Sense Memory VII
Saturday afternoon.
Meant for lazy drifting through Ikea, or doing laundry, or having a nice nap.
Instead, Scully was wearing khaki capris and a baggy cotton shirt and flat shoes, perched on a bar stool, watching Mulder play pool.
She thought it would be awkward, but it wasn't, because Mulder was working the problem. They were working it.
He said, "Scully, you and I are both remembering a close encounter of the wild kind. We're remembering it through our sense memories. Right?" Completely straight- faced and unembarrassed.
The people at the other tables were playing in a relaxed, Saturday-afternoon and mostly sober way. A baseball game drifted from the television in the corner, and the sound of glasses clinking came through the arched doorway to the main bar area.
She saw his unembarrassed and raised him interested. "Taste, touch, sound, sight, smell."
"Smell?" he asked. //her neck//
"Yep." //his neck//
"But we don't feel it right now. It's not an actual hallucination. It comes in flashes of memory?"
"Yes, like flicking a light on and off. Or a radio station going in and out of signal."
Now, he was chalking his pool cue. "I thought we could have been in a psychic hot spot. That could cause us to re-enact the actions of other people." He looked up, and said, reluctantly, "Dead people."
"But why would we forget it until we saw the pool table?" She stood up and took the blue chalk from his fingers.
"That's why I don't think it was a hot spot." He was watching her grind the chalk onto the cue tip. "And not possession by spirits, because the same thing; the literature indicates that the possessed remember the events." "A break in the space-time continuum?" she asked, moving around the table and pretending to sight along her cue. "A temporal flux?"
"Since when do you watch Next Generation?"
"I'm all about Data," she said, poker-faced. "What are your other theories?"
"Well, we weren't drunk or drugged, because we'd remember the after effects. Remember that time I came back from the base? I knew something had been done to me."
"What are the other Star Trek theories?" she said, lightly balancing the cue on her palm, watching it teeter.
"Scully, I don't know. You, me, hot monkey love on a pool table? It wasn't fantasy, it's memories. Rack 'em up."
"What?" she asked, looking away from his hands on the cue.
"Let's play a game, Scully. I'm not going to put the moves on you in a pool room with two other tables." He stood next to her, so close to her that she could see the cinnamon freckles on his cheekbones, the faint tracing of smile lines at the corners of his eyes, the flecks of hazel in his green eyes. And all the edges of his haircut were straight.
"Mulder, did you get a haircut?" is what she started to say. So how come it came out as, "Mulder, where are you going to put the moves on me?"
He couldn't have looked more startled if she'd said, "Klaatu barada nikto." In an English accent.
"Well, Mulder, we do it. Right? Or we did it? You can talk about theories and you're all calm, but I know we had sex. Pool table sex. And we were happy. That's the X-File. You and I were happy."
Her voice trembled on the last word, and she felt her throat close up. Mulder put his arm around her shoulders, his big hand covering her upper arm.
"Scully," he said, his lips grazing her temple. "Don't cry, Scully."
She leaned into his side, holding on to her pool cue like it was a subway pole. "Anyone can have sex, Mulder. That's not all I feel. I felt happy."
"I know," Mulder said, nuzzling the side of her head with his face, like a cat. She shivered. "You aren't very happy, are you? I shouldn't---"
She turned her head and caught his mouth with hers. He tasted of beer, but his mouth, his mouth was the same. His mouth had been like this, warm and pliant. "Mulder," she said into his mouth, and felt his hand tighten on her shoulder, his arm hard around her. He raised his head.
"Mulder, the only times I am happy these days, is when I'm with you."
His eyes were intense, and she couldn't look away, even though she knew she was flushing.
"Okay, we need to get out of here," he said, and taking her pool cue with two fingers, and put them both on the table.
They turned to go. Behind them, someone said, "Are you done, dude?"
"Yeah," Mulder said over his shoulder.
They couldn't even wait until they got inside the car. Mulder was going to open Scully's door, and he found himself backing her up against the car, both his hands on her face, kissing her. She had her little hands under the hem of his shirt, pressing the small of his back, one foot out of her shoe and her toes pressing on his sockless foot just above his shoe.
"God...Scully," he said, just as she bit his neck. The sensation went straight to his dick and he tried to remember who lived closest, shit, if there was a motel handy. Her sunglasses fell out of her hand.
Motel. Scully. Partner. He wasn't in school, damn it, they'd just kissed for the first time and he was already renting motel rooms? He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled back. "Scully," he began, and then didn't know what to say.
She was glowing. He couldn't look away, couldn't talk.
So he kissed her again.
It was like coming home.
Something in the back of her mind made every act deliberate. She asked herself if she knew what she was doing, if she was responding to some kind of lost memory. "Yes. No. Maybe," she told herself, and reached over the console and put her hand on Mulder's thigh.
He hit the accelerator.
Behind her scratched sunglasses, she smiled. There was a bubble of laughter, of joy, rising in her chest. It was all very simple, wasn't it? Whatever it was, whatever they had done or not done, she knew something for the first time. Mulder belonged to her, and she belonged to him. They weren't on a case, and she didn't have to lean away from him, or jam her hands in her pockets.
She dropped her fingertip to touch the seam of his pants.
Mulder felt ridiculously happy. He was driving to his apartment with his partner and she had her hand on his thigh, leaning over the armrest to touch him. He'd often wondered if he was attracted to her when they were out in the field just because it wasn't very professional. He always wanted to lean into her space, hunch his shoulders around her. She always responded by stepping away and drawing herself up very straight and square-shouldered.
Now, there was no reason at all why they couldn't touch and boy, they were. He turned his knee slightly on the seat as she slid her fingertips over his leg.
Tomorrow could and probably would bite him in the ass; she'd probably turn all pissy and cold again, but he didn't care. Today, she was his girl.
He parked in the first place he found. Hand in hand, they loped up the sidewalk.
If Scully thought Mulder would have second thoughts, or turn shy on her, the elevator ride reassured her. She had both of her hands in his hair, brushing away the stiffness of the gel on top, yanking at the roots. Mulder actually groaned into the side of her neck.
"I thought...women liked...foreplay..." he breathed.
"Mulder, we apparently already had foreplay," she said.
The elevator door opened and he bolted out to his floor, pulling her by the hand. She had both hands wrapped around his. He opened the door, and they practically fell through. He slammed it and turned all the locks.
"Now, Mulder," she said, and stepped out of her flats.
He said something that sounded like "Huh," and pulled his shirt off over his head.
"I wanted to do that," she said. She gave him the look she last used on Ethan. Apparently it worked on Mulder, too,because he stopped cold, and let her run her hands up his sides, pulling the soft undershirt up. Damn, he worked out, she thought approvingly. She bent her head and kissed one nipple.
"Jesus!" Mulder said, and got his hands under her shirt. He got her bra unsnapped before she had time to properly appreciate how her tongue made him jump. He bent from the waist, avoiding her hands, and unsnapped her pants. Under her clutch, he dropped to his knees, pulling pants and underwear down, and ran his tongue from her belly button to the crease between her thigh and groin. His hands were already at the tops of her legs, spreading her a little, and then putting that mouth, that tongue, right there.
She folded over his shoulder like a doll, grabbing his undershirt. When he put a long forefinger inside her, she came, right there, her pants around her ankles, her butt bare. Somewhere, her cellphone rang--or was that her ears--and his face was still pressing against her belly. She was holding his tee-shirt in her hands, she was surprised that she hadn't strangled him with it.
He leaned back, so he could look at her. "You taste sweet, Scully," he said, his eyes brilliant.
"Your pants off next, Mr. Tongue," she said, finally. She was rewarded by that killer, knee-weakening Muldergrin. "Bedroom?"
"Nah, too much crap in there. I'll clean it up before next time." He got up, and helped her step out of her pants. She decided to leave them on the floor, and it actually made her feel wild. They collapsed on the wide sofa, and Mulder arched his back so she could pull his jeans off. That's what had got her to start with; that Mulder wasn't afraid of her, wasn't afraid of her being on top. Literally.
"What are you grinning at?" he asked. "Not good for a guy, for his girl to grin at his dick." She straddled him, taking the very hard and very large object in question...and yes, it felt as silky/hard as her hand's memory told her...and rubbed it against her clit. Mulder was trying to take the shirt and bra off, but she wasn't going to let go, so her top was hanging off her shoulder and hand, and he gave up, lying back. finally taking her by the waist. "Stop playing, Scully," he said, and she took him inside herself and they both gasped.
She remembered a summer evening just at sunset, running and running along a green lawn in a park, green green with the smell of grass and clover and the grass cool on her feet and the air still warm, coming over a hill and seeing a river spread out below. Her heart felt it would burst at such beauty and joy, but she didn't have the words. Now, impaled on Mulder's dick, looking into his eyes, dark with passion, his mouth open, leaning into his big hands on her breasts, she felt it again. She was hot, and wet, and she tingled all over as she rode him, meeting his thrusts.
"Mulder," she said, "We are so lucky."
He nodded, and then let go of one nipple to put his hand between their bodies. When his fingers brushed her clit, she came suddenly and hard, and after a second, he came in her and she threw her head back and screamed.
In the shower, later, she said, "Your girl?"
"Aren't you?" he asked, pulling her hair back under the water. "I don't think I'd let just anyone bite me where you bit me."
She leaned into him and let him soap her. It would be fun to get in a hot tub, she thought. He tweaked her nipple. "What?"
"Aren't you my girl?" he asked, from behind her. If it hadn't been Mulder, she would have thought he was shy.
"Well, yes, Mulder. Obviously."
"I should have known that you meant it when you didn't pick up your clothes," he said. He licked the water from her neck.
"Mulder, what was it? What were we seeing? Remembering?"
"I don't care," he said, his voice matter-of-fact.
Another X-File, she thought, and then smiled to herself, as she felt something, not his hand, on her hip.