, it seems, than giving himself over to the magic the natural world has imbued in him. "Not bad, huh."

He has every intent of playing it off that he's fine, because of course he does. Still, now that his hand can close around hers, it does. Firmly.

Is she always so reliant on the comfort of his touch, or is that linked to the need, here, for synchrony? She can't guess. Doesn't want to confront the question or what it means. The truth is Mulder is more necessary to her than she can explain, and having him here-- whatever he looks like-- is like a small bone being set, the restoration of a missing puzzle piece.

"You need to keep an eye on your manna," she reminds him again, but she's not that worried, not as long as they're together. She doesn't intend to let go until she's certain he's all right. (Never mind the fact that they've been joined at the hip already long enough that he can't possibly have exhausted what he's got. They're going to be rich at this rate.)

"I didn't find it so instinctual." She pauses. "Though... I don't have to breathe under water, you know."

He lifts their hands a little and answers, "I think my manna's covered."

And probably will be for the foreseeable future, for that matter. Their work unites them, but he has to believe it's not the only thing keeping their friendship alive; even with a seriously diminished need to investigate, they're going to be in each other's hair more often than not. (He hopes so, anyway. The idea of living here on Noctium and not seeing Scully leaves him feeling strangely lost. Her absence was manageable right up until he found out she was here.)

"Really? I might have to ask to be transferred over to Sapphire." Being able to swim laps with his head down the entire time sounds significantly more useful than starting a greenhouse.

... okay, yeah, he's probably more than good. She's going to just. Not let go anyway. Just in case. Medical necessity, you know.

She doesn't even think twice about spending time with him. Sure, they don't work together; but they're a team whether or not they're on the x files. It doesn't occur to her that they wouldn't stay close.

"I wonder if you could. Petition Malachite, or something. I don't know if anyone's ever tried." She considers it, but returns to the more personal. "There are reefs and underwater caves off the coast in Marilla, I've never seen anything like it."

He could explore too, if a friendly Sapphire was willing to share their ability with a kiss. Scully doesn't know that, so she doesn't have to agonize over telling him.

"I'll find out." He's not overly concerned with which stone he has, generally speaking, but being able to compare the experiences seems worthwhile. Maybe sapphire's harder to make work. (Or maybe Scully struggled to tap into whatever connection they have with the gems. She must've had to overcome her own inclination toward skepticism.) "It sounds beautiful. Do you go often?"

His sense of alien geography is still weak, here in his first week in Sumarlok; it could be on the other side of the planet, and he wouldn't be any the wiser.

It's difficult to do magic when you so aggressively don't believe in magic. Eventually she'll tell him about it.

"Just a couple of times over the summer. I thought about another trip over transformation week..." But she's not ditching him, and asking him to come on vacation (separately) seems like kind of a lot, so she just trails off.

"That sounds great." She doesn't have to worry about ditching him if he just invites himself along. And if she's going to some tropical paradise, he's definitely going, too - unless she tells him no, anyway. "Maybe a long weekend."

On paper it might not seem like a huge distinction, but in practice, there's a world of difference between asking someone to join you on a tropical vacation on a very horny planet, and just letting someone take the same tropical vacation at the same time nearby. Totally above-board and not weird at all.

"You'll like it. You have to ride a sky whale to get there."

She does not love that part, but there are indignities one must suffer for all good things. At least she's not some poor sap who gets seasick.

"A skywhale." Somehow, he finds room to sound doubtful about this - not because of the possibility of motion sickness (he gets seasick, not whalesick), but because even living among aliens, skywhales sound like the stuff of children's books. "I'll have to save up some cash first, but I'm interested."

What can she do but shrug? She knows how it sounds, though for the most part her books had whales firmly in the sea where they belong.

"Well you're off to the right start," she points out, swinging their linked hands loosely. Synchrony is the ideal moneymaker, she can probably spot him if she has to.

"Yeah, someone, uh, mentioned that." His smile's gone. He hadn't started looking into it, but Scully seems likely to know the details - and she'll be a better judge of how coercive the whole thing is. "Where we're from, that'd be a problem for Vice."

Which is to say: his guess is "pretty damned coercive." One more reason, he's guessing, that Scully's been getting by on as little manna as she can manage.

"Potentially," she agrees, frowning slightly. "It's not quite as bad as it sounds at first; I've heard of people who achieve synchrony by sparring with their friends, and if you have people you're comfortable with it's easy to fit in to whatever you'd be doing anyway. Interestingly, the gem culture does place an enormous value on consent; there are virtually no reports of assault, and I don't think it's because it's going unreported."

That said, between the incentivization and the permissive culture and the environmental factors... yeah. She's not going to argue about what goes on here.

The funny part is Scully's problem has always been with the necessity of emotional intimacy, more than sex.

She hesitates a little; there are very good reasons not to discuss their personal lives, either hers or his, and she doesn't want to break that unspoken rule especially when they're synched. But she's known Mulder a long time; she's seen his video collection, she's met people from his past. Possibly he'd enjoy this place. She's not going to judge him. (Well, she's going to try her best, anyway.)

"But I do think there are people who make a perfectly comfortable living solely through synchrony."

"Who could blame them?" The thing is, if everyone's having a good time, he's hard-pressed to judge. The idea's already taking root in his mind as a possibility; the less time he spends at some daily grind, the more time he can devote to figuring this place out. They don't seem likely to hire him onto law enforcement at any level he'd be interested in, after all, and he has no designs on starting a career in retail or picking up basic lab tech.

"How're they tracking it? Does this -" a glance at their hands - "count?"

Even if that's easy passive income, it suggests a level of oversight that's frankly unsettling. Connecting his personal life to an institution as large as whatever banking system they use here is putting a few too many eyes on his movements. Paranoia, thy name is Mulder.

"The actual measurement mechanism is hard to get information on. I think it has something to do with the embedded gems. If you've got one of their palm pilot devices it should have a program to show your current balance-- there's a stipend paid out at the end of the month."

Simple facts, that's fine. She's not gonna be his wingwoman, though.

"I'd imagine we're doing all right, actually. You and I are-- close. It's harder with people you don't know or trust."

He makes a face, glancing down once more at their hands - and his gem, hidden between their palms. Too good to be true, apparently. It's not surprising that an alien implant would have downsides, especially given the barcode Scully'd identified during a case a few years ago, but the realization still makes his skin itch.

Has anyone tried digging them out? he wants to ask, but that'll just worry Scully. He's seen how she's looked at him in the last day, like he might turn out to be a trick of the light at any moment. If he wants to borrow one of her scalpels and use it on himself, he's going to have to find a different source of information beforehand.

(And then she'll kick his ass. But if he looks into it and decides not to do it, and she knows about it, he thinks some part of her is always going to wonder if he's going to change his mind.)

"Yeah. Found that out my first day." Though he doubts his mild discomfort had anything on Scully's. The newness of everything had disturbed him; for Scully, the synchrony itself seems like it'd be a hurdle to clear. "You said you'd found some people, right?"

[ 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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