TITLE: Sense Memory

AUTHOR: Tesla 

RATING: R. Smut.

ARCHIVE: Let me know so I can dote

SPOILERS: None, but set really early in the series.

KEYWORD: MSR, PWP

DISCLAIMERS: Chris Carter and 1013 created Mulder and Scully. The characters seem to have some time on their hands, so I borrowed them.

b>NOTES: I'd like to thank the Academy, but I wasn't nominated. Thanks to MaybeA, the fastest beta in the, er, north.  I also acknowledge Sybil, for relentless harassment and a curious refusal to let me peaceably write; and Jen, for reading everything I do write. 

It's a bitch.

Dana Scully would be first to tell anyone that you can only trust the factual evidence, the evidence that can be replicated in a lab, *cue her partner's eye rolling*, the evidence of a medical examination and the lab tests.

She and Mulder were called out because there were some vaguely occultish aspects to what Scully would call gang murders. Mulder didn't disagree, but something about the wreckage of the social club had his paranormal antennae twitching. He stood beside the pool table, palming the solid balls. He looked down, frowning, at the table, the long strong fingers of one hand making the ball spin.

And then the sense memory hit her, of those fingers on...her. On her. When...she wouldn't have dreamt it and forgotten it, she never forgot a single dream in her life, and she certainly would not have forgotten one starring Mulder.

Melissa always thought it so funny to refer to your clitoris as your 'naughty bits' and Scully stood straight up, feeling the bit very naughty indeed. Mulder looked up, still frowning, but she knew he wasn't seeing her. He walked around the table.

Oh, Mulder. Please don't pick up the pool cue. Please don't---

//the pool table. Felt smooth on her back, one pool ball brushing her scalp and the only light from the Coors sign in the window//

Mulder balanced the cue on his palm, his palm...

//his palms on her thighs, surprisingly hard and his mouth soft hot quick on her neck, her jaw, her mouth. His tongue at her mouth at the same time his fingers are inside the crotch of her panties. She spread her legs and opened her mouth at the same time.//

Scully's mouth was dry, but the rest of her wasn't. They had. They had. Mulder bent quickly, and made a shot. It bounced twice off the bumpers, and rolled into the side pocket. "Sweet," he said, absently, and straightened up.

//"Sweet, sweet," Mulder said, stroking her clit and biting her earlobe, her neck, the fingers of the hand she brought up to his face. "Do you like this?" And she was amazed that she actually say, "Yes," instead of "Aaaaah."//

Scully knew she wasn't blushing, she never blushed, but she felt hot all over, not just between her thighs. Here was their X-File, right here. She and Mulder had sex on a pool table, and why the hell didn't they remember it? How could anyone forget

//coming over and over again, the cue balls rolling and nudging her right hip. Her legs locked around Mulder's lean waist, biting him through the shoulder of his blue shirt, he leaving finger- sized bruises on her upper arms, his fingers jammed between them on her clit and she was screaming into his shoulder.//

Mulder threw the pool stick back on the table. "Let's go, Scully," he said abruptly. The light turned his face ruddy.

#

There was a Santeria shrine in the back room, but other than that, the gang's "social club" was X-File-less. Nice pool table, though, Mulder thought.

//They were lying on the pool table. The only light from the Coors sign in the window//

Mulder picked up the pool stick, leveled it at the table, as flashes of memory appeared faster and faster, like when he envisioned the action of a crime scene.

//he ran his hands up her legs, pulling off the panty hose, as her hips lifted, pulling them off with her shoes and dropping them on the floor. He smoothed the sweet soft skin of her thighs, soft skin and surprisingly strong thighs. Her eyes were blue pilot lights in the semi-dark, as he ran his open mouth up her neck, and along the rim of her jaw to her mouth. Her mouth opened to his tongue at the same time that her legs fell open to his fingers at her panties.//

Mulder blinked. The fuck? He didn't usually have waking fantasies at a crime scene. Well, not for a while, anyway. He lined up a shot, and hit the cue ball. The nine ball bounced twice off the bumpers, and rolled into the side pocket. "Sweet," he said, to himself, pleased, and straightened up.

//"You taste so sweet," Mulder said, and she did, from her minty tongue, to the fresh clean smell of her neck, to the breath of cologne from between her breasts, to her essence as he pulled the panties down and tasted her clit.//

Weird. Better run at least five miles tonight. He certainly had something to think about in the shower, though.

But.

Scully was staring at him, with her eyes almost popping out of her head like a cartoon. It was warm in the abandoned club room, but her nipples were standing out like marbles through her white blouse. If he didn't know better, he'd think she knew exactly what he was thinking. She stared at him, at the table, back at him, eyes dilating.

But shit, he could feel her //coming, clenching around his dick, Mulder rocking her so good, Scully moving with him all liquid fire, over and over again, the cue balls clicking beside them. Her legs were locked around Mulder's waist, and she was biting him like an animal, a beautiful tawny animal, right through his blue shirt, and he got one hand free long enough to jam his fingers between them and he yelled and she yelled.//

Mulder threw the pool stick back on the table. "Let's go, Scully," he said abruptly. He hoped he sounded normal, because he felt like he was blushing like a high school sophomore caught making out in the supply closet.

Your conscious mind could forget details, but the memory of the senses was true.

#

Of all the ways Dana Scully dreamed of fucking her partner, pool tables had never been a featured kink. True, you had your sexual imagery, with the sticks and the balls, the pockets and the felt. And Mulder with a stick in his hand.

She didn't know how to play pool, really. She knew how to get a guy to show her how to play, how to wear a tight summer dress and strappy sandals, and have the guy lean her over the table and hold her fingers on the stick. She could see doing that with Mulder, them bending over the table in perfect sync, his chest against her back, her ass grinding into his groin. Snap, click, and the 8-ball went into the corner pocket.

That was fun, on a warm spring night in a bar, with the low murmur of a baseball game on television, and a couple of bottles of beer sweating condensation on the table rail. She would like to have fun with Mulder in a bar, see the little crinkles at the corners of his eyes as he teased her. He loved to see her laugh. //her head thrown back against the rack of cue sticks, laughing a full-throated laugh, yanking Mulder's tie loose; the hiss the rep fabric made against the starched cotton, God she loved Mulder's shirts, Mulder's shoulders in a starched shirt//

Her hands were sweating on the steering wheel. Mulder looked out of the passenger window, his trendy expensive sunglasses on. Zoned out. That's the only way she got to drive, if Mulder was zoned out thinking about a crime scene, or some pick-up basketball game, or some way to work a double-entendre off her last remark. He was hardly breathing.

//panting, mouths crashing into each other and his tongue at her earlobe, behind her ear, his mouth nipping her chin, her neck, his open mouth painting her skin with honey, and the honey spreading down her entire body. She couldn't breathe, she was breathing pure oxygen//

She couldn't just fantasize a moment of pure bliss like that. She could hear the exact whisper of his zipper as she lowered it, his sigh as she put her hand on his erection, how she//polished the head of his dick with her palm, and his skin quivered and he got harder under her fingers, how could something feel so hard and so silky soft at the same//

She hastily took her hand off the gear shift.

#

She hastily took her hand off the gear shift, and Mulder was devoutly grateful. As it was, he hardly dared breathe.

He could feel her hand on him. He could hear her laughing in his ear//Scully breathlessly laughing, head thrown back, like a child on a swing, and he was the one pushing her. They were walking to the pool table, but it was like dancing. It was like dancing, him with one hand at her nape, the other at her hip, she moving backwards under his hands, his tie wrapped around both her fists//

He had to get out of this car. He had to get away from her and think about this, and not be having flashbacks, they were flashbacks, why-- how--missing time? Drugged? How could he suddenly just remember //how hot and wet, how like melted wax or hot pancake syrup, hot liquor, was her sweet// how could he possibly have forgotten //entering that, her silky tightness gripping him, so much better than his fantasies? At the time he thought it couldn't be a dream, it was true and right//

He turned his head away from her, and glanced sideways from under the screen of his sunglasses. She was holding onto the steering wheel like she was piloting a ship, a sharp line between her eyebrows.

Her little hands with the clear polish//red fingernails making little white marks on the felt of the table. He pulled off the pantyhose and her pumps, and he saw her red-tipped toes and couldn't breathe.//

Mulder couldn't breathe.

#

Scully sat down at her computer, trying to figure out where and how and why she had ever been in a bar with Mulder. A bar with a quiet back room and a pool table, with a high opaque window covered with a blue "Coors" sign.

//laughing// Take it slowly, before the pool table part.

After hours; or it was closed, because as she tried to remember the flashes of memory, she knew that they were alone in the bar. //safe//

They weren't drugged, they weren't drunk //they were lucky to be there, they were lucky to be together//and they hadn't been out all night. It was still//Mulder put a pocketful of quarters in the jukebox and they were dancing and laughing//

She put her fingers on her eyelids and tried to remember. Music. Nice, kind of slow-dancing music. //her jacket and raincoat and his jacket and raincoat were on a table. "Lock up," said--//

That was before the music. She and Mulder had gone somewhere to look at something, that wasn't an emergency, that didn't have a body or a crime scene or any one else. Someone told them to lock up when they were finished. Mulder put money in the juke box.

//Dance with me, Scully// //Mulder, you goof// //Mulder's slow, open smile. Dance with me, Scully. And one hand on her hip and the other hand holding hers. Smiling//

The flickers were fading. She couldn't quite hold on.

******************

Mulder walked down the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, sunglasses on. He and Scully had been in a bar, looking at something. Something, off-duty, perhaps. There was no one else in the bar. He had the keys. The only ghosts were the scents of liquor and beer and cigarette smoke.

He could smell it.

He could smell Scully's hair.

A car drove by, the radio mellow and sweet.

Music had been playing.

But it wasn't any good. The further he was from Scully, the less sure he was of any of the flashes of knowledge, of any of the sense memories.

He turned around and walked back to the office, sweating a little in the late afternoon sun. //sweat at her temples, his back prickling with it under her small hands as he came inside her//

He had no idea what to ask her.

#

Be an adult, Scully said to herself. She sat in Mulder's chair in the basement, legs crossed, one foot in its chunky heel swinging like the switching of a cat's tail.

A Friday evening quiet was settling on the office building, on the block. She could hear the elevator, far away; the air conditioners were turned off, and the Bureau was emptying out for the weekend.

Where had Mulder gone?

She could have believed anything: allergic reaction, pygmy blow-dart with poison, hallucinations, hypnotism, deja fucking vu--- any explanation as to why her secret fantasies about Mulder would be playing inside her head, in broad daylight, on the job. But it was evident, even to her reluctant eyes, that Mulder was right there with her; he was feeling, seeing, smelling, tasting//Mulder licking her nipple through her bra and blouse, the slightly chlorine taste of his neck// what she did.

She put her hands flat on the desktop. They were shaking. She licked her lips//Mulder's mouth tasting faintly of his bubble gum// and took a drink from her water bottle.

Okay, one sense at a time. Taste.

She sat expectantly, but nothing. She picked up one of Mulder's pencils and tapped it against her teeth//Mulder on his back on the pool table, she on her hands and knees straddling him, dragging her face against his chest like a cat, shoving the white tee shirt out of the way so she could trail her open mouth over his chest//

God she was hot.

"Scully," said Mulder, from the doorway. She sat bolt upright, her eyes wide. He leaned on the doorjamb, his jacket hooked over his shoulder on one finger. He wasn't smiling. "I think we need to go play pool."

#

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.

#

End

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