May 29, 2000

"Stop looking at me like that. You wanted to come along." Jim continued to carefully circle the table of folded shirts, fingering and musing on them. He hesitated on one, sniffed. Its undefinably irritating scents entered him, an inhalation of molecules, the kind Sandburg was always going on about, and it struck him again, as it had been lately, that it was possible to be too conscious of things. Stuff. The world. Molecules entering his body. What was that? It was like some alien invasion. Tension pulled at his brows like a needle drawing thread.

"Of course I wanted to come along. I want to be here. But every time I start looking at the labels, you freak out."

"You're carrying a binder, Sandburg." Jim glared at him. "The salesgirls are staring."

The fluorescent lights did cruelty to Sandburg's face, tinting his skin yellow, green and tired; the department store was a catalytic hell for Jim's senses, and in it all of Sandburg was magnified. He seemed part of the mixing light and scents, and Jim hated that. He couldn't focus. The other man's hair was messy today, his clothes rumpled. An old backpack was slung over his shoulders, straps frayed. His sneakers were ancient relics, ingrained with sweat, mud, saltwater. Tramp shoes. These were good Sandburg elements and Jim could have twined his attention into this familiar, material chaos if not for the jungle of fifty thousand fucking shirts they were trapped in.

"Jim, they're staring at the six-pack strapped under your ribs, man, and nothing else. Chill."

Jim's cheeks heated, and his temper flirted with distraction. "Right." The salesgirls were talking about boyfriends and cheesecake, and comparing their values on a quality-of-life scale. Cheesecake pulled rank. It was no longer shocking to Jim that women talked like this regularly.

Light stroked his peripheral vision; he glanced up. The tilt of Blair's glasses as he looked through his binder. The disruptive movement of his curls. He was muttering.

"I'm still freaked out by this. I'm surprised you don't break out in hives every time you get dressed. I don't even know what good this is going to do. I'm thinkin' we should just find you something you want to wear and, like, wash it fifty times in pure water."

"Hell of a waste." He picked up a light, green sweater. "I like this."

Blair looked up. "Read the tag."

Patiently, unnecessarily, Jim flipped the tag into view. "It's one-hundred percent cotton."

"Good, good! Um...okay. The usual bleach and dye job, chlorine, acids. Probably a nonionic softener, silicone defoamer, flame-retardant, a fluorocarbon finish that would have been washed out, a dye-carrier based on an aromatic ester--"

"Do you even know what all that means?"

Blair broke off. "More or less."

A glint of annoyance caught Jim's attention, something in Blair's voice, smell. Even his glasses seemed to flash the message asshole. Jim almost smiled.

"So how do those feel? Do you smell anything on the sweater that bugs you?"

"Is that the scientific term--bugs me?" Jim said, sniffing absently. It smelled like a headache, but so did everything else in the place. Somewhere on the other side of the store a child screeched, and the whole building rang like an animal's cage with that juvenile fury.

"Stop yanking my chain."

"Chief, I wouldn't know an aromatic ester if it walked up and gave me a kiss."

Blair smiled goodnaturedly back at that, stroked back some loose hair. "Okay, I wouldn't either. Just go with your instincts."

"Maybe we should get one of those electronic noses you were talking about the other day."

Blair, the picture of disheveled encouragement, came nearer, bringing with him a fuzzy corona of oranges and warmth, tendriled with all his hundred other scents. "Jim, please. You're driving me crazy here. Focus, man, focus."

"Hmmm," Jim said vaguely. Blair was peering down at the sweater as if it were a prospective pet. His hair was close, and Jim could have brushed his face into the edge of the cloud, if he'd bent a few inches. His nose peeled away layers of sage, coriander, almond, the green products of a little green man. Coriander was the motif of his deoderant. It was disturbing on some level to know the exact name for the scent of your roommate's deoderant. What a weird private history they had, when you thought about it. He tried not to--but how many tests had he done over the past few years, learning the names for everything that touched his senses? Coriander. Once you'd pegged that, it was hard to shake loose the word. Not to mention motif. He'd made the mistake of telling Simon one day that his cologne had a motif of bergamot. In return he'd received a penetrating, alpha-dog stare that said back off, I didn't invite you to sniff me. True, Simon had eventually lightened up, but that was even worse; the chuckles and ragging had lasted weeks. Simon commenting thoughtfully on the motif of his coffee, the motif of Jim's sweater. The motif of his danish. Cheese. The motif of the weather. Rain.

"You want to try that on?"

"I don’t need to. I know what fits."

"Jim, you never wear half the things you buy. The dressing room is nothing to fear, man."

The remark invited parry. "A real man only needs to visit the dressing room when he’s buying a suit," Jim said, keeping his voice offhand as if he truly believed this small gem of wisdom that seemed like something his father would say, and maybe had.

"Ri-ii-iight," Blair drawled. "I try on clothes, Jim."

Jim raised his eyebrows, mugged a bit and made an expansive hand gesture. "Hey, if you're going to step right into it...." Blair took the sweater from Jim's indecisive hands, tossed it over his shoulder. "Did I say I wanted that?" Jim complained.

"Yes."

"Oh." They drifted to the next table, Blair not so subtly herding him. His entire body chivvied Jim toward a circular rack of denims, and he effectively trapped Jim between two adjoining racks so closely aligned that had he tried to push through them it would have been like forcing himself through a pair of grindstones. He hovered close to Jim then, nose back in his binder, glasses halfway down his nose, his compact frame readjusting itself restlessly, rolling from foot to foot as if he were dancing to some inner rumba. His lips moved as he read and his kissable brow wrinkled and relaxed in an arrhythmic synch. Cut it out, Jim said to his wayward libido. Respect your roomie and stop ogling the man. Libido and headache had him between a rock and a hard place. A vein in Jim's temple throbbed as the store's muzak was broken by a sharp-voiced announcement recalling an employee to housewares. He felt pincered from every direction. He reclaimed some space, edging Blair to one side.

Blair looked up, not seeming to notice he'd been maneuvered an additional foot away. "We should definitely stay on this natural-fiber track."

"Natural fiber, right."

"Cotton is the way to go. I mean, not much chance of you wearing hemp. Or linen. Or silk." Blair's blue gaze prodded mockingly at Jim. "Silk boxers, though, maybe."

"I don't need any boxers right now. And don't suggest underwear to me."

Blair rifled idly through a curtain of shirts. "Overstepping my boundaries, check."

"And don't put words in my mouth."

The look Blair gave him was a dry restrained comment, before he returned to his browsing. "How do those shirts feel?"

"Red."

Blair turned again and glanced. "Um. That's blue, Jim."

Jim's head knocked at itself roughly. "You asked." He pushed a hand up against his temple. His hand reeked of perfume, a sick trail of esters or whatever the hell.

In a flash, Blair was cozied up against him, soothing, the binder clunking to the floor, the green sweater on his shoulder a furry storm of color. Jim pawed the sweater off of him in a few pissed swipes. He was pissed at its smell, pissed at himself, pissed at his senses. He tried to tune into Blair's natter, which faded in and out, and the firm hands that touched his chest and shoulders. He'd gone from low-key queasiness to gross misery in a fast zero to sixty; it felt like flu but he knew it wasn't. He swallowed convulsively, determined not to throw up, a splinter of consciousness catching Blair's mildly panicked uh-oh.

He let the other man, now a blur, lead him through the jungle of wretchedness, trusting that they were going someplace safe. Outside seemed like a good idea, but they weren't heading toward brightness and he couldn't vocalize his wish.

He heard a clash of voices, cool and stiff yielding against a sound of warm, and they barely stopped moving before rolling on into a quieter, dimmer, stuffier place. Okay, okay, said the warmth to him, pushy and handy as it eased him into a box. What could have been a small clatter slammed rudely onto his eardrums and Jim let out a groan which deeper down was a snarl. Moments later he was sitting, bent slightly forward, breathing shallowly over something metallic. Hands stroked the back of his neck, his thigh, and a forehead flirted its hair millimeters from his own aching skin before butting gently into place. Ah, Jesus, that felt good.

Jim closed his eyes fully.

He slid along the zone as if on the shoulder of a raceway, not quite entering its stream, the rush that would become a lulling circular compulsion. Absence. The forehead against his own felt heated and tense. The babble softened, the cadence lost its thread of urgency.

Eventually Jim started his inevitable return to himself, a process he'd dutifully clarified according to Blair's dial analogies and which enabled him to force his senses back down toward baseline zero. He usually found that focusing vision first sped the process, and so after several minutes found himself staring into a wastebasket. At its edges began a grey carpet strewn with threads and lint, and at the edge of his vision were the still slightly-unfocused angles of Blair's body, sculpted into a landscape of cliff and hills. His friend's left thigh and bent knee.

"Better?"

"Yeah."

"Don't rush it."

"Don't worry," Jim said. "Wastebasket," he managed a moment later.

"You need it?" Blair's voice was low and kind, but the kindness was simply in how matter-of-fact he was about the whole thing. Mister normal.

"No."

Blair moved it away immediately. His palm curved against the nape of Jim's neck. Reluctantly, Jim straightened and the hand slipped down to his shoulder, cupped there just as well. Blair pushed himself up as well but remained half-kneeling, Atlas holding up Jim's world. The hand at his shoulder kneaded reassuringly, a strange camaraderie in the grip; the other hand rubbed casually on Jim's thigh.

Their situation was suggestive, if viewed from a certain angle. The muted light, the public privacy, Blair kneeling in front of him with unthinking readiness. Blair was a flirty guy, in his way, the kind of guy who could tease a friend about his boxers, but Jim tried not to read much into things when Blair sprawled absently in front of him, stroking his ribs while watching ESPN; maybe he was just trying to decide if he needed to work out more, maddening fingers and all, and didn't give a thought to Jim's presence three feet away--just as he probably didn't give a thought to how his hands touched Jim now. Why should he? Blair, if you bought the whole act, was a disarmingly straight but healthy boy, like an amiable physical therapist Jim once had, who handled him intimately but without significance.

Coriander.

Good old resentment complicated Jim's relief at having Blair look after him in his warm, brotherly, able fashion. After all, he knew damn well that the Sandburg facade covered for layers of neurosis and a streak of difficult moodiness. Blair's sunny articulation had a darker root system; and Blair was deeply rooted to him in some way. He was tired of shopping with Blair, driving with Blair, eating with Blair, Blair sleeping a floor beneath him, Blair lurching around in the morning, yawning, leaving his mark in the bathroom, his entire Blair-marked lair and the mystery of his bed, the motion of his hips as he walked, sturdy and graceful as a soccer-player's, his presence in the station, his women and laugh and weird music, things hiding the truth of Blair's companionship. Truth was, the irritating bastard fucked all Jim's senses and fed none.

He deliberately grabbed Blair's hand, the one on his thigh, thumbed it and moved it fractionally higher along his leg. He made himself meet Blair's eyes. Inside, he was tangled up in a place where grimness knotted with vulnerability and faint disgust.

"Um, Jim...man." Blair guttered out a breath; his hand twitched as if he were thinking of pulling away, but he didn't quite. And then he braved himself, it was obvious in his face. "What's up." Serious Blair, wary, knowing, tolerant.

Jim said nothing. The silence pulled at his throat, and then he blew it out through his nose and it seemed to expand like a huff of air around them. From outside in the store, the speaker system broke into voice again, and the sharp ping of a cash register carried to his ears.

Blair wore a hooded, uncertain look, but his voice when he spoke was a dry irkedness. "I thought I wasn't your type."

Jim's mouth tensed, flattened. He was unequal to all the things he wanted to say. He'd been trapped for years by their earliest conversations, boxes of words, his own rigid conditions for living together, for their partnership. "What am I, an idiot?" he rasped. The pent-up realizations of those years lent the words a fierce angry spark.

Blair's cheekbones contracted and pushed surprise into his lush mouth. "Wow. I guess. I'm flattered. I mean, I am--"

"Don't."

"Hey, Jim." Blair cleared his throat mildly. "I'm always flattered. It's not...that's not a brush-off or anything."

Heat that hadn't been there a moment ago clung to Jim's face and scalp. He had no response, just a wide-eyed suspension of disbelief and a sense of having gone trippingly over the edge in a department-store changing room. Blair's hand was still held tightly in his own, and it tried to move again. He had to let it. The fingers moved right back to his own, on top this time, and lay there unafraid. He had a leather thong on his wrist, sienna colored. He had squared knuckles. It was hard for Jim not to imagine that hand on his dick, working him over. He'd spent a hell of a lot of time letting his desires thin and bleed away into the humdrum of daily routine. But it seemed that desire like blood would just keep welling up until he died.

It was possible that his thoughts had been transparent, for Blair said, "You weren't, uh, thinking--I mean, this isn't the best place--"

Jim shifted back, reflexively appalled. "Of course not!"

"I left my binder out there," Blair said, frowning at the sudden thought.

"I'm fine," Jim said. "Let's go."

"Don't rush--"

Jim stood up interruptively, drawing Blair with him, keeping him on-balance when his back-pack threatened to tip him off. His senses whirled around, like dry leaves picked up and spun by his movement, and then Blair in turn was steadying him. Jim snapped back into focus, blinked at the upturned face he saw every morning over coffee, and kissed it. It was a dry, dumb peck and Jim regretted it right away, but Blair smiled, if nervously.

There it was, Jim thought. He'd crossed the line, put the moves on Blair.

They returned to the floor; the lights stenciled an ache to Jim's eyeballs. He went outside and waited for Blair, who joined him a few minutes later with a bag that he handed to Jim.

Jim opened it, found the sweater, grimaced in a way he hoped Blair wouldn't take as offense. "You didn't have to get it."

"I thought you wanted it."

Jim shrugged, started to dig out his wallet.

"Don't worry. It's on me," Blair said.

Jim raised his brows, nonplused. A seventy-dollar sweater from thrift boy was a gesture indeed. Reluctantly he put his wallet away. He eyed the worn nap of Blair's current shirt as they walked through a light drizzle of rain toward the truck, wondering how many second-hand flannels seventy bucks would buy. With more practical calculation, he estimated how many chai lattes, or smoothies with bee pollen and ginseng that chunk of change would take him. Twenty, maybe. Each time saying casually, I've got this one, Chief.

"Want some coffee?" Jim asked.

"Plutonius, sure. We could pick up some bread if we're over there."
 

Blair swept in just as Jim was about to bolt back for the sidewalk. He carried a loaf of bread in his arms like a baby and was grinning as if he'd just seen a special on soybeans or an old girlfriend. As he caught Jim's glance his smile dimmed several notches, but not the way a cloud takes sun. More like romeo turning off a lamp in favor of firelight, if Jim could trust the tiny, elusive waft of sex that accompanied this. The other man's lips moved in mysterious ways. Jim would have brooded on this more, but they were in public and he was still debating on soybeans and women, and where the hell their lives were going.

"Did you order?"

Jim shook his head and Blair led the way to the counter, where he gave the barista an order for a garden-of-bliss, and it was a good thing Jim hadn't tried to guess Blair's brew of the day.

"Coffee, black, tall," Jim said, and then as Blair's hand moved toward his pocket, added, "I've got this one."

On inquiry, affected as fascinated distaste, it was revealed to Jim that a garden-of-bliss comprised chamomile, ginger, honey, lemon grass, spices, and spearmint with steamed milk. Blair didn't even make him exercise his senses for this pay-off; he just rattled off the contents in his most pedantic voice, then stared at Jim appraisingly over the rim of his cup, his face wreathed in steam, his entire storm of hair already scented with chamomile, ginger, honey, lemon grass, spearmint, and nameless spices that might have been Blair himself. His mind played tricks at times, or Blair did.

They would have returned to the truck but it began to rain harder, so they sat in the window, Jim with his back to the wall, taking the vantage of the door and the room. Behind Blair sat a scattering of students with laptops, young deadbeats, slumming businessmen with time to kill. He'd known Blair three years, and in that time the other man had altered from one of them to one of his own, a guy he wanted to keep around, most days; a partner who viewed the world from an uneasy halfway point between civilian and cop; a strange addition to his living room suite that Jim didn't know where to put yet, even after all this time. His partner was now looking out the window, eyes slitted, face in neutral, as intensely unreadable as a cat, a cat watching the grey rain.

I shouldn't have kissed him, Jim thought. This made a mess of everything. Jim wasn't even sure it was what he wanted. And Blair was probably thinking about his dissertation at this very moment, whether to make this a footnote or a chapter.

"How's your coffee," Blair said, as if it mattered.

"Fine." Jim's fingers idled around the cup.

They were both silent, and it occurred to Jim that two people who'd just kissed their way into new territory should be more...more. Not silent, unable to find anything to say to one another, but brash and puffed-up, excited, maybe trading glances. So he offered up a trading glance to Blair, but Blair was looking off in the direction of the flyer-pasted bulletin board and didn't notice. Heart beginning to beat him up, Jim stared stonily at Blair until he turned his head.

"What?" he said, but his eyes said he knew what.

"We should just forget this," Jim said, against the drumming command of his pulse.

Blair opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, then obviously nailed his determination to speak. He frowned when he did. He'd frowned a lot in the last year. But his low voice came out diffidently; he was feeling around.

"It's not the world's biggest surprise. But I always figured you'd stick with your type. Women, men. You got your classy women, and...whatever. I guess there's something to be said for proximity." He gave a sliding hand gesture. "Slipping in under the radar."

That took Jim aback. It sounded as if Blair had been thinking about this too, scheming even. But maybe he'd misunderstood. "Is that what you've been doing--slipping under my radar?"

Blair shrugged with an inward hunch, body speaking hedgingly, his eyes more frank. "What do you want me to say, Jim. I haven't really given this much thought. But it's not like we don't have a vibe."

"A vibe," Jim echoed. Something in him, the actor, the straight man, wanted to make a face, but he left it alone. The scripted lines of a normal day had been struck out. It had been a long time since he'd improvised from his own terrifying heart.

"We've got a little love jones going," Blair said, smiling quirkily, and now he was punching gently at the air. Every nuance of sex seemed to have its own hand gesture in the Sandburg lexicon. "Don't we?"

"Sure," Jim said. "Yeah. Just...don't jump into anything for my sake, you know?"

"What am I, investing stock in your startup? I wouldn't just--" He started to make another hand gesture.

"Will you cut that out?" Jim said impatiently, wanting to grab his hand but not daring.

Blair sat back in his chair, not especially chastised. "I'm only saying--"

"I've got it."

"Do you?"

Jim swallowed a retort, stared to one side and gave it some thought. Or would have, but his thoughts weren't settling too well. It was a strange time to be thinking about this. Maybe the wrong time. He slid out a move from the line of pawns and distractions arrayed between them, a weak proxy for an attack or simply for getting closer. "You're still writing your dissertation."

"You're still thinking about Alex."

Jim's gaze snapped around. "You don't know what I'm thinking about."

Blair's own gaze lowered. "I don't really compare to that, do I."

Jim's hands fisted, then palmed the table top. His entire body had bunched with tension. "I told you what I thought of her."

"Like bad perfume," Blair recited. "Strong. Poison." One of his hands picked at the other, roughening a  fingernail.

He hadn't missed the opportunity to take notes, that was for sure. The thought of him transcribing those comments from memory, into his laptop, dissertation material, gouged at Jim's tolerance, even though he'd known of Blair's intentions. They'd debriefed. All for the dissertation. Jim wanted to ask if this would go in too; whatever intimacy might lie ahead between them. And he couldn't ask. Blair would not go that far, after all that they'd talked about. Trust. He had to hold onto his trust.

"Yes." Jim nodded, jaw tight.

"So what were you thinking about?" Blair asked curiously, leaning in toward the table with a covert movement.

Jim shook his head, not as an answer, but because he had no answer. Blair appeared to understand.

"Let's go," Jim said.

"You never call me your bitch," Blair said when they were in the truck, three blocks down the street, Jim taking a light.

Jim did not hit any cars when he swerved a foot off-course, and counted himself lucky. "Excuse me?" he said, filling up with astonished dread.

Blair continued with his earnest observation. "You know. Cop talk. Like, you're buyin' the doughnuts today, bitch. Or, type this report, bitch."

"I don't talk like that!"

"I know. You don't talk dirty at all. None of that tough-cop street patois."

Patois? thought Jim, staring at a red light, half fascinated and half praying that Blair would drop this topic of conversation and never ever bring it up again.

"I just wondered if, you know."

"I don't know," Jim said, driving when the light changed.

"You know," Blair said with certainty.

"What are you saying?" Jim asked with a small lick of desperation in his voice. "You want me to, to call you names?" The question came out of his mouth as if printed on a bright red balloon, like the balloon a child was carrying four blocks away. Pop. Deflate. Retract.

"Well, no. I mean, you could if you wanted to. You do already. Not those kind of names. But it's not a big deal. I just thought I'd mention it. Since you never talk like that at the station, and it's kind of the usual buddy thing cops do, I thought maybe...." Blair trailed off, then after a fraught silence in which Jim gripped the truck wheel like a life preserver and the blocks continued to scroll away past their speeding windows, said, "Never mind."

"Not all cops talk like that, you know," Jim said after another minute.

"Not in Cascade," Blair said by way of agreement. "This is where all PC yuppie cops instinctively migrate."

Blair's remarks bedded in Jim's mind, growing in fertile, tangled unison. He imagined coming to his desk one day in the bullpen, tossing a file on its surface, saying to Blair, type that up for me, bitch. And every voice across the floor simultaneously falling silent and every pair of eyes turning to stare as the phones rang and Jim's head exploded. He then briefly entertained the idea of pulling Blair to him, cupping his ass, murmuring bitch as their lips neared. Then he realized he was  picturing this in the bullpen also. Unable to bank the response in time, Jim felt his dick flare with arousal.

Without turning his head, he looked at Blair. Sometimes, in a zen trick, an entire view cohered from splinters--like now, the faintest, oblique reflection off the windshield, a five-degree slice of peripheral vision, the view from his ear of respiration and heartbeat--and he could see all of Blair, a puzzle of unexpected pieces. He could see Blair even from the other side, as if clinging to the passenger side door, looking in at Blair's profile, looking at himself driving. Blair was not aware of his arousal. Blair wasn't a sentinel, attuned to every digestive grumble and pheromonal spike of Jim's body. And he, the all-knowing sentinel, had known nothing.

What would the guy want? Romance? Frowning, Jim thought about romance. Dinner. Wine. Candles. Tablecloth. Did he own a tablecloth...no. Carolyn had taken them all with her. The red tablecloth from Mexico with the embroidery and fringe. The white tablecloth, once her mother's, that she washed obsessively after each use. The holiday tablecloth. The checked tablecloth. Did they really need romance? Probably not. Good. The effort of choosing tablecloths from memory had already tired him. Casual was good. Good, good. He'd found a mantra. A simple goal, to keep everything good, and to keep this simple. It could be simple. Sure. Why not.

It was not the usual straightforward relief to get home. To flip on the light, toss his keys, hang his jacket, with Blair following in his wake.

Once inside the door, Blair toed off his shoes and left them by the nearest chair along with his backpack, then carried the extra bags into the kitchen. The smell of bread inhabited the air. Jim turned from the fridge and handed Blair a bottle of beer with the cap already screwed off. The tea had been a gift; the beer was an imperative. Blair took the bottle and blew meditatively across the lip, creating the hollow scudding sound Jim had heard countless times in his life, in crowded fraternity parties, in nearly empty bars. Blair's accomplished breath gave the tone body and depth, like the low signal of a distant ship.

It was late and the block around their building had quieted, subsiding to layers of subdued noise in which rats rustled and televisions murmured with constancy, rain fell, traffic washed the streets in a distant, occasional pass. In the loft itself silence pooled around their breathing bodies like water and the only other sounds came from the substructure of pipes and vents. The vents were hissing quietly just under the threshold of normal audition.

"You going to put on your sweater now?" Blair asked.

"Now? No."

"Come on. Do a fashion show for me." Blair's voice was smooth, his throat slippery with beer. He seemed ready to introduce the preliminaries. But within that shell of cheeky readiness, the other man's nerves hummed.

Put on the spot, Jim let tension be his guide. He put his own beer down, then recklessly removed his shirt, pulling it free of his jeans and over his head. His undershirt was thin as gauze, and he left it on to get in the way, to frustrate, to be taken off later. The sweater remained in its bag. Jim waited silently and in a few moments heard Blair's breath speed up by hitches, heartbeat matching the pace.

"I don't even know what you like," Blair said, and he met Jim's eyes and Jim looked back into dark blown pansy eyes, black and blue. Blair was eyefucking him as if they were strangers, the way street punks look at a cop but lacking their cold hatred; only challenge inhabited the darkness, bending its meaning.

"I like a lot of things."

"Can I ask you something?" Blair fiddled with his beer, then put it down. He rolled himself away from Jim, leaning against the counter, stretching, his body a reflex that leapt ahead of conversation.  He went on without assent. "You date women. You go to bars for men." A pause followed.

"That's not a question." Jim watched the stretch, not bothering to check upwards for a gaze. The other man's body was flirty in motion, a cat toy with a mind of its own.

"You like it rougher with men? Or is it just, like, more convenient? I mean, is it all about sex?"

Jim did look up then. As usual, he picked only the last question of a Sandburgian interrogation for a reply. "Mostly. I guess. I don't know. I've never thought about it."

Blair's lips twitched as if unsaid remarks were battering the seawall, but his eyes remained dark and unchanged. He was, with rarity, focused. "In a multiple choice quiz, you can't mark all four, Jim." He brushed his tongue into the left crook of his lip, and Jim honed his vision on the tiny wet fold, that place on a person's lips which was like the smallest furl of a univalve. In his own kitchen, this was one of the few things left he hadn't tasted yet, right now the only thing that spoke to his hunger.

"Me, I'll try anything," Blair said. "I've tried a lot of things already. With women. Not so many men. I never go looking for men; I mean, why bother? Women are right there. Women are easy."

Jesus Christ, Jim thought. Women are easy? Obviously on Planet Sandburg, the laws of gravity had been laid down differently.

"Maybe you're the easy one," Jim said. He moved closer. Blair shifted, almost as if to shy away. Jim stopped. The air between them filled with heat and breath. Blair's pupils were breathing, his hair was breathing, he was humid with life. He shifted again when Jim did, mirror dancing like prey, until Jim trapped him against the island of the kitchen counter, arms on either side. He leaned in and inhaled, his fingers tightening on the counter edge as he did. He hardened immediately, dick knifing itself into a full-blooded ache. Blair's breath sawed frantically at the silence as Jim skimmed around him, cheek to cheek. Their faces didn't quite brush.

"You really want me to call you names," Jim asked in a whisper, pushing his face into Blair's hair, lips to his red-flushed ear.

"Yeah. Yeah." Longing colored Blair's tones; he was sweating. Jim rose on the heat. The ripening scents of lust and submission made it easier for him to forget about the embarrassments of friendship, the potential for wreckage.

"Bitch," Jim said, trying it out. Blair's head jerked, and Jim's lips were kissed by the heat of his ear. He sucked in the lobe, then bit it. He worried at the skin, marked but bare of earrings, while Blair's hands slid behind Jim and down, knuckling into his jeans.

"Wow," Blair said, the single word breathed out as delicately as a soap bubble. His wrists were stretched along the concavity of Jim's back, his hands kneading lower, heels strong. His bracelet's leather caught on the small hairs of Jim's skin, rolled its beads there, smooth and rough. Jim followed his senses as they veered from spot to spot on his body; a ring of light sliding from bell to bell. If he let himself tilt with it, he could control his descent, elude the zone.

"You with me?" Blair murmured.

"Yeah." Twenty minutes ago Jim had been thinking about tablecloths. Now he held Sandburg in the  wishbone of his arms; he was chewing his roommate's hair. It seemed perfectly normal, if he didn't investigate the progress too closely. Three years was a long time for a pot to boil.

He could hear the rain drumming harder on the roof, staccato on tin gutters, broadly flattening itself on the skylights.

If he'd done what his senses told him, he might have begun this years ago.

He drew his face along Blair's, an etching of whiskers to one another. Blair was watching him, eyes like those of a man stoned. Up close, he was rough and complicated, a museum of ancient art in a singular cradle of bones and flesh. Thin veins in heavy eyelids, brushstrokes of iris, raw marble everywhere, an old face. Knowing. Jim pushed himself toward Blair with his own face, his entire skull at first, wanting fusion. Then the little unnerved breaths from Blair commanded his restraint and he continued the kisses only with his lips. It was like tasting coffee in Rome.

"You're quiet now," Jim said. Released, his words buzzed softly against the other man's mouth.

"I usually do all the seducing."

The response would have been almost meaningless if Jim had not read its significance in Blair himself, the shaken weight of his body, caught off guard and immobilized. Seduce this, Jim thought, nudging his tongue past the other man's parted lips. They kissed for a while, and Jim drew the loose vise of his arms in and held Blair around the shoulders, cupped the back of his head, hair bunching in his grip. Sweet, unpracticed kisses struggled up from Blair's mouth, and then took wing in newly acquired skill. Jim tried to remember a time when he'd been the novice, when kissing another man had been something utterly different and not just a matter of degree and variation from female to male.

Jim wrestled his tongue free, licked the soft hem of Blair's upper lip, his front teeth.

"Can I ask you something," Blair said again. He was nervous. For the first time Jim realized that he could pin down this nervousness like a butterfly on the five points of his senses: the timbre of Blair's voice, acrid molecules on his tongue that carried both the taste and smell of uncertainty, a heat and barreling pulse.

"Mmm," Jim said agreeably, thumbing one parenthetical edge of Blair's mouth.

"How do I taste?"

"Yes." Jim leaned in again, but Blair nudged his lips aside from this whimsy, unfurling heat across Jim's cheek.

"No. C'mon. Jim. Do I taste okay?"

"Mmm. Yes. Coffee."

"You had coffee."

Jim paused, kissed him plunderingly, then withdrew. "I guess you taste like me, now."

"So I don't--"

Trying to shut him up, Jim worked Blair over some more until he heard groans. "Don't get neurotic," he said between inserted commas of his tongue. "You taste good."

"Okay, okay," Blair said breathlessly, all soft assent, and yet Jim could hear disappointment too. He didn't know how to respond, what to gather from this or from their kisses; he knew it was crucial at such a point to give whatever reassurance or compliment was sought, to be inventive, even if instinct said to speak the truth. But the truth was not complicated.

"You taste good," he repeated, carving off the words from the edge of his voice.

"Can you taste me?"

"Yes," Jim ground out. It was apparently a test. He kissed the other man's mouth again with savage dominance, his tongue a bladed entreaty across all that silk. His dick throbbed, his hands ached and tingled as they held up the scouring cloud of Blair's hair. When he broke away he felt a catch tightening in his chest, as if down in the depths of him an anchor tugged at its nest of rock. "You taste...good," he said helplessly, voice cracking on the admission as if it were his failure.

Blair's arms tightened around him and he gusted warmly, soothing. "Sorry. Jim. Please."

By this point, nothing Blair said mattered. Multiplication tables, obfuscations, apologies. Jim loved every sound unfolded from that throat. He nodded. He was hungry. Maybe if he tasted more, he would understand what Blair wanted from him. He would handle the entire span of Blair's body, and then read it.

"Come upstairs," he said, tugging so that Blair swayed forward against him, dancerly.

Blair looked up, introspective even as their eyes met. "Can I--I thought maybe I'd take a shower first."

Jim let Blair go and listened to him undress while balancing himself between impatience and the keen challenge of delay. He took their beers upstairs, disarrayed the bed, examined the sparse contents of his bedtable drawer with a frown, then sat down on the edge of his bed. Sighed. He laced his fingers together, contemplated his nails. He went to his dresser and clipped one nail that was slightly longer than the others and then ran his tongue over its rim, checking against thorniness. He rubbed his face while he stared in the mirror. Took off his undershirt. Touched his chest. Thought about his old dog tags. Stared stonily at himself. He returned to the bed and removed his shoes and his socks, and took careful stock of his feet, which were not bad for a man his age who'd spent most of his working life jogging and jumping when not stuck behind a desk. Blair had seen his feet before. Often.

When the bathroom door opened below and unrolled its steam, he nearly panicked. He took several long swigs of beer on self-medicinal impulse. Lust beat a tattoo inside him. The bedside lamp suddenly painted a sharp wedge of light against the air as the other lamps below were turned off. Its dim corona gelled the surface of the bedside table, empty except for scars and beers, and called to mind an anonymous hotel room. As he tracked the approach of Blair's padding footsteps, Jim wondered how much longer he could retain his bedroom as his last resort, a sentinel's aerie against the tide of messiness and personality that washed through his life below.

The tide was coming in.

Jim looked up when the soft squeak of damp feet against wood reached the perimeter of his room. Blair stood on the top step, hand on the rail, looking back at him. He wore flannel boxers but they clung to his shower-wet body. Jim could already taste the soap he'd used and the spot he'd missed behind his knees; the cool inner fresco of his mouth painted by toothpaste. He'd somehow known not to wash his hair, and Jim was pleased though he didn't show his approval with a smile. His eyes might have shown something, however, because Blair took the final step to enter the room.

"How's the water?" Jim asked, and Blair cocked his head as if listening to the rain or thinking of his shower, and yet despite the faint puzzlement Jim felt as if he'd asked an intelligible question.

"Um...it's fine."

"Come here." Jim moved back on the bed invitingly, and Blair came to join him with a crawl and a bounce. Jim piled some pillows behind himself and sat back against the railings, giving the man in his bed close regard. Blair had shaved, and his hair was in all directions with one particularly askew tendril fanning out from the right side of his head like a Boston fern reaching for light. His boxers were dark plaid, a pair Naomi had given him during the last holiday season. When you know the origin of your roommate's boxers, you may be driving too close. But what the hell did caution matter now, when they were already sharing a bed and planning nookie.

Blair sat cross-legged and held his knees in a death-grip as if he were afraid he'd otherwise spring free. The fly of his boxers gapped just enough to tantalize, but even sentinel vision was stymied at further angling. His leather bracelet was wet, his chest hair a mass of tiny slick corkscrews; he was breathing audibly and with self-consciousness and appeared to be trying to calm himself. His lips had parted to reveal the gentle emphasis of his overbite.

"Are you trying to be adorable on purpose?" Jim asked gruffly.

"What? No." Blair cleared his throat and played with the dusting of hair on his knees.

"Why don't you come closer," Jim suggested.

"Yeah, okay." Blair took an epic breath and scooted over. When he was in range, Jim grabbed a wrist and hauled him into a straddle. This didn't occur without cooperation, of course, but Jim was willing to assume responsibility for the arrangement. He pretzeled his own legs and Blair, taking cue, maneuvered himself in a way that finally justified yoga classes, settling comfortably into Jim's lap with legs wrapped behind him. Matching grins snuck out of them both.

"Works for me," Jim said, flexing to feel Blair's heels in the small of his back, warm knobs between him and the pillows. Blair was stroking the nape of his neck, touching the razored line between skin and hair. Strong fingers braided the air gently around him as if they would not commit to outright manhandling.

Lamp light weakly scrubbed at the shadows, but the genie astride him was gilded. High above, the last arterial blue of daylight squared the window against dusk.

In Jim's lap, Blair was adjusting his seat with distractive little hip motions. "Did you really want that shirt we got today? You can take it back."

"It's amazing," Jim said, feeling glassy-eyed and wondering if he'd become drunk on his one beer.

"Good," Blair said mildly, bumping foreheads with him. "Maybe I'll get you some of those flowered Hawaiian ones we saw."

"Sounds great," Jim managed to say. Closing his eyes, he stretched and rolled his head like a restive cat, rubbed his temple against the curves of Blair's face. He felt all the arousal in his body gather and push upwards to bloom above the neck, creating a heat so deep his own face might have been red as a rose.

"Mm hmm," Blair was saying. How about I drive your truck from now on, and you drive my Volvo."

"Okay."

"Can I borrow a thousand bucks to play the horses this weekend?"

The honeyed question poured itself across one sensitized sentinel ear, in a tone of voice so perfect that Jim felt a pearl of pre-ejaculate roll up out of his dick.

"Yes," Jim said fervently, meaning it. Somewhere in the tiny, secluded cell of his brain unaffected by hormones, a man styled after Dashiell Hammett typed ironically: He knew he was a sucker with a lapful of dynamite. He would have agreed to anything right now, even murder. 

"I think we're officially married," Blair said, flicking a finger on the side of Jim's skull with startling force.

"Hey!" Jim jerked and glared at the younger man, a posture of irritation hard to maintain given the blue eyes that were dreaming into his own, the uplifting horizon of lips.

"Sorry. Just christening in the relationship. Maybe I should do it with a beer bottle, though. More traditional." He leaned out to one side, stretching for the beer; Jim caught and drew him back.

"Leave it. I've got a cork you can pop."

Blair reared back, mocking alarm but clearly amazed nonetheless. "Oh, really?"

"Really."

"Really?"

Jim shifted Blair's bottom against his dick, cupping him through the boxers and then sliding his palms up under the material. The weight of Blair's body, the curved handfuls of padded muscle, stunned him. He'd meant to say something aggressive and maybe witty, but had no idea what. He simply held on and let Blair start kissing him. The other man's mouth, no longer a stranger's, was becoming lewd and tender. He did taste of toothpaste now, and his jaw seemed more relaxed. Jim's hands found a rhythm that matched the dance of their tongues, while in his hands Blair was trying to hitch himself higher.

They kissed until Blair grew rough and greedy, which was the same point at which Jim could no longer bear it. He yanked down the other man's boxers, freed the length of his cock, took it in his hand and began fisting. Blair began talking desperately into his mouth, subvocalizations that might have been words muffled by their unrelenting kisses.

Blair pulled away first. "Wait--I'm going to--going to come."

Jim stilled his caress. Thwarted, Blair twisted against his hand. Jim unclasped his fingers, let Blair drive back and forth across his palm for several moments, then slid his hand lower, under the tightly pursed balls, and stroked the root of pleasure under the skin. Blair cried out.

That's it, thought Jim. The sound leapt inside him. They were getting to the ruckus now; he wanted to hear every variation on this theme. Every thrum of vocal cords reversed a song on him, stroking excitations of air across the taut bow of his cock.

"Make some noise for me," he said roughly, fingertips teasing the seam of Blair's body. Blair gasped, and shuddered and arched in place, supported by Jim's free arm.

"Jim," he groaned. He was rising, or trying to, eager to center himself on Jim's busy fingers but hindered by the lock of his own legs. Jim nipped at his neck, mouthed the juncture of soft skin where it met shoulder, the left, then began biting in earnest at the captured curve of muscle. There were no objections, only grizzling snarls of encouragement. Blair was touching himself now, swiping his palm up and down his dick, irregularly tightening his grip in a way that Jim tried to anticipate and counterpoint. He rolled Blair's balls carefully, allowed enough time to earn a bucking flirt of ecstasy, then felt his way to the other man's hand on the shaft, where he interlaced their fingers. Blair's were slick, twitching.

"Please," Blair muttered.

Jim worried Blair's throat with his teeth and Blair sighed again and again, sounds of ascending joy and violence as the need for release came inevitably on. Jim could feel Blair's trembling all the way through him, in his thighs, arms, chest. "You're a sweet little bitch," Jim said deliberately, pumping hard on Blair's dick as he did.

Blair's head rolled back, and he thrust wildly into Jim's hand. He might have come then but Jim took his hand away, carrying Blair's with it. Blair accepted the change of pace reluctantly, with a moan; he exuded erotic angst but halted his gyrations to lean against Jim. Hair rose in a flocked drift to surround Jim, who licked the sweat at Blair's hairline and nuzzled into the fragrant mane.

"Call me some other names," Blair invited, tipping his head back. His heavily lidded eyes took more than a moment to focus on Jim.

"Maybe later," said Jim, unable to think of anything else right then, and resisting premeditation. "Do you mind if I get out of these jeans."

Blair hummed his assent, smiling. Jim decided the other man's full lips should be parted all the time, and swollen to this exact degree of use, and he thought of a famous jazz saxophonist he'd once spent a weekend with and realized he was even happier now. He caressed Blair's face, which was flushed and beaded with exertion.  "You're real pretty, Chief," he said, not caring how this sounded.

"Oh yeah? Pretty, huh...okay." Blair's tone of voice communicated doubt for its own sake, the hard wood of resistance in a man who doesn't care how he gets nailed. But his body spoke a different language and, supple and easygoing, he unbalanced himself and began reclining.

Jim removed the belt of his arm and helped ease Blair down onto the bed. His legs were still tangled around Jim's waist in a sultry bow, boxers shoved down off his hips. Christ, he looked good. His cock stood up, juiced and alert, its thick vein visibly pulsing, cap glistening; he was the ideal length, shape, heft. Not especially big, nor small, he was clean and cut, and basically what Jim thought of as normal. He'd rested one hand near the base, and his fingers wandered lazily there. He had dark curls, flat and decorative, and even though Jim liked the whole package he was already half-seriously wondering if he could persuade the younger man to shave every now and then for variety, and how smooth the skin might feel against his fingertips.

"Got your own private porno flick running there, Jim?" Blair sounded pleased, looked pleased, at Jim's lingering regard.

"Yep." Jim stroked an available leg and then shifted uncomfortably off the bed to stand and shuck his jeans. From his cute, debauched sprawl, Blair turned his head to watch him. As Jim pared down to boxers, he sat up, kicked out of his own flannel, and levered off the bed into a springy armful.

"Whoa," Jim said, staggering back, incensed to happiness by the fluid motion, the other man's utter nakedness, his own uncramped cock. He grabbed at Blair's backside, snugged him close.

"I just want to rub against you," Blair said, introducing a compelling grind against Jim's hips.

"Great," Jim croaked, stumbling back another pace to find himself up against the wall with Blair clinging to him. "Ohjesus," he said a second later as Blair's cock thrust at his through damp cotton. "Jesus, Blair, yes--" Blair's hands were shoving his boxers down, scooping him out, teasing his length. Jim shut his eyes, banged his head against the wall once, twice, hissed as Blair murmured something at him.

"Don't stop," he said when Blair's hands hesitated for a moment. "Fuck," he said raggedly, voice pitched to a hoarse plea, as Blair's hands began working him again as if sharpening a pencil. His head thumped restlessly against the plaster over and over, nearly matching the exquisite fucking natural rhythm that was swallowing his entire body, almost, almost....

"Fuck!" he said angrily when Blair stopped again. It could have killed him, that abrupt cessation of everything right in the world.

"Jim, man, cut it out." Blair tried to step back, would have if Jim hadn't held his wrists in place with demanding strength.

"You're killing me here, Chief." It took a lot to force those words out in a semblance of normalcy and not as savage warning. He wasn't even sure he succeeded, but Blair only looked concerned.

"You're doing a good job yourself. I think you put a crack in the wall."

"I want you," Jim said. Blair swallowed once, a noticeable bob of throat that made Jim's head swim. "Now," he added for emphasis. "Please." He would say anything; he was close enough to begging that Blair couldn't miss it. Under his blunt words need ran swift and strong, a dark river of desire. He tugged at Blair's wrists, gentled his grip but didn't let go entirely.

Blair uncaught one hand. "Let me," he said. He slid his hand up behind Jim's head, fingers channeling into short hair, heel propped along the base of his skull. His other hand immediately resumed its gift. Jim closed his eyes and tried to let Blair's hands console him; he sank into that touch, then leapt from the hips, maddened, thrashing, but there was nothing to hold onto. Fear of bruising Blair kept him from reaching out. His hands hung by his sides, helpless as dead meat, then pressed themselves flat to the cool wall.

He tried to let go but it was no good. He needed deeper grounding, something into which to divert the wild, tearing passion that was creeping up his back and scalp. It had been easier pleasuring Blair; it was always easier to keep control when he was the one driving. And he was used to people letting him drive, to the natural selfishness of sex. He'd forgotten how pushy Blair was, how eager he was to give of himself.

Jesus, he had to come. Instead, he took Blair by the shoulders, kissed his bewildered face. The need was dammed up now; his body had choked.

"What's wrong?" Blair asked, obviously wanting to please him.

"Look, you...you know how you said I like it rough. I mean, you asked if I did. Well, I do. That's how I like it."

"I'm not letting you bang your head against the wall," Blair said angrily, shoving at him as if to ward off the prospect.

"Then I'll have to do something else," Jim said flatly.

Blair stepped back, ran his hands through his hair. "Is this a--"

"No," Jim snapped, unwilling to hear the question completed, Blair's favorite question, is this a sentinel thing, because in probable truth, it was. But he didn't want to be Blair's object of study during sex.

"Okay." Blair caught his gaze, held it. "Okay. What else do you think you might want to do."

The question left Jim nonplused. Everything, he thought. "You could tie my hands to the closet rod," he said without stopping to think.

Blair didn't act as fazed as he should have been. "With what? Cuffs?"

Jim didn't display gratitude for this matter of fact response, but several tensely knotted fears in his body relaxed a notch, leaving pure sex behind. A sharp ache of relief in his chest contrasted with the dull, painful need for same that rode low and heavy in his balls. "Police issue cuffs aren't really fun," he said. As he went through his dresser drawers for suitable belts, he could see a peripheral Blair in the mirror, leaning against the desk and watching his backside.

"I always wondered about that."

"Don't pretend you haven't borrowed my spare cuffs," Jim said blandly.

"Um...never mind then."

Ten minutes later, Jim stood affixed to the closet rod, naked, testing its strength. "Feels okay," he said. He stretched, safe in the artifice of his restraints, his dick beginning to fill out again at last.

"So you want me to...I could, like, blow you." Blair said gamely, giving his equipment a measuring eye.

"If you want to," Jim said, putting no pressure in the words.

Blair stroked himself. "Maybe what I want to do is jerk off," he said, blue eyes frank, body canted in a wickedly casual set of angles.

Jim's mouth went dry. "Go ahead," he said.

"Hmmm," said Blair. "Decisions, decisions." He would have been annoying, but Jim could smell the rut on him. He grabbed the strips of leather behind his head, flexed his muscles to show off his chest, his rising dick. Blair breathed heavily and looked unabashedly impressed.

"You said once you'd never done this before," said Jim.

"Yeah. Not really."

"You seem to know what you're doing."

"Turns you on, doesn't it."

Jim considered this, watching the other man through narrowed eyes. "Hmm," he said noncommittally.

Blair smiled and went to get the chair from Jim's desk. "I've always been open minded." He dragged it back and set it in front of Jim's straining, ready body. "You're the one who set the house rules." He sat in the chair, kissed the head of Jim's cock.

"Sometimes I'm not too bright," Jim said blissfully.

Blair was kind enough and busy enough not to reply. He did a number of experiments, giving them his full attention: licked the head of Jim's erection, pulled the shaft upright then relaxed his grip, ran his thumb along the heavy underlying vein. He kissed the head again, licked it tentatively all around. Jim, unbuckling at the knees, watched Blair's mouth perform and tried to stay upright. When the other man's tongue arrowed itself and flicked wetly up and down the notched base of his glans, Jim pushed forward urgently.

"Suck me," he growled, and then jerked in his bonds, leather creaking and buckles clinking against the rod, as Blair obeyed. Jim pushed his senses into the rain that still poured down outside, and the light of the lamp, and intermittently he stared at the dark curls that spilled over his groin and each time he did it was as if he leapt up another flight of stairs in a headlong chase toward his prey.

"God," he began to breathe, and then began a helpless chant of yes after yes that paralleled a sudden fear Blair might stop. He swayed in place, and thought he might fall even though he couldn't. Instinct drove him to seek better footing, but his feet were really doing nothing more than rocking from ball to heel. He was fucking Blair's mouth, demanding and imploring, and Blair was taking him deeper, eyes shut; he'd slid one hand under Jim and reached up behind him so that his entire arm hooked the crux of Jim's body in warm, hard resolve. He'd at some point begun effortfully jerking himself off, but after an unmeasured passage of time during which Jim lost track of any pleasure but his own he felt Blair's other hand anchor itself to his hip. His mouth grew progressively more clever, more certain.

Jim arched, gasped, realized he could wedge his dizzied head against the metal rod and the shelf above it. He pushed himself in place and found enough resistance to let himself go further, to let go. His hips abandoned rhythm and he succumbed to a frantic, primitive drive focused in the expanding heat of his cock. Blair was letting him. Blair was letting him slide its wet aching head around his mouth, sucking him when he could, taking him down. Jim felt the entire world in him rise and fall, rise and fall, faster and faster. Nothing else, there was nothing else than the mouth that clung to him in persuasion, welcome, tongue shoving against the belly of his cock like a sentient wave, pushing him up against the ridged, spinal roof and drawing into a hot hollowness where he fit the burgeoning tremor of his head. He came like breakage, sharply, a missile of release.

He was half-dozing on the bed in satiety, wondering if he'd ruined his belts. He drifted to thinking of a porno movie he'd once seen with Marines. Unconvincing impersonations of Marines. A dungeon. Blair was below, making tea. Jim was pretty content, which made it hard to decide if the tea-making was offensive or endearing. The blow-job had been perfect. He decided it was appropriate to be  forgiving of any and all eccentricities. And he wanted to reciprocate in some way.

"Come up," he said to the ceiling, with a sketch of a smile.

"Hold your horses."

Jim thought about horses, saddles, tack. He pictured a Latina actress he'd always liked, in jodhpurs and carrying a whip, but now he discovered that he couldn't remember her name. "What's the name of that actress, the one in...." He trailed off, unable to recall anything she'd been in.

"What?" Blair called. Jim could hear the plink of a tea-bag hitting water, a spoon scraping pottery, smelled lemon. He got out of bed and went downstairs, rubbing his sparse hair as he went.

"Hi, naked man," Blair said from the kitchen.

"Hi." Jim went to the fireplace and began constructing fire. "Who's that actress I like?" he asked as he knelt. "The one with the, you know--" He made a hand gesture to himself, laughed, felt Blair look his way with that derisive, sidelong manner he sometimes had.

"With the booty, Jim? Man, you can't even say it."

"I'm thinking it." Jim poked some more sticks in for kindling.

"I have no idea who you mean."

"She played that singer," Jim said, crumpling some newspaper.

"What singer?"

"I can't remember her name."

"The singer's name?" Blair was laughing at him now, outright. Jim turned his head and enjoyed the sight of Blair in the kitchen making tea, laughing and naked. The interior of his eyes took on a glow.

"Never mind," he said, feigning grumpiness and then lighting the fire.

Blair brought tea over for both of them. Jim made a face but allowed Blair to set the mug on the table without comment.

"Manuela. Paula. Tina," said Jim to himself. The fire caught life quickly.

"You notice I'm not even asking why you're thinking of babes right now," Blair said from three feet behind him.

"I'm losing my memory," Jim said. "Getting old." He heard the dry but squelching sound of fabric giving under the weight of a fine piece of ass. "You think you can just sit on the couch naked now, I take it."

"Yeah," Blair said easily.

Jim rose and moved over to Blair in a loom he'd perfected long ago. Blair lay his head back against the couch and gazed up at him with his dreamy-eyed opposition. Wild curls, shadows creeping up in his jaw despite his earlier shave. His lips had ripened during their play, along with his scent; one side of his neck and shoulder evidenced Jim's thorough mauling. Jim sat down, defining new territory with the wrapped closeness of his body. He rested a hand between Blair's thighs, gentled the soft heap of his dick and balls, both still perceptibly swollen to his touch. Residual, unspent arousal.

"You didn't have to wait," Jim said.

"Maybe I wanted your full attention."

"Oh." Jim stroked the curvature of Blair's resting genitals, felt them stir from within.

"Not really," Blair amended. "I could have taken care of myself. I wasn't in a hurry. I mean, I was, but now I'm--"

"Shut up," Jim said pleasantly.

"Okay." Blair smiled, then melted a few inches into the couch as Jim's hand commanded him from below. "That's good," he said. His head nudged Jim's encircling arm as he exercised his neck, maybe working some kinks out.

"I used to massage Carolyn sometimes."

Blair eyed him, then connected the dots as usual: in whatever direction took his fancy and without request for explanations, a style of accommodation that sometimes exasperated Jim and sometimes gratified him in the deepest possible way. "So, I might benefit from this? Cool."

"Enlightened self-interest?"

"Mmmm. I thought that was the point. You do keep mentioning women, though. Maybe you're trying to tell me something else."

Jim relaxed his grip on the stiffening handful of Blair's cock and didn't tighten it again until he heard a note of complaint. "Maybe," Jim had to admit. "I don't know."

"Do what you can," Blair said. Then: "Do what you want." He didn't sound too troubled.

"I can do this."

"I'm incredibly glad," Blair approved with some breathlessness.

Jim observed his resurgence. "Make some noise for me," he said.

"You really like that, huh?" Blair shifted closer into the crook of Jim's body and arched. Eyes dosed with sensual watchfulness, lips parted, he sighed, stretched, gave plaintive husky mewls that enflamed Jim's attention. "Jim," he murmured. "Jim." When he said Jim's name like this it was an exhalation of pot smoke, a taste of cream, a blossom on the clambering vine toward nirvana.

Jim's ears heated. Blair was rubbing against him shamelessly, boyish face absorbed in pleasure while the fully grown, masculine, Jesus-fucking-beautiful length of him writhed like a soldier caught in wire, like a submissive prisoner. Jim tunneled his hand and let Blair's heat-flaring cock plug away at him, and gave rare applause to the luxurious concentration of nerves he'd been blessed with, wondering if he could have an orgasm with his hand because it certainly felt like it.

"C'mon, Chief, that's it," Jim whispered against the upturned rapture of Blair's face, biting his jawbone and running his tongue in a broad, careless swathe against stubble that barely broke skin but felt like granularly fine sandpaper. Blair would let him do anything, that was clear; almost anything. Close enough to anything to make him feel very, very good.

Blair shuddered and heaved, then plumbed Jim's cloistering hand with erratic control but fierce concentration. "No, ah, no," he groaned, twisting and bumping against Jim--face, chest, thighs--before taking him by the arms. Jim collected him into his lap again, where Blair pushed to his knees and quivered semi-upright, cock sliding across Jim's ribs like erotic writing. Jim touched his mouth to a nipple since it was there, then sucked it to a point. Blair lapsed into guttural, incoherent argument with himself, like a drunk who can't choose his next step.

Jim ignored this and adjusted Blair's seat, fitting ass neatly against the renewed scepter of his cock, a clasped center of muscle resting on its bluntly pearling head. Blair articulated some resistance but Jim soothed him, distracted him with other pleasures, edging himself determinedly around the gate like a burglar. Blair took several uneven breaths and Jim stroked his rump, held him open. It took a while to find out whether this would work, and they spent the time with their faces pressed together, mouths passing reassurances back and forth. Their bodies struggled to fit.

After a while, it seemed to matter less whether they accomplished this immediately; to Jim it became almost more of a job than it was worth given the lines of stress that were weaving Blair's face into a grimace. His own cockhead felt bee-stung, painful, intrusive. But then it happened despite itself, a completion of key to unoiled lock, and they were both surprised.

"You know I'm clean, right," Blair said, with Jim buried to the hilt inside him.

Jim, dazed, nodded. "Ditto."

"It feels...like it could get better," Blair noted. Rather pointedly.

"Just take it easy. Don't move around like that."

"Um." Blair wriggled, tensed; his forehead was knitted tight. Jim began another slow, jack-handling acquisition of Blair's cock; after a minute it grew again into his hand.

"When I come," Blair rasped out, "I'm probably going to drown you."

Jim said nothing. The fire crackled behind Blair's upraised body; his furred thighs clamped firmly to Jim's; the rain came down some more; their downstairs neighbor turned on HBO. The rug beneath his bare feet was gritty and needed a vacuum. There were urban rats scouting the building. In truth, the whole city was a nest, but this was his nest, ratless and demarcated against the city, relatively clean, calm, with mint tea cooling on the table. He was wearing Blair like a holster. The thought excited him. In his mind flashed definitions of his life, and it occurred to him that he would go to work Monday with this man's scent still on him, sit at his desk, open a case file and make calls. Blair would go to school and the rhythms of their lives would pick up and continue and he had no idea what the fuck he was doing, but thank god it felt good right now.

"How's this for you," Blair asked, posting lightly in the saddle of Jim's hips.

"Infuckingcredible," Jim said.

Blair placed his hands on Jim's shoulders and squeezed with magical synchronization, tensing two different sets of muscles on Jim's shoulders and cock simultaneously. Jim, speechless, fought the urge to buck. He clutched Blair's ass instead, helping himself, astonished even now at the implicit permission of the other man's body. Issuing a full-throated complexity of purrs, Blair rode him at a more aggressive pace, and Jim figured that all systems were go. He shoved his feet to the floor and levered himself into a series of thrusts that Blair answered with greater pressure and then Blair moved his bottom like a cork kissing a corkscrew.

Jim came first, at once, unable to wait, and moments later Blair gasped and shook, spirit leaping with agile force inside his skin; he came the way shamans have visions. Jim felt used, in a virile and satisfying way.

Later, the fire burned down and they talked until they were bored. Jim drank the cooled tea, and didn't complain. They each went to bed, separately.

The next morning, Jim remembered the name of the actress. Jennifer Lopez. He wore the sweater Blair had bought, even though it was too warm for it.

He thought about Jennifer Lopez often that day.

End.