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

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."

Consider: things are only awkward if you allow them to be awkward.
Consider: for half a year, Scully has had an alien chunk of rock slowly chipping away at her inhibitions.
Consider: perhaps Agent Scully is in fact in love with him.

Actually, don't consider that last one. She tries not to.

Unorthodox as it is there's an argument to be made that it served a medical purpose, and it certainly made her feel better, too, to know he got some rest and to wake up reassured that he hadn't disappeared.

"Hmmn." Another thing for the shopping list. Not that she plans on staying over regularly, but come on, Mulder. "Just let me fix my hair," she says with a sigh, standing up. His abysmal furnishing must include a bathroom at least. She's going to have a slight walk of shame aura but she'll clean up as best she can.

As far as the third point goes, he'll be damned if he thinks about it on any level. The world is full of lonely men who misread colleagues' kindness as attraction, and Fox Mulder has no intention of joining the club. He's seen how hard she works to be taken seriously in the field; assuming she looks at him and sees anything other than a friend would only undermine her efforts.

(That people look at her and don't see a force of nature is going to baffle him to the end of his days. He wouldn't believe it if he hadn't seen it for himself - the reality of her is self-evident, as far as he's concerned.)

(Not that he's thinking about any of this consciously. Not on a regular basis, anyway. But buried somewhere deep, informing everything else, it's there.)

"Sure." He's already wandering toward his bedroom, half-absorbed by trying to crack his neck. "Bathroom's over here."

He, at least, has some more clothes in the otherwise empty bedroom. Enough that he can shuck off yesterday's jeans and t-shirt and replace them with today's. The chunk missing from his hair is still kind of a problem, and he could stand to shave, but it doesn't seem all that important compared to Scully's request for coffee. Every day in Sumarlok feels like a day off, so far, and on a morning like this, he's a little lazy.

Back in the living room, he's checking his palm pilot with a grimace when Scully comes back out. "We might have to put shopping on hold. Looks like I'll be a little short until the end of the month."

It matters her to her immensely that Mulder has always treated her with impeccable professional respect. Sometimes he's a complete asshole when they disagree, but he's just as much of an asshole to other men they encounter. He never insists she's wrong just because of her sex, never mistrusts her expertise, always backs her up when she's right. All of that matters.

There have been rumors, she knows, since the day she set foot in that basement office. No one dares call her Mrs. Spooky to her face, but she knows. When she was younger it bothered her more, truth be told. It rolls off her back easily now; those people don't understand the half of their relationship.

And here she is in his bathroom, splashing water on her face and trying to smooth the wrinkles out of slept-in clothes. Six years of not sleeping with a guy and you end up rumpled in his bed anyway. It almost makes her laugh.

She's not quite up to her usual standard when she emerges, but it could be worse.

"Some places might give Gembonded credit," she suggests. "I could spot you for small stuff."

She could... probably spot him for larger stuff. But she'd rather not say so.

Scully looks like Scully when she comes out of the bathroom, as far as Mulder's concerned. The details beyond that don't really matter to him - though it's kind of novel to see her freckles so clearly. If that means she's a little less put-together than usual...well, she can probably see the 5 o'clock shadow gracing his jaw. At least she's not alone.

"We can pick up a Mr. Coffee and a frying pan," he says, as he locks the door. The idea of spending Scully's money doesn't exactly thrill him, but he can see he'll have money coming his way eventually. "Next time you stay over, I'll make pancakes."

It's not a matter of if she does but when. He can already tell he'll miss her tonight, as ambivalent as he feels about waking up wrapped around her.

Normally she takes as much care with her appearance here as she does at home-- impeccable makeup, fairly formal clothes, hair in perfect order-- but for some reason she ran out in a hurry yesterday. Who can remember.

"I didn't know you cooked without a phone," she teases. Pot, kettle; the occasional baking of chicken to throw on top of a bagged salad does not a gourmet make.

She doesn't argue the point, when instead of if. It's probably a bad idea to make a habit of sleeping with your coworker, even therapeutically and platonically. Someone is bound to get the wrong idea.

(In the privacy of her own mind, she can admit it might be her.)

Should they be holding hands again? Somehow it feels different to reach out this morning, though she won't shy away if he does; he just checked his balance, he'd know if he needs it. Probably.

Her fingers itch to grab his, though. Perhaps she's been too permissive with herself.

[ 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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