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

"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.

Mulder's not tired, but he knows when Scully is - nearly before she starts yawning. And they both know about the dangers outside his door. It leaves them with limited options, just like Dana "I'm going to make you sleep if it kills me" Scully probably wanted.

"Probably too late to catch a cab," he says, glancing out the window. Does this place have cabs? Not that it'd help, if the driver ended up infected with the curse. "Look, you take the bed - I can go into the other room."

'Bed' in a manner of speaking, anyway. He'll just flick the lights out on here, and maybe he can sit on a different floor, see if it changes his mind about feeling drowsy.

She knows he tends towards insomnia, and she knows the signs well enough not to have to ask. Scully, on the other hand, can sleep nearly anywhere; she dozes off on stakeouts, in waiting rooms, long car ridges when she's not consciously making the effort. A lifetime of staying so busy she needs to snatch every minute she can, maybe. Maybe it's just growing up in the chaos of base housing.

What it means is: it honestly doesn't matter if he sleeps on the floor. Not for a night.

"We'll be fine," she says decisively, like it's not weird to take your friend to bed. It's against protocol, sure, but there are always extenuating circumstances. The equivalent of a town with one motel room left. It's fine.

She does soften a little, though, when she looks at him.

"Synchrony," she points out. "It'll help you relax."

Mulder raises an eyebrow, making no effort to hide his dubiousness - but all the same, nowhere near saying no, no, I'll go lay on a hardwood floor somewhere else.

Scully sounds like she's made up her mind. And yet, he can't help asking, "Are you sure?"

She's stubborn, but the synchrony marks a pretty significant difference between motel rooms in the boonies and falling asleep side by side on the planet of casual sex. There's a sensual component in general, if not for them personally - and if they kick dirt over the line, Mulder's not sure they can unkick it.

It's certainly not something she'd suggest at home, though there's a tiny part of her that thinks it would still help with his inability to sleep, not to be alone. Would she insist, if she hadn't been here for six months by herself? Is it the gem, or the world, influencing her to be more permissive, more affectionate, less bound by the rigidity of her own rules?

Who can say. In her own mind it's easy enough to justify: he doesn't sleep, he needs to sleep, it's like prescribing a tranquilizer without the pill casing. She isn't offering anything lascivious.

"Just lay down," she says, shifting to stretch out her own legs and scoot a little closer to the heart of the blanket vortex.

Mulder may have hit upon an instinctual link with his herbaceous abilities but Scully has more practice than he does with synchrony, and certainly more practice with emotional control than most people. She reaches to touch him and this time the thread of synchrony is more obvious: deep and focused, calm and suffused with her drowsiness. It's just a brief brush at first, an example, before she rolls onto her side facing away from him, figuring it will be a little less awkward that way.

He assumes it'll be more of that general sense of closeness, the thing that's always there but now is there just a little more. He assumes wrong. If anything, it feels like Scully's invented some kind of topical sedative, one that works one hell of a lot faster than anything else he's tried. If he doesn't wake up groggy tomorrow, it'll be a miracle cure.

"That," he tells her, his mouth quirking up on one side, "seems like cheating."

Not that he minds. Getting up - to the sound of creaking wood, which doesn't say anything charitable about his knees in this transformation - he tosses the takeout bags in the kitchen trashcan and hits the lights.

In the darkness, as he stretches out beside Scully, Mulder finds himself wondering if this is a situation where touching's necessary or not. He's already a little closer to tired than he usually is at this hour, and even if she claims to be all in on this plan, putting an arm around her still sounds like a fast-track to an HR-mandated class on sexual harassment. It's hard to ignore his own perceptions of Scully, and all the ways the woman he worked with would never have suggested this in D.C.

Eventually, after his usual shifting around, he lands on crooking one arm up and letting it rest next to her back. Close, kind of touching, but not too much. Just enough that he might benefit from some of Scully's ability to sleep nearly on command.

And if he ends up with an arm wrapped around her anyway, his face buried in her hair, that's the fault of some unconscious, dreaming Mulder.

It's not cheating, it's just using her resources in full. She'd feel stranger about the influence but they've been linked together to some extent nearly all day; synchrony is easy between them but it's not inevitable, it's always an offer and acceptance. She doesn't have room to doubt that he doesn't want the help.

As he settles against her she's halfway asleep already, only reacting with a little puff of breath, satisfied to have him so close. There are lines they haven't crossed, boundaries she isn't sure they should threaten, but the truth is their relationship is intimate in a whole other way. Here, where that closeness offers so many advantages, she just can't bring herself not to leverage it.

She sleeps easily, though she won't be able to guess whether unconscious synchrony is a thing; it could just be the reassurance of having a trustworthy body at her back.

But eventually she wakes. Not scandalized, but a little bemused, trying to inch her way out from under his arm without waking him and calling attention to it.

Ok, in the light of day, maybe it's a little inappropriate.

She moves, and so does he, making a noise almost like speech as he tries to pull her closer. Mostly asleep, and then less so, and then the scent of her hair - that's the thing that pulls his eyes open, slightly disoriented by it. It takes him a moment, comfortable as he is, to realize his arm's draped over her waist, the line of her body dangerously close to his. Mulder can't remember the last time he's been so comfortable, and it's because he's breathing down Scully's neck.

(It could be worse, he'll think later. The blood could have rushed somewhere besides his head, in that moment of realization.)

"Sorry," he mumbles in a voice still half-smothered by sleep, his mouth a little too close to her ear. And then it occurs to him that that's probably making things worse, and he lets go of her, rolling away so he can clamber to his feet.

There's really nothing to apologize for, but she doesn't say that. It's nice to wake up tucked against somebody that way. (Whatever extracurricular synchrony she gets up to, Scully is not habitually a cuddler. That doesn't mean she doesn't like it, only that she does not generally allow for it.)

It's been six months without him breathing down her neck. She could be more bothered by it.

"You slept," she points out, uncurling and daintily wiping the corner of her mouth with her thumb. It's a simple fact. She doesn't bother to qualify it as good or bad because it's sleep, and that is never a guarantee for him. Medically, this is a simple therapeutic success.

"I don't suppose you invested in a coffeepot?"

He looks at her for a moment, not so much uncomprehending as unsure he comprehends right. This isn't the Scully he last saw at the J. Edgar Hoover Building a week ago. It's not not her, either - but it's hard to square that woman with the one stretched out on his blankets, asking for coffee.

(Maybe that's unfair of him, assuming she'd be tense and stressed out at the idea of waking up as the little spoon. She of all people knows bodies, and everything they're capable of when they're asleep.)

(Maybe what's really bothering him is the fact that he's bothered. But that would require admitting as much to himself.)

"I slept," he agrees, running a hand through his hair. It sticks up oddly despite that, no thanks to what's clearly a missing chunk on the left side. "If you could market that, you'd make a mint, you know. And there's a place across the street."

[ 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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