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Mulder shifted uncomfortably, frustrated at his lack of sleep and his retrospectively poor choice of pants. He adjusted his pillow, glancing to his right. Scully was dozing, breathing deeply. At first he was smitten, then envious, and then a little perturbed when a small snort escaped her.The heavy breathing was steadily turning to a snore. Great.He could never sleep on planes, even on night flights. Perhaps especially on night flights.Scully twitched in her sleep and Mulder’s eyes snapped back to her. A small smile spread across her face and she murmured, “Real cream cheese.”They were halfway through their journey home from another gruelling and unresolved case. Mulder played over the events in his mind. Could he have acted faster? Could he have cleared the zoo fence instead of attempting that barbed hole and getting stuck? Could he have wrestled that giraf-“BIGBIRD!” yelled Scully as she jolted violently awake, thrashing one arm at the window and the other into Mulder's unsuspecting eyeline.Mulder slowly turned to her, his eyes wide with excitement. What did she just say?A messy-haired child peered at them between the seats in front, then retreated.Scully came round, blinking her eyes back into focus. The first thing she saw was Mulder’s face, beaming at her with a goofy smile.“Scully…” he began.She quickly shook her head in defiance, stunned and frozen.“You had the dream too, didn't you?”“Mulder-”“You went there too!” He could barely contain himself.“How do I get off this plane,” she muttered.“Well, what happened?”**********Scully was at the local park with her nephew. It was a scorching day, and she could see heatwaves bouncing off the high bars of the swings. She slumped onto a bench in the shade.“Don't go too far!” she shouted.It really was humid. An uncomfortable, sticky, unrelenting heat. She reached into her rucksack for her flask, but it wasn't there.Just then, she sensed a figure next to her on the bench.“Deep Throat?!”He smiled warmly at her.**********“I've gotta ask this right now - was he wearing clothes?”“Uh-huh.”Mulder thought for a second.“His own clothes?”“Yep.”“No ballet attire?”“Nope.”“Great.”*********Scully started coughing from the hoarse dryness in her throat.“I'm sorry, excuse me,” she said. I'm sure I had a flask here somewhere…” She rummaged further into the rucksack but all she could find were rusks and an old tampon.“Would you like mine?”Deep Throat produced a rucksack of his own from somewhere and began pulling out a large glass container. Scully couldn’t help but snatch it from him, thirsty and desperate.She unscrewed the lid and rushed the strange, glass flask to her lips, her eyes closed in eager anticipation of some crisp, cool water. Which didn’t come.Something rubbery nudged her tongue.Her eyes flicked open and she lifted the flask for a closer look.She screamed, her mouth spraying water over a nearby child who ran away, traumatised.She looked down at the flask, now smashed to smithereens on the floor, revealing the alien body inside.“An Erlenmeyer flask!” she shrieked. “You didn’t say it was an Erlenmeyer flask!”**********“Your dreams are a little different to mine.”Scully snapped her fingers. “Dreams? So you admit it was just a dream. Just like yours. Nothing real about it.”“So nothing about it felt real?”“Well… not until you turned up.”**********As Scully sat staring at the baby alien on the tarmac floor, still with one ear on her nephew's laughs, she heard barking in the distance.Looking up, she saw the faint blur of a tiny pomeranian dog standing in front of a big building that had appeared from nowhere in the middle of the playground.“Queequeg?!”She started running. As she arrived at the warehouse**********Mulder gasped. The warehouse.**********
Queequeg darted through the cat flap**********Mulder gasped again, then frowned.“The warehouse had a cat flap?”**********Scully threw herself to the ground and frantically punched her arm through the flap. As she stretched further, she felt her arm extend, growing through the hole and deep into the inside. Her fingers elongated unnaturally, feeling along the dirty floor, grabbing blindly for her companion. Her arm grew longer still.**********“Is it only arms? Because I feel like this might've benefitted me more.”Scully smirked. “Eating human livers doesn't sound so bad now, huh?”**********Just then, a large wooden crate fell from the ceiling, landing straight on Scully's fingers, crushing them flat. She screamed.**********“Hey so when do I arrive? I thought I was in it too?”“CRUSHED, Mulder. My fingers were CRUSHED.”Mulder held up his hands in surrender.**********Her fingers were CRUSHED. As she cried out in agony, trying to wiggle the feeling back into her mangled hands, she knew there was no going back. She had to climb through the flap.**********“Wasn't there a door?”**********She squeezed her head through the small hole, then her shoulders. She pulled hard. Her hips protested, caught on the frame.She could see Queequeg sat at the end of the room. A man stooped down and stroked the dog. She heard him whisper, “One rat to another.”**********“There he is! But where am I?”**********“Don't you touch her Krycek!” she yelled.Just then the door swung open, with Scully still in it. Her legs dragged across the floor.“Heyyyyy!” she cried.**********“So there WAS a door!”**********The Smoking Man looked down at Scully and placed a cigarette in his mouth. “This is unexpected.”Finally, Scully wrenched herself free from the cat flap. She headed for Queequeg and Krycek, who were now enrobed in darkness as the door swung closed again behind her.As she got closer, she could make out Krycek’s weasley form, but no Queequeg.“Sir,” began Krycek. “I did as you asked.”Scully couldn’t help but notice an odd, squeaky quiver in his usually quite sexy voice.**********Mulder raised a finger.Scully looked at the ceiling. “You can enjoy his body in a tutu but I can’t find his voice sexy?”**********Krycek continued. “Sir, I took the vial from Skinner’s desk and I brought it here.”**********“What about my voice? Do you find my voice sexy?”Scully sighed.“How about if I growl a little?” He turned to face her head-on. “NO ONE DOWN HERE BUT THE FBI’S MOST UNWANTED,” he gnarled.The child peeked through the crack again.**********“Give me the vial, Alex.” said the Smoking Man.Krycek was silent.“Give it to me.”“There’s a bit of a problem with that.” A noise escaped Krycek that was familiar to Scully, though she couldn’t quite place it.“What do you mean?” he asked, irritated.“There was a mishap on my way over here. Her stupid dog got in the way and I… I dropped it.”“You mean you don’t have the love potion?” he spat.“It’s a little worse than that. When I dropped it, the contents splashed over me and the dog. Sir, I think there was something… off, with this batch.” He made the strange noise again and this time Scully knew why she recognised it. Horror ripped through her body.The Smoking Man whipped out a torch and shone it straight at Krycek.The bright beam revealed Krycek’s suited body with Queequeg’s ruffled pomeranian head protruding grotesquely from the top of his shirt.**********An air hostess came to their seats. “Nuts?”“You said it sister!” said Mulder.**********Scully nearly vomited.**********“So wait…” began Mulder. “The weird sound you heard was Queequeg?”“Same noise he used to make when he needed the toilet.”Mulder screwed up his face in disgust. “Scully you know I love you, but I think you might be unwell.”**********There was a loud creak. Scully's attention was diverted to the crate that had so mercilessly landed on her fingers. The panel at the front was bending and bulging.There was something inside trying to get out.Kryqueg panted excitedly, his slimy tongue lolling out of his mouth.The side of the crate splintered.Scully stood with her back to the wall, her eyes glued to the box.Two more thuds followed, and the side of the crate split open.Mulder exited the crate in a forward roll.**********“About time.”Scully smiled, first at Mulder, then to herself.She looked back at him and said softly, “You were naked.”Mulder nodded slowly, not all that surprised. He looked thoughtful. “What do you do for reference? Given that you've never seen that area of me?”“I can fill in the blanks.”“I hope you're generous.” He paused. “And I hope you appreciate that this kind of thing didn't happen in MY dreams. I never saw your… blanks.”“But you did experience quite a bit of me nonetheless.”“I did.”**********Scully rushed to Mulder, took off her trenchcoat and wrapped it around him.“Thanks, Scully.”Mulder looked around and stopped sharp as his eyes fell on the man-dog abomination in the corner.Kryqueg nibbled at an itch on his arm.“What the hell.”The dulcet tones of her partner’s voice awakened something in Scully.**********“So you do find my voice sexy?”“It was more that it brought me back down to Earth.”“You say all the right things,” he quipped.**********“Mulder… I don't think this is real. I think this is a dream.”“But it feels so real. I've been trying to get out of that crate for hours, Scully.”“Can you remember how you got there?”Mulder looked resigned. “No.”“See.”“Well what if we were drugged?”“All of us?”“It’s possible.”Mulder shivered under the coat.“Let’s get out of here,” said Scully.Hearing her, Kryqueg started walking towards them. Mulder and Scully exchanged glances.Kryqueg looked pained. As pained as all the fur would allow him to express, anyway. As he reached them he started whining.Instinctively, Scully ruffled his head. “It’s okay, girl. Um, boy. Whatever.”Kryqueg wrapped his arms around her waist. The three of them stood there, a man with a dog’s head, a bedraggled woman with scratched legs, and a second man, naked in a trenchcoat.Scully tried to peel Kryqueg off her, but he wouldn’t budge. “Mulder, a little help here.”Mulder looked around for inspiration. His eyes fell on a plank of a wood from the busted crate. He picked it up.“HERE BOY!” He ran out of the warehouse and threw it into the woods, which had replaced the park.Kryqueg released his grip and eagerly scampered after it on his hands and feet.Scully caught up with Mulder. “Thanks,” she muttered.Scully looked around.“What happened to the park?”“Park?”“Never mind… Hey, is that a diner?”It was a diner. It was called ‘Big Bird’s Big Yellow Restaurant’, and it was remarkably ordinary, much to their relief.For some reason Mulder, rather than Scully, went to get the food, fostering some weird looks from the locals when they noticed his lack of trousers.He shuffled awkwardly back to their table and placed a bagel in front of Scully.“Real cream cheese,” she smiled.**********Mulder stared thoughtfully past Scully and out of the cabin window. “You know Scully, in my dreams I always seemed to be looking for you. So in a way this makes sense.”“I mean I can only consider that term extremely loosely in this scenario, but yes, I guess.”Mulder smiled.Scully continued. “But maybe it’s just my subconscious mind. You told me all about your dreams, so that’s bound to influence mine.”“Maybe,” he acquiesced.Scully’s head rolled towards him. “You know, it’s funny that you’re so hell bent on this being a reality.”Mulder sat up. “What do you mean?”“It’s just that, if these are dreams, and lucid ones at that, well…”“What is it?”“Lots of lucid dreamers can control their dreams. Wouldn’t you find that interesting? A kind of sanctuary where you could safely play out your deepest inhibitions without fear of the repercussions?”Mulder looked into her eyes and held her gaze. She gazed back, only her eyes were dancing slightly, like she was searching him, imploring him to realise what she had. That this could be lots, and lots, of fun.