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

... 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?"

There's something appealing about the idea of paying your bills with quiet affection. (Or other things, but she doesn't let her thoughts slide that way. At least not in the daytime. Nor in polite company. And especially not in Mulder's company.)

"I've made some friends. I'll introduce you around, eventually." She doesn't want to spoil the surprise of eighteenth century pirates or the seventeenth-century centaur she reads bedtime stories with on occasion. Surely he'll get a kick out of that. Though she's not above dangling some of those possibilities if the conversation gets too prurient; there are things he just doesn't need to know.

"Wherever people come from, we're all in the same boat here. So most people are willing to help out."

That's a polite no, I don't want to talk about my friends, and he tries to leave it at that. Six months alone, and he has no right to demand anything from her about that time - but he's curious. Who Scully's met here and liked, what kinds of people she's been drawn to, all the things that have happened since they last saw each other.

"It's convenient," he agrees, and glances up at the sky. The sun's higher now, and he needs something to distract himself from the mystery of Scully's time here. "Think the lab's open yet? We could do some scans."

What if she just wants to walk around holding hands all day, Mulder, have you considered that? (She does not because she's going to need to eat eventually. Not everyone here can photosynthesize.

Really she doesn't mean to shut him out; there's just so much that needs to be experienced to believe.

She hums in agreement, and tugs him down a path back out of the park, heading for the GemSci headquarters.

"We'll do a base line sometime after you're back to normal. It'll be interesting to see how human anatomy corresponds to plantlike structures."

Under normal circumstances, wandering around holding hands probably wouldn't be his first choice. It feels weirdly like being twelve years old again, with a girlfriend he'll keep for all of three days before they both move on to greener pastures. But here, there's a purpose - and with a gun to his head, he'd have to admit that it's helping keep him grounded.

"If you have anesthetic, we can peel off some bark and see what's underneath," he offers dryly. It's like clockwork - when he's back to thinking about how his body's changed, it stops feeling like his and starts pinging some instinct to pull it apart and see how it works.

"Mulder, no, I am not going to vivisect you."

For God's sake, Fox. She's not entirely surprised by this self-destructive turn of mind but no way is she going to encourage it. Or take up whittling.

"I'd learn less from that than from a scan, anyway. We're not doing anything today we can't repeat when the transformation wears off."

Not to mention the fact that she's half-wondering if she'd be able to feel it if he got hurt; the difference between her awareness of his mood now and normally is subtle, but she's played around enough with deeper levels of synchrony to think it's within the realm of possibility.

"Scans, then I need some breakfast, and after that we can explore, if you like."

"I'm kidding." He's not, entirely, or he wouldn't need to say he is - but Mulder's willing to inject a polite fiction here. People take skin biopsies all the time is waiting in the back of his mouth, itching to be said. But he doesn't.

Judging by the rest of the technology here, a mix of way-beyond-home and kiddie fantasy movie - he might still be stuck on the skywhale thing - a scan might be enough, anyway. And there's still the matter of breaking off a few of the branches on his back, or maybe all of them, in search of good samples. Pruning the grass on his head. Picking a bouquet out of the roses he's vaguely aware are threatening to bloom again. The mix of fascination and disgust with which he regards this shifted form still has plenty of outlets.

"If you're hungry, we can start there." He's not, but he's also not in that much of a hurry to be anywhere.

There's a world of difference between a skin biopsy and peeling away sections. She knows him too well to mistake his suggestion for the former. And maybe she'll take some samples, but more along the lines of giving him a haircut. She's curious, but not so curious as to risk harming him. All the more because she knows he'd let her.

"Science first. Maybe you'll work up an appetite."

Could he survive entirely on synchrony and sunlight? Curious, but she doesn't want to test the theory.

"You'll have to show me where you're staying, too." She'd make him a key, but maybe it's better not to-- she wouldn't want to be caught with other guests. Wouldn't want to stumble in on him either.

"I'm fine," he says immediately, too interested in how long he can subsist on photosynthesis to consider getting another coffee and a croissant.

They do go to the lab first, where scanning and samples happen: none invasive, even as Mulder picks at his rough skin like he's trying to see if he can flake some bark off with a minimum of fuss. Instead, they cut beach grass from his head, another rose, and break off a twig from his back - the thinnest ones lack nerve endings, but the heavy branches they grow from don't, and Scully refuses to entertain suggestions of taking a chainsaw to a bough in the name of science. (And Mulder knows it's a bad idea, he does. The compulsion still comes back whenever he's focused on his body.)

After that, they brunch. And wander around. And hold hands, despite the fact that he's pretty sure they don't need to at this point. The city becomes more familiar over the course of the afternoon, the time slipping away faster than he might have guessed it would. There's no case to fixate on, and they still have reason to enjoy each other's company. Of course they do - but outside the context of Scully, it'd be confounding to want to spend that much time with a colleague. God knows he wouldn't sightsee with Skinner, given the opportunity.

On the way back to his place, Scully insists on picking up takeout, and Mulder only puts up a token complaint. (He's getting hungry, just not as hungry, and he wants to hear more about...well, everything.)

"Home sweet home," he mutters, pushing the door open and flicking on a ceiling light. There's...nothing in there. A pile of blankets and pillows in the center of the small living room, and that's about it.

Non-damaging samples are a good compromise; she lets him get away with not eating but won't take him up on the offer to count growth rings in his humerus. Life is matter of give and take. Either way, it's a wealth of data added to her little flash-drive of scans, and that puts her in a good mood. Or maybe it's just the company that puts her in a good mood.

The thing is that even when he's bad company, Mulder is familiar and solid and reassuring; a constant that has let her weather the storms of their work and her life outside it alike. She is more glad to have him here than she knows how to put into words, and doesn't have to put into words to convey.

At the end of the day, he takes her home to-- well, honestly, pretty much what she expected of him. She can't help but laugh.

"Mulder, you don't even--" Not even a card table. Good Lord. "We're taking you shopping tomorrow."

"I've been here a week," he grouses, then amends that statement. "Less than a week."

Though honestly, if Scully's laughing at the fact that he's found a way to have an empty apartment that's simultaneously still messy, he can't complain. It means she's here.

Kicking his shoes off, he shuts the door behind them and makes his way over to the nest that serves as every piece of furniture in the house. The bags of food get set down on the edge, and he sits in the center of the blankets, as though this is second nature. And in this body, with a shape that makes chairs difficult, it may as well be. "C'mon, we'll call it an indoor picnic."

It's not like it seems unusual, by Mulder standards. Frankly his nest looks like he's slept in it at least once or twice, and that's a good thing. All of this is terribly on brand.

"You at least need a couch and a table. Something with locking drawers if you're going to get a gun," she points out, rolling her eyes as she delicately sits cross-legged at the edge of his fabric sprawl.

She'd been planning to stay. Not on asking to stay or even insisting on it, just on doing it; this certainly complicates that notion. It's one thing to take the floor while he's on the couch or let him insist on giving her the couch, but there's not even that flimsy attempt at chivalry. There is not only one bed, there is no bed. She'll make it work. (It's fine. It's not weird.)

"Next time, there's a place I like in Primavera-- it's a little like Thai food," she says idly, opening up her salad.

"I'll get to it." It's a tolerant kind of annoyance, though, like he's enjoying the fact of bickering. He could use a couch, if nothing else - at some point, his back is going to start giving him hell if he spends every night contorted on the floor.

Locking drawers probably won't get as much use as they probably should, though - how will he startle awake and pull guns on people if his guns are locked up?

Blissfully unaware that he's hosting a sleepover as well as a picnic, he pulls out the sandwich he'd ordered. (It's mostly meat - eating vegetables feels weird right now.) "Sounds good to me. It's weird that so much of the food here is recognizable, isn't it?"

She is definitely enjoying the bickering. Suddenly it makes perfect sense that some people achieve synchrony while fighting; there's something about the type of opposition between them that makes her feel more in tune.

"A little," she agrees. "I haven't entirely figured out how much of it is a matter of perception; if I order tea with ginger is it really ginger or just some native equivalent? My goat-milk lotion, they aren't really goats. Just something very goat-like."

[ 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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