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

"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."

"Renamed for all of us earthlings." And non-earthlings, for that matter. He can't help but wonder of this is stranger or more familiar for the people from other planets. Thinking about this makes his french fries, not potato but reasonably close, suddenly seem more alien than anything else from today.

(Potatoes don't count as vegetables once they're fried. Mulder can put them away like they're nothing.)

"If you want to go shopping tomorrow," he continues, "I could use a new aquarium. Some weird fish. Maybe an alien treasure chest."

"I haven't had a chance to ask someone who's not from some version of Earth what their perspective is. Maybe it just translates to whatever the closest equivalent is."

Is it insensitive of her to be eating a salad? For that matter, is she eating salad because she likes salad or has she got plants on the brain, like buying that giant tub of chicken in Arkansas? (Really, she eats a lot of salad, it doesn't mean anything.)

"There must be a pet store somewhere," she muses. "You could get a little submerged Ford Taurus instead of a floating UFO."

He laughs. "They deserve a Corvette at least."

Whatever "they" end up being. His ability to care for pets always felt slightly variable at home - would be come home one night from a long trip and find the fish belly-up? - but he's got a lot less to occupy his time here so far. Something unapologetically alien looking by Earth standards, with lots of legs, sounds ideal.

It's quiet for a bit, the two of them there in his empty apartment, fishless and content. Eventually, Mulder says, "We'll have to pick up a television, while we're at it. These little screens aren't the same."

Turns out he needs a sickly glow on him to fall asleep, even on another planet.

But she and Mulder are the alien visitors, here, and they're usually in a rented Taurus. That point she doesn't argue, though, because a Corvette would be cuter for whatever alien fish or other critters he ends up with. The wildlife here is so bizarre she can't convey it, so they'll just have to see what's on offer.

"I haven't caught much alien programming," she muses. "Their books are interesting-- I can't always tell what's fiction and what's history." Maybe it's all the same. "Not interested in more video games?"

"And fall asleep while monsters wander past me?" He grimaces at the thought. "It's hard enough without wearing a skin suit."

The suit itself is nowhere to be seen - it's one of the few things hung up in the closet right now. He hasn't shaken the mid-90s perception of video game equipment as too delicate and expensive to risk.

Never mind his sleep schedule, though. He dips a fry in a sauce more reminiscent of mustard than ketchup. "Of course, if you want to spend the night fighting them off with me..."

"Maybe another night, Reynard," she laughs. For one thing her kit is at home; besides, she feels a little more self-conscious if she can't just be the mysterious Rokovoko. Once everything settles, though, maybe. It's a decent way to pass the evening.

"And you're not getting away with another night not sleeping."

"I don't think that's up to you," he answers, giving her a wry smile. She's been on the road with him enough to realize that insomnia can catch him just about anywhere. "Unless you sit here with a gun to my head - but I think I'd have new reasons to stay awake."

Edited 2022-09-13 00:45 (UTC)

"Mulder," she says fondly. "I don't need a gun."

It's not seriously threatening in any way, shape, or form, but then again, she did shoot him once already, so. You know.

"There's a lot going on here," she points out, poking his knee with the handle of her fork. "You need to be able to keep up."

If she thinks making him laugh is going to convince him to let her stay - well, she doesn't even have to work that hard, really. All she'd really have to do is fail to leave.

"Have I given any indication," he says, swallowing his last french fry with a smile, "that I'm not keeping up? I'll double my caffeine intake if you're worried."

But the reality, isn't going to be stated unless it's dragged out of him and probably doesn't need to be said anyway, is that the rumpled blankets are more sign of restlessness than any kind of sleep. He gets at least a few hours every night, and that's good enough.

Probably.

All she does is roll her eyes at that, and get back to her salad.

And... fail to leave she does. She eats and tucks the trash back into the takeout bag, pokes at her network device idly, they chat about this and that, and Scully makes absolutely no move toward leaving.

Eventually she does yawn.

[ 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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