Archive of Our Own ^beta

Author's email: [email protected]

Author's disclaimer: These are two other guys. I don't think they belong to Pet Fly. I found them in some other, sluttier universe. Still, whatever.

May 1, 1996

It was that time of the month. My one week layover chez Ellison had stretched to three, then six. And now the rent was due.

All part of the master plan.

For weeks I'd made a show of looking through newspaper rental ads, circling the likeliest, leaving messages--I even visited a few places on my own. I filled out applications with wrong names, false credit histories, and a past reference who was actually my pal Jeb, a guy with a vicious streak and too much time on his hands. I'd go and look around the apartments, nod, say, "My girlfriend's got a lot of cats, but most of them are pretty clean," and "I'm not sure my speakers will fit in here, but yeah, why not, man. Let's give it a try." When Jim got impatient with my lack of progress, I'd drag him along for an afternoon and put on my best face; give the landlords winning smiles, fill out the applications carefully. Except for the phone number, whose digits I transposed. This was dangerous, though. If you look like a strong contender, landlords encourage you to leave a deposit, and after a month Jim was too ready to fork over the dough on my behalf if it would get me out of his handsomely thinning hair.

He actually did hand over a hefty deposit for me a few times, and each time I had to fetch it back with apologies and carefully devised excuses. Once I came very close to getting an apartment, a nice place with hardwood floors and a glossy, old-fashioned elevator. The landlady was determined to give me the keys. I was adorable and reminded her of her grandson, and Jim had wowed her with his manly presence and side-holster. I told her that Jim had accepted a job offer in San Francisco, with great domestic partnership benefits, the kind of opportunity you can't pass up when you live the lifestyle we do. She was understanding, and gave me some ancient hard candy from a bowl in her foyer, and for several minutes I felt about eleven years old and for several hours I felt deeply shitty.

More worrisome was the possibility that Jim would follow up with her--he is a cop, after all, and apt to scent a trail of deceit with his well-tuned nose. He never checked up on any of my stories, though. Funny thing.

I spent far more time elaborating and sustaining this complex pretense than I did actually looking for another place to stay. Why would I want to leave? Jim Ellison is...is...Jesus, I mean, look, he's a big hunk of beefcake with a brain like a cherry on top, and a decent, upstanding citizen besides, and somehow I'd talked this beautiful guy into becoming the subject of my diss. How the hell I managed that I'll never know, but I intended to stick close for as long as he'd let me, no matter what vile, low connivances it required of me. Hey, I'm a Sandburg. I come from a long line of freeloaders, loafers, con artists, and penniless anarchists. We're not the nice Jewish family on the block. We're used to working an angle or two before breakfast, trying to talk someone into letting us stay for another night, just until our ride comes, the check comes, just until we pick up some work. Great practice for grant proposals.

Jim had been patient, in the guise of impatience. He had a calm, smooth facade and these blue eyes that followed me everywhere. If he caught me looking back, he'd flick his gaze down or away real quick as if he'd just thought of something else he needed to think about. It was cute. This was why I couldn't stand the thought of leaving. I'd miss those looks, and the exasperated faces he'd make when I messed up the bathroom sink or left weird foods lurking in his tupperware. Plus he was fucking hot and he knew it, the bastard. He'd been parading around in boxers since day one, showing off his robocop buffness. He had a little swagger to his walk, a way of obliquely flirting from the neck down while his face remained aloof and innocent. He'd stand at the fridge, morning woody not entirely abated, drink down some orange juice from the carton--head tipped back on his majestic neck, scratching himself casually on the belly--right in front of my open door when he knew I was watching. I wasn't quite sure at first this was for my benefit, but I realized it had been part of a whole peacock display ritual when he stopped; the man drinks orange juice from a glass.

I'm not sure if he scaled back the strut because he thought he wasn't getting anywhere or because he reconsidered the wisdom of sleeping with a guy seven years younger, a tag-along partner who'd somehow gotten lodged in his spare room. If he thought I wasn't interested, he was wrong. I was letting things build to a natural head. I hadn't nailed him yet, but that was part of the plan too.

Now I was officially in residence--well, more or less. I wasn't on the deed, but he'd finally allowed my toothbrush to migrate from its carrying case up into the toothbrush holder. No joke. This was what I'd had to put up with. The man is territorial and the demarcation lines between temporary guest and roommate were all very clear to him, even if visible only in his head. Everything I'd brought had to remain in the spare room; a special cupboard was assigned for my food; a travel kit of his own was issued to me, so that all my shit would be carefully isolated in the bathroom, away from his shit. I didn't go to war on his turf, of course. I retaliated by being faultlessly amiable about it all, and then going off to type notes, knowing he'd hear those steady clicks.

Still, by a slow process of ingratiation and familiarization, I'd worn him down. It was the honeymoon phase, and I know that he got a kick out of me despite his best intentions to hold fast against the encroaching tide of Sandburg, mess, and chaos. I made him a lot of food. He hadn't eaten so well in a long time, and once a man starts acclimating to home-cooked meals again, he's lost. It was what I counted on. He could cook too, but no one pulls out the casserole dish just for himself. I made him healthy stuff, gave him just enough meat to prevent rebellion, even made a few batches of cookies--not too many. I didn't want to be that obvious. The trick was to obscure the slow ramp-up into domesticity under a guyish haze of banter and wet towels and annoying music. He had to feel he was breaking me in. He taught me how to hang my towels, how to do dishes, how to clear the living room of my debris when I was turning in for the night. All stuff that, duh, most twelve-year-olds could manage on their own, but I gazed wide-eyed at the novelty of it all and he felt like he'd accomplished something.

That was the key. By the time several weeks had passed, he'd invested a lot of effort in me. I was his project and I'd come a long way. I also had a hero worship thing going, no pretense there, and he ate that up while trying to play it off like it was no big deal. He needed a kid brother or a wife, or maybe both rolled up into one--hell, he just needed someone. He was lonely. I wasn't lonely, exactly, but I wanted in. In his loft, in his life, in between his sheets.

I don't know how he came to the decision, whether he realized that I was never going to leave under my own power and he'd better put a price-tag on my mooching, or if he felt a true inclination to keep me around on more permanent terms. Or maybe it was simple resignation, the way you finally have to admit that the cat you keep feeding is no longer a stray--time to give it a collar and a name. Whatever the case, he sat me down and said that if I was sticking around, he'd expect me to pony up some rent. He owned the loft and didn't need the money, so it was clearly the principle of the thing; I figured my share would go mostly toward utilities, household stuff. He was asking three hundred dollars, and that included monthly parking. This was nothing, this was a steal. I mean, his spare room isn't exactly spacious, but I've seen apartments not much bigger. I agreed in a heartbeat. He eyed me sharply the whole time we talked, wanting to make sure I took the matter seriously, and wasn't spacing out on the obligation.

When the talk was done, it was done. No papers to sign, no further negotiations. He'd already laid out his house rules, and never had a problem clarifying them when the occasion arose. From the day of that talk, I'd had two weeks to come up with the first month's rent, and now it was the first of the month and money was due to change hands.

It was too bad I didn't have it.

Jim sat across the table from me, reading the newspaper and eating his eggs. Orange juice in a glass. He's an old-fashioned kind of guy in some things. Traditional. I'd pushed a bran muffin on him, which sat on a small plate of its own, half-dismantled, with a big chunk of butter dribbling off one end as a fatty counterbalance to the benefits of the bran itself. I was eating cereal and trying to think of a way to tell Jim that I had no money. I don't make a lot of money, and what disposable income I do make gets disposed of pretty fast. Instinct told me that Jim wouldn't be sympathetic to my gambling habit, and I had no plans to disclose this bit of info.

I wondered if he would raise the subject first or if he'd wait it out, growing more tight-lipped as the day passed, eyeballing me with a grim anticipation of conflict, making meaningful jabs about money that circled the issue indirectly. This was his attack technique for most difficult subjects. He liked to practice the methodology of a gradually escalating interrogation, I think. Or else he just dug that slow torture thing. I don't know.

"Listen," I said.

Some tiny movement of his eyes told me he'd been alerted, but he didn't look up from the paper. He held it folded in his left hand, forking eggs up with his right. "Hmm," he said.

"Um. It's the first."

He glanced up now, looked me over with the morning's offhand, critical inventory that communicated his thoughts--what the hell is with the hair today, is that shirt clean--but said nothing.

"So, listen." I cleared my throat and dinked my spoon around in my cereal. When I met his eyes, I saw his face had started to change. Already I could read the knowingness which said he'd expected this, expected to be disappointed with me. "I, um, don't have the money. For rent. I don't have it."

"You don't have it," he repeated.

"Yeah. I mean, no."

He waited for something--my excuses, my story--but now it was my turn to say nothing. When the silence and our sparring stares had dragged out for ten or fifteen excruciating seconds, he finally let himself get irritated.

"That's it. You don't have the money." He slapped his fork down across his plate where it clattered, and laughed with a cop-meets-asshole incredulity. Then, needing to express his outrage but being a nice, whitebread, suburban-bred sort of guy, he grabbed his napkin from his lap and gave it a chuck across the plate to indicate he'd be eating no more. The definitive gesture of disgust. I'll bet his father used to do it.

"I should have known," he went on. "I don't know why I thought--" He stopped, shook his head. "I should have listened to Simon. He said I'd regret this."

"He did, huh." I made a mental note of that. Work harder on the Captain. I sat back in my chair, toying with my spoon, trying to decide my next move. I kept my eyes downcast while I thought, and tried to hang my face in an apologetic and embarrassed manner.

"For Christ's sake, it's just three hundred dollars, Sandburg. How can you not have it? What do they pay you with over there at Rainier, cowrie shells and peanuts?"

Ah, man, I loved this guy. Cowrie shells and peanuts. He was so much smarter than anyone gave him credit for, and he hated his own brains. Every slip made him uncomfortable, self-conscious. I wanted to suck his cock, make him feel good, then tell him I liked his brains too.

"That's about right," I said, managing a crooked smile. "To tell the truth...oh, man, you don't want to hear it." Finesse is only half of what makes a good liar. The other half is the guise of awkwardness, the skillful punctuation of frowns and shrugs. If you deliver your lies smoothly, and the truth poorly, no one will know what to believe. Then, if you're accomplished enough, you can switch-hit.

"Hear what? Your bullshit? You're right, I don't want to hear it." He stared off to one side and fumed silently, and after a moment I understood that he'd worked himself into a corner and I'd have to help him out.

"Fine. I didn't want to tell you anyway, I just thought you deserved an explanation. But you know, forget it. It's all bullshit anyway, right." That was laying it on pretty thick, but I'd been honing a bland delivery to match his own. I imagined that my face was a mask over inner pain that I couldn't bear to show. He twitched responsively.

"What are you going to tell me. Let me guess. You gave it all to save the whales. You got some girl pregnant and had to help her out."

Jesus, he could be a mean son of a bitch. I had to respect that. But we both knew that he was really giving me an opening. "Okay, look. I'm going to tell you, but don't laugh. I know you're like this cop and all--I mean, you're a cop, and it's all in a day's work for you, the shit you see. And I know you probably think therapy's for pussies. It's not like you haven't made a few cracks. But I...." I blew out a breath. "It sort of fucked me up, what happened with Lash. I didn't want you to think I was losing it, that I couldn't hack the ride-along part of the deal. And if they're letting someone do a ride-along, I'm sure they don't want them cracking up. Probably worry about liability, that sort of thing. Anyway, I picked up some sessions with this guy I used to see."

It was a terrible thing I was doing. Lash had fucked me up. I'd been ripped to shreds. For the last few weeks, late at night, I'd stared awake in the darkness at my patch of ceiling, adrift in a quiet sea of panic, longing for a simpler life and for Jim. I'd woken up in cold sweats. I'd dreamed in technicolor evil. And now I was using my fears to this base purpose.

I used myself more than I used Jim.

Through my lashes, I watched him absorb my words. His face was conflicted and showed undercurrents of movement as if the muscles of his cheeks and jaw were where thought and feeling resided. The guy was ripe for TMJ, but there was something attractive about this subtle articulation.

"You could have seen the department shrink," he said, but it was a half-hearted rejoinder.

"I didn't want them to know."

Jim nodded, acknowledging this. He'd been successfully guilted. Which was just where he wanted to be. But warring against the guilt was an adamant determination not to be taken advantage of. I think this was one of his deeper fears. Hard to tell. It may have just been a guy thing.

"Look," he said. His gaze skittered over me as he spoke--up, down, up, away. "I understand this, Sandburg. Okay. I do. But you have to pay rent. I can't just let it go because you had therapy bills this month. I mean, what's it going to be about next month?"

I saw the shadow under his face. He cared, despite those hard words. I remembered a night soon after my kidnapping when he'd woken up with cries--strange, terrifying sounds from the upper floor which drew me abruptly from sleep--and we'd left our beds by mutual instinct and met on the cool floorboards of the living room, standing in only the dim grey light from the balcony doors. He'd held me and cried without a sound, his grip like the steel band of brotherhood around my shoulders and back, said something about down, duck feathers, waste and pond water. Inarticulate, broken words that made me cringe as if I was living his nightmare, made me chill and press into his embrace. He'd remembered nothing the next morning, and I hadn't pushed him.

I used my pain, because it was mine and I could do with it as I liked. But it left a sharp metallic taste of disappointment on my tongue, disappointment in myself. I'd used this, and it was cheaper now. Diminished. Maybe that was a good thing, too, though. Stuff like that gets mixed up.

"Yeah, I know," I said. Submission to his challenge.

"Are you still seeing him?"

I frowned and let the question hang a moment, the pause dragging it out of context just enough that its suggestiveness became apparent. As Jim began to look bemused and faintly disgusted with me again, I said, "No. I'm through. I worked through some issues, got closure."

Jim's face now said, whatever. He was forcing himself to move on. "Next month, no excuses. We'll add this month in. If you can pay for both months, fine. Or you can pay an extra hundred a month for the next three months. Is that good enough?"

"Man, of course--thanks, Jim. I just--"

"We're done." He raised his brows at me warningly, grimaced as if the whole conversation had left a weird taste in his mouth, and rose to clear his breakfast away.

I didn't smile, he might have seen me, but my head buzzed happily with this reprieve. I'm not sure that I knew what the hell I was doing. Playing the horses, playing fast and loose when I should have been taking better care. Speaking in a broader sense now. I didn't want to lose. I never want to lose, but I was messing with him, I was pushing him--pushing us--toward something that could easily turn out to be very ugly. Why?

I don't know why I do the things I do. Even anthropologists can be pretty stupid that way.

June 1, 1996

It was that time of the month again, and I was flat broke. Easy Pieces had looked like a sure thing. I win at horses more than I lose. Really. But like any man, any human being with a dream, I take the long odds once in a while. Pay-off would have been ten thousand dollars. I could have paid a few years' rent in advance and had enough left over to keep Jim rolling in Wonderburgers.

Now I was good and fucked.

It was a Saturday morning, and Jim was still lounging upstairs with his earplugs in and a glamour-girl sleep-mask plastered across his face. I was downstairs whisking blueberries into pancake mix and considering the ameliorative powers of bacon. Unfortunately, there probably wasn't enough bacon in the world to make him sit still when I confessed I had no money for him.

I muttered to myself and banged around the kitchen more energetically than I needed to, wishing he'd wake up so we could get it over with. Then I caught myself and quieted. What had I been thinking? I didn't want him to wake up now. In fact, maybe if I was quick I could even sneak out. Take off for the entire weekend, defer a confrontation until later in the week when he'd be more easily distracted and avoided.

The idea materialized too late. I looked up to see Jim's shapely calves descending the stairs, followed by the shapely rest of him. He was tying his robe. A glimpse of boxers, a glimpse of chest, and then nothing. Pricktease.

He ambled over, grunted at me, and headed for the fridge. Out with the filtered water, out with the glass. I watched his throat work, admired the hand that remained splayed on the counter as if to hold his godly muscles upright. What a pretty man.

He set the glass down, looked at my pancake mix.

"Blueberry," I said. My voice piped its nervousness. "How many?"

"Three." He straightened, disappeared into the bathroom. I stood and poured batter on the griddle, feeling grim. Bacon, I thought. Bacon. I got some out and tossed it on. Big griddle. Lots of bacon. In seconds, the air was filled with its aroma. He returned from the bathroom and sniffed delicately.

"First of the month," he said. He must have realized it while in the bathroom. I knew I shouldn't have left the sports section in there.

"Yeah."

"You've got the money, of course." He had the decency to turn and get coffee as he said this, but I couldn't evade the perception of his senses. His attention radiated from the back of his head, from the set of his shoulders. Full-body sentinel attention. He looked at me without looking.

"Um. Yeah. About that."

He turned back and came within a foot of me. "I want you out. If you don't have the money, that's it. I've put up with this, but that's it. I don't know what's going through your head, but the ride is over."

Horrified, cheeks flaming, I nodded my wordless grasp of the ultimatum. I shoved my spatula at the pancakes as if it were a crucial act of penitence to ensure that they did not burn. My throat felt tight, but I was also perversely exhilarated. When I'd braved myself to speak, I said, "I'm not a freeloader, you know." I was, but hey, I was trying for some credibility here. "I'm just a little short."

"How much short?"

"Well, all of it, but--"

He thumped his fist on the counter like a judge's gavel. He was still standing very close. A good and scary kind of close. "How the hell did you manage to pay eight hundred a month for that shithole of a warehouse when you can't even manage to scrounge up three hundred to stay here?"

"I lied." Always best to admit it once in a while. "I was squatting. I thought you'd be pissed. I just made up that figure. It seemed about right."

I stole a glance and Jim was gaping at me: for just a second his lips parted in disbelief at my audacity or insanity or whatever else had popped his cork, before he raised his hand to his head with theatrical wonderment, almost a salute. "Squatting. That's just great. Just great. In a rat-infested hole next to a drug den in the middle of the warehouse district. I suppose you were siphoning off electricity too."

This was opening up a whole line of questioning that I didn't want to get into. Time to divert. "Rental market's tough, man. And I only make eleven thousand a year." I began stacking pancakes, pouring new ones.

Jim blinked. Stipends are always startling to non-academics. "You can't be serious," he said.

"Of course I'm serious. Grad students are thick on the ground and hungry for any work that doesn't involve mopping." Or pride, or dignity. "I'm lucky to have an assistantship."

Jim's eyes narrowed. He would hate to admit that I was a poverty-stricken urchin and that he wanted to keep me. "You still have a thousand dollars coming in each month," he said. "You have to budget in a place to live." Then a thought, unfortunately, occurred to him. "You've been stringing me along all this time. There's no way you could have paid for some of those apartments we looked at." He gave me an accusatory look, like a bear who's been stung on the nose by a honey-bee. It was sweet.

"I figured I'd get a roommate or two, work it out. I didn't want to bother you with the details, man."

His jaw swerved with a short laugh. "You are such a con artist." He liked the sound of this, I could tell, and he swallowed down some coffee as if that ended the discussion.

"And you're such a cop. Always thinking the worst of people."

He glared at the comeback while I heaped up bacon on a plate and hoped he'd get pissed, loom over me, even push me around a bit. "I know I've let you down," I said. "I thought I could pull it together. It's just been tight these last few months. I'm willing to come to an arrangement, though." I cut a glance his way, dipped my lashes at him winningly. A frown of incomprehension dug in between his brows.

He shifted on his feet. It could have meant his feet were cold, or that he was hungry for bacon and ready to cut the argument short. Or just maybe he'd gotten that first whiff of possible sex and his balls were starting to knot. He took a step back and set his hip against the counter. "If I cut the rent back to, say, two hundred, do you think you could manage it?"

"I guess," I said doubtfully. "I could try." I let a few beats pass. "Ah, who'm I kidding. You say to budget it in, but it's not easy. It's been a while since I've paid rent. I've mostly crashed with friends, or worked it out in trade. I was kind of hoping we might be able to do that."

"Do what," he said in a dangerous, uninviting tone.

"You know." I finished up our breakfast, carried the plates to the table, and sat down.

He followed after a few moments, sat across from me but didn't pick up his fork. "I don't know."

"Work it out in trade." I chewed a mouthful of pancake, held his gaze with my eyes. His were so blue. Mine were blue, but his defined blue. I was getting a hard-on, staring at him, being stared at. I wondered if he could tell.

"I know you don't mean what I think you mean," he said, almost politely. Dismissively. He made as if to begin eating.

"Sex, Jim." He stopped cutting his pancakes and stared at me again from across three and a half feet of table. A new stare, a cat-in-the-headlights stare. "I mean sex."

"Are you insane?" His tone conveyed simple inquiry, as if he needed to know my blood-type, my marital status.

I laughed. "Come on, man. Don't tell me you haven't thought about it."

"You do realize that you've just made a sleazy proposition to trade sex for rent to a police officer."

"Is it illegal?" I asked innocently.

He had to think about it. I liked Jim thoughtful. His jaw grew longer; he looked more complicated. "Maybe. I don't know. That isn't the point."

"Hey, you brought up the whole I-am-the-law thing. I'm just talking about an understanding."

"An understanding."

"A consensual, symbiotic arrangement of mutual needs," I offered.

"Symbiotic. Isn't that the kind of relationship you have with a parasite?"

It was my turn to glare. "Forget it, never mind, if you're not interested--"

"Of course I'm not interested. What the hell made you think I'd be interested?"

"You're interested," I said. I licked syrup from the corner of my lips. His gaze followed my tongue before he snapped it back front and center; his cheeks pinked. "I'd blow you now if you'd let me." It was risky, going that far; he was hungry and dangling but I could still lose him. He might twist away and reclaim his heterosexuality, descend into verbal abuse, kick me out. Conflicted men, men who like it on the side, are unpredictable.

He'd stopped trying to eat. He was embarrassed to be discussing this over breakfast. Discomforted. Turned on. I wondered if Carolyn had blown him at breakfast, under the table, on her elegant knees. I told him with my eyes that I'd do it for him. He couldn't get up from the table now; that was how much he wanted it.

"It could be like a test drive," I said. I let one hand flop on the table, finger curling to point toward the open jar of syrup, an expensive type that he liked. His gaze followed obediently again and his cheeks heated further. "That'd feel good on your dick, wouldn't it. And then my mouth."

"Jesus...Jesus Christ, Sandburg." His voice was strangled; I could see a vein on his left temple throb and imagined the ache between his legs.

What the hell, I thought. I pulled off my tee-shirt and tossed it on the floor, then came around to him. He didn't get up but his legs widened a few inches. Instinct. His breath was picking up. I got down on my knees next to his chair. I could have crawled under the table, but that was silly. Besides, I wanted him to turn the chair for me, to meet me halfway. He breathed, didn't look at me. If he was thinking at all, he was probably trying to decide what to do or maybe hoping the phone would ring. It didn't, and I touched his knee. He drew in his breath.

"Sandburg." It was a growl, an entreaty. He refused to look at me, to commit. Stubborn bastard.

I tugged lightly. His knee felt good in my hand. The chair creaked as he shifted. "Come on, Jim. Just once. You don't have to make any big decisions now. Just a little one."

He put his forehead in his hands: a Rodin thinker in a chenille robe, except with mussed hair and his hands kind of flattened out as if he were pressing back a headache or prescience. I tugged again and stroked up his thigh. He jerked upright and sucked in an even deeper breath. I thought he'd bolt, but he turned his chair instead. Bingo. He gave off heat, pouring it into my hands. The chair legs dragged as he swung himself around and I helped him with this slide, moving between his own finely designed legs. He didn't touch me; both hands were clenched on his thighs, one on each side of the parted robe. I could see his blue striped boxers through the gaping lap. His dick tented the material.

I glanced up, saw and took pity on his averted face, his roughly blood-rouged cheeks. I didn't say anything else. Hard to, anyway. I was so turned on that I thought I might hyperventilate. I undid the tie on his robe and drew it open, then tugged his dick out of his boxers with both sweating hands. He moved--man, did he move--with a sizzling arch to his back, this long shudder of lust for me. His legs slid further apart, his body wedded itself gracefully to the chair. I sucked him off. I took my time and gave him no choice in the matter. I wanted the introductory blow-job to be perfect. Plus I owed him that six hundred bucks. It turned me on more, thinking of it. I worked him over with my mouth as if I owed him my life too, and in fact I did, didn't I.

I was--am--great at giving head. After five minutes, he was gusting out ragged, appreciative curses; after ten, desperate sounds closer to prayer.

I did it sloppy. I did it wet and soft, then wet and hard. I licked his balls, nuzzled them, rubbed my face all over his dick. I sucked the gleaming juice from the head, jacked him lazily with one hand and rolled his balls with the other. Every now and then I'd swallow him down as deeply as I could and feel his entire body shake with the strain. He was fucking beautiful. His dick was long and thick and dark red, with a distinctly heavy vein running from balls to crown, and he was cut, every part of him etched sharply, pure art. I ate him as long as I could, and kept him from spilling over the edge until I was ready. Then I took one of his hands and drew it into my hair. He stiffened and clutched at me, and I urged him along with small hums of pleasure. I flicked my tongue along the underside of his shaft and heard him groan, then he pushed both hands into my hair, drove trembling into my mouth, fucked me harder as he understood I wanted it. I could feel his balls tightening, every muscle in his body growing rigid with tension just before he shot wildly into me: six or seven streams, hard ones that sent his shaft jerking across my tongue.

"Blair," he uttered when he came, as if my name had a broad, passionate meaning for him. That was nearly enough for me. I gripped myself through my sweats and pumped a few times, and then I was well and truly finished. I came in a soaking rush with his cock still wedged between my lips.

My ears burned, my face tingled. Wonderful. It had been a while since I'd given a blow-job. Maybe four or five months. Last guy was some nameless jock in a public bathroom on campus. I shouldn't let myself do those things, but he'd come on to me and it had been one of those days, one of those crappy days when you want to get drunk or laid or both--make a trashy mess of your life--and then zing, angels drop ripe plums in your mouth.

But Jim was the gift of a better angel. When I pulled my mouth away, he groaned and then caressed me, one hand cupping the side of my neck, the other stroking my hair, as if I needed gentleness. With that gesture I felt smaller, meaner--just for a moment, that transcendent moment when you realize you are less than the sum of your hopes. Then I breathed, and dwelled again in the ordinary condition of myself.

"Blair," he said. He touched me with his fingers, tips drifting across my hair and skin.

Okay, he's just a guy. His dick is out. I can smell his sweat. He's breathing and his heart is beating and he's this soldier, this grunt of skin and muscle. He's meat, like the rest of us. But I was captured; he was splendid. My sentinel. He was real.

"Mmm. Yeah," I said.

Awkwardness followed. We sustained a frieze of completion for close to a minute, then my knees twinged, he shifted in recognition of his waning arousal, and I looked up. He was sated, his eyes low and heavy with completion. I'd done that. I wanted to do it again.

We didn't discuss what had happened. Not then. The subject was a delicate one, and I didn't press for formalities, a ring, a contract. I retreated and showered, and let him gather himself for the day. It was enough that he'd let me give him what he wanted, what I wanted.

I didn't pay him rent that month. He said not a word.

July 1, 1996

It was hot in my office. The door was open but the windows were ancient and unbudgeable, and I was stewing in my own juices despite three fans. I was teaching one summer class and my scheduled office hours were in session. In the space of two hours I'd seen Christa, Lynette, John, Marcus, and Terri: term paper, vague career advice, term paper, quiz score, and freshman crush. I'd been tense all day, and during the student conferences fiddled almost non-stop with a small, five-dollar lingam I'd picked up recently. It didn't calm me but I told myself it did, and thumbed it with restless energy while Terri made cow-eyes at me.

She wanted me to explain kinship systems in detail off the top of my head, without charts. She leaned forward toward the desk and regurgitated small, mangled chunks of paraphrase from her notes and asked inane questions. I told her the best thing to do would be to sit down and draw her own chart from the exercise in the book. It took twenty minutes to successfully impart this advice. As she talked I nodded and entertained dirty thoughts of Jim. Jim, naked and spread out like a buffet. Jim wearing only black combat boots and tighty-whities. I even painted a ludicrous mental picture of him in a pair of blue jeans--top button undone, fly unzipped a sweet half-inch--and a cowboy hat, leaning against a fence. I had it bad. It was difficult for me to focus on Terri's sensitive face: those big eyes, encased like beetles behind thick glasses, that pile of complicated brown hair, those Kansas freckles. She was nineteen and had a jock's lithe body, and an endearing way of smiling at me and saying with her eyes that I was the man her mother had warned her about, a Pacific Northwest hippie child, an academic goofball who could corrupt her and lead her down dark paths of pot and pussy power. She wanted this, I could tell, and it made me shudder. One false step and I'd be the effete villain in her first novel.

When I finally ushered her out and closed the door behind her, I was nearly jitter-bugging. I'd been able to think of nothing but Jim all day. What I could do for him, what he might let me do for him. I went back to my desk and sat down in front of my university-issued PC. I rubbed my thighs with a nervous gesture, opened a new e-mail message, then sat and stared blankly at a post-it note which said, "CSA con, pap dead 8/13." After a minute, I typed: "Hi Jim--checked your calendar? I owe you. Think about what you want. Anything goes. It's your dime and then some."

I sent it to his e-mail address at the station and sat back in my uncomfortable chair. We hadn't really talked about this. Almost a month of silence on the subject had passed. We'd worked several cases in that time, including a string of robberies involving this criminal chick named Laura, who'd thrown Jim's pheromones out of whack in a big way. It'd bugged me. This was a guy who needed sex, who was basically walking around in a state of perpetual deprivation, sensual dehydration. I'd wanted to get him laid. With me, with men, with women, whatever. I'd come on to him again not long after the first month's installment, but it had been awkward, even grim. I'd wriggled close. His jaw had set. His eyes had fixed even more tightly to the television. A feathering touch. Silence. Another grope. Then he'd abruptly left the couch and gone up to bed. I'd told myself, fool, wait for it--wait for the first. He needs that excuse; it's a situational thing. Don't rush it.

And I had waited. But in the meantime, I'd urged him toward mixing and mingling. I proposed a trip to The Back Wall. He recognized this as a gay bar by its name and gave me the marbled, rolling eye of a horse smelling blood. No go. Then, after waiting a week for the effects of my faux pas to pass, I offered a night out in search of chicks. Women were good for him, apparently; a workable prospect. He let me talk him into an evening of pool, moderate beer drinking, and casual flirtation.

Once there, he'd balked, then met Laura. Man, what a trip. She'd done a number on him--not even her so much, but the effect of the pheromones. Two weeks later he was still walking around stunned and resentful, as if I'd failed to warn him of something I'd had no way of anticipating. I hoped he was getting over it, because I really fucking wanted him. Maybe he could take out his frustrations on me. I could live with that. This was about the same time I was recuperating from an embarrassing crush on a virgin centerfold named Maya, who'd started out as an alternative to Jim and wound up driving me to tears. I try not to think about that whole mess. When you pull one of those banana-peel slips on yourself that leaves you feeling thirteen years old--an inept thirteen--you pretty much want to leave it behind and move on. I wanted casual, dirty sex again. Not soft-breasted young women with daddy issues. The dirty sex actually made me feel cleaner.

After an hour of piddling around at my desk, waiting to see if he'd reply to my e-mail, I gave up and went home. As I reached the building, it began to rain. A clap of thunder rolled across the sky and a barrage from the heavens nearly sank me during my sprint from car to foyer. I went upstairs, perusing a handful of mail, and entered the quiet loft. My rubber soles squeaked softly on the floorboards and thunder rang again outside. I flashed on a memory of being out sick from school one day sometime in the slow seventies of my childhood, staying at the house of a nameless babysitter who watched Days of our Lives with the lamps unlit as rain dripped down her windows. The sky had been white and I had felt a deep aching sadness that encompassed the entire world. This place too--Jim's stark, neat loft--didn't feel like home. I still felt like a probational guest, uneasy. But I wanted it to be mine.

I put the mail down on the counter, dropped my back-pack. The fridge hummed, the rain fell. For a moment I thought it would take more strength than I possessed even to turn on a light or take off my jacket. I went into the bathroom and looked at my anxious face and told myself how damn hot I was. Well, maybe not hot. Not setting the world on fire. But a fine-looking man, desired by many. Many freshmen. That had to mean something. Somehow my thoughts evoked my mother's voice. This could never be considered a good thing. My face remained unmoved, and I left the mirror. I turned on lights, put on a Dave Matthews CD, laid my mark on the den. Shoes kicked off here, drink left there, Jim's perfect couch pillows rearranged by my outstretched body. I dove into an hour's work on my laptop then left it on, screensaver spiraling, on the coffee table. It added another layer of distraction to the comfort I sought, and I fixed dinner enmeshed within a safety net of running electricity, surrounded by the fetishes of civilization.

I prepped dinner for two, but the afternoon dragged into evening without Jim's arrival and it occurred to me belatedly that I'd warned him--he had no reason to come home now, not if he wanted to avoid me and the possible exchange that the first of the month might bring. Maybe I should just go ahead and eat, I thought, and then go wait for him in his own bed. Would that cross the line? I couldn't tell. This was a man who'd recently said to me, You can study the sentinel thing all you want, but stay out of my personal life. As if I were not already there. Contradictory man.

By eight, I'd eaten and put away the remains of dinner. It had that eight o'clock and no-Jim feel, and I ensconced myself on the couch with television and a book, sure he would not be in before midnight, if at all. But then the door knob clinked with his keys and turned, and he walked in. I swallowed and eye-tracked his movements in a truly pathetic way, and he acknowledged me by not acknowledging me. I was supposed to intuit, maybe, that the graceful shrug of body from jacket said hello, that his silence was familiar rather than displeased.

"Hey," I said meekly from the couch. My guts were twisting. Oddly, it hit me only then how risky this game of wills and negotiations was--and that he might simply decide to toss me out. If not this month, then the next or the next. If we did not come to definite terms, things might continue like this, and with each month's arrival I'd feel a fluttering panic, the uncertainty of how he'd respond, of what actions he might take. Exciting, but maybe stressful, in time.

"Hi," he said in return, finally bestowing on me a glance. He came over, no detours, and sat down on the nearest chair. I was unnerved, and my heart raced.

"Did you get my e-mail?" I asked.

He nodded once, a dip of head. He'd obviously been brooding before his arrival. He might even have been drinking; there was a laxness to his shoulders that spoke of bar and beer.

"We haven't talked about it since--I know you haven't said anything for sure--and I--I was--" I was teetering on the edge of saying dumb things.

"I don't know why the hell you want to throw this into the mix," Jim broke in. He was slumping back in his seat and staring at the surface of the coffee table with the particular shade of inexpressiveness I'd learned to recognize as resistance. His arms rested loosely on those of the chair as if he were the gloomy Lincoln memorial or a man strapped into the hot seat. "You have to make my life so fucking complicated, Sandburg."

"Well, I don't mean to."

"Oh, yes you do."

"I want you to come in my mouth once or twice a month. That's all I'm asking. How difficult is that?"

His jaw twitched restively. "Fuck," he said.

"Yeah, right on, man."

If he'd been pissed, he'd have leaned his head back on the chair, shut his eyes, closed up shop. But he was shifting in his seat--back muscles flexing, feet cutting the rug. He was tightly wired, turned on, even if he hadn't admitted it yet. "You really want to put yourself in this position. That...I find hard to believe."

"It works out for both of us."

"Yeah," Jim said skeptically. "You've got it all worked out, right."

"I'm not saying that. But I'm studying your senses and I need a place to live. You're getting some free back-up, help with the sentinel thing, and license to ride me three hundred dollars' worth of ragged on a monthly basis. How is that wrong?" I believed what I was saying, enough to get by. I was making him a great offer. All he had to do was bite.

"I don't want to mix my personal life into this...this thing you've got going."

"My diss?"

"Yes," he said, glaring with fresh affront at the mere word.

"I hadn't planned on that. I understand boundaries."

That made him crack a dry laugh. "Sure you do. You move in, drag me to give lectures--you force your weird medicines on me, suck my dick. Yeah, your boundaries are well defined there, Chief."

I'd edged half off the couch, leaning toward him to close the gap. "We get along, admit it."

"We get along. So what?"

"Nothing, Jim. That's it. We get along." I compelled his eyes with mine, trying to look frank and easy, the kind of guy who'd make a good fuckbuddy, who'd agreeably take a hike when a woman slept over, who'd phone for the law when you were holding the corral against the Double-Bar Ranch gang. Why the hell wouldn't he take advantage of me?

His face softened almost imperceptibly and his gaze swept my lips and down my body, a soft hungry wandering that I could learn to love. He had tilted his head as if to consider what I had to offer, and I could sense him giving in to my grungy charms--or something of that kind. Reading his thoughts was a murky business.

"If we do this, we don't talk about it," he said. "No more e-mail. I've got better things to worry about than station ops reading your messages or you humping my leg in front of Simon."

Man, that was harsh. But I nodded with submissive grace. I could tell he wasn't finished.

"And you leave it to me to decide when I want to collect your IOUs. One per month. I'll keep track and let you know when I'm ready. You won't need to be worrying about that."

"Sure. Whatever you say." I didn't like the sound of that much. I suspected he'd blow me off, and not in a good way, if he thought he could get away with it. But now was no time to quibble; not when his eyes were roving and his cock was hardening. "So, you wanna get dirty?" I asked matter-of-factly, waggling my brows in a friendly fashion.

"You are something," he said, shaking his head in that half admiring, half disbelieving twist of features that he sometimes gives me. But his eyes had picked up a knife-sharp gleam. It was a look I'd hoped for. I liked it rough, and wanted him to be meaner than perhaps he was, cruder and harder. This was a man who carried around a world of gentleness, but provoking him was my goal. I'd done good so far.

I got up and stretched while he sat like a king in his throne and admired his new toy. "I'm going up to your bed and getting naked," I told him. "Unless you want anything here...now."

"Go," Jim uttered. An order.

I went, blood rising in me, my shaft lifting and bouncing above my balls as I walked. He didn't waste a lot of time in following, and still I was already naked when he arrived. His eyes remained unblinking for a half minute as he took me in. I started to help him undress; it seemed like a good idea. Got his belt in my hands and was tugging it loose when he swatted my hands away. Okay then. I retreated and watched the show. Jim had learned how to dress and undress in the army, and the habit of fast efficiency had been retained. He wasn't whistle, jump, toe-the-line swift any more, but he didn't linger on buttons. He pulled the shirt over his head in a single motion, then tossed it starboard to hang neatly from the rail with the practiced grace some men use to hang hats. Shoes, off. Socks, off. Pants, off. Swoop, kick, done. When he got naked, he got naked.

He deserved applause, but I merely smiled. He was a god, and I was a small crooked earthdweller, but I had him in my grasp. Almost literally. "What do you want first," I asked. "I could--"

"You could be quiet for five minutes. Do something else with your mouth." He made the words sound tender. Heat spilled upward from my neck, downward from my hips. He walked to me and stroked my hair, picking it up in handfuls and letting it fall. I scooted forward another inch on the edge of the bed and pressed my face against his abs. My ear brushed the side of his cock, heat on heat, and then we both shifted and it touched my neck. I could feel wetness on my skin, like the tip of a paintbrush writing on me. He moved again and pushed his cock all over my face, exercising ownership. I opened my mouth and spent my breaths as if they were my last. My skin burned--my cheeks--where he rubbed and I sensed the excitement growing in him by how his hands changed pressure on my head. Then I let him in. We stayed for a while in this position, my face a slave at the crux of his hips, his hands wedded with demanding purpose to the curve of my skull. Now and then he tugged me closer as if he were afraid he'd lose me. He watched as I fed on him; I could sense it but didn't look up. I was focused, a drug user, an animal straining at its source of bliss, blind, simple, shameless, stupid with greed. I worked his cockhead into the pocket of my cheek, laved him with my tongue, drew off, suckled the head, drove my mouth back onto him with force and with grunts like soft sobs. I held nothing back. I was crazy.

When he neared orgasm, he pulled away, muttering and unsteady. "Get up--on the bed--ass up," he said, rough and deep from his throat. I did as he said, and heard him fumbling in the bedside table. I arranged myself and drew my legs up enough to give him access. He was on me quickly, big hands sliding down my ass and legs. I bit the pillow and cried out when he dug his fingers against the opening to my body. His fingers were slick and clumsy. I could hear him breathing. It seemed loud, his sawing breath, and I wondered as I often did how I sounded to him. If he heard me inside and out. My blood's circuitous river. Thoughts crackling in the electrical storm of my brain. He used one, then two fingers. He had strong fingers. I pushed back against them and he knelt behind me and slapped my ass a few times. Pure porno, but I appreciated it. I yelped and squirmed for him and he made a noise. I can't describe it. I knew he was there, though, riding the edge. Lost and desperate, his mouth hanging open. It made me wild. I didn't want him to finish before he shoved inside me and I begged him to do that.

"Come on, man--hold on to it another minute--" It took a lot of effort for me to string out those few words. "Come on, please--"

He fumbled more, cursed, then his hands were on my hips, his cock nudging my ass. I mouthed the pillow, then tucked my forehead in and breathed in short, shocky gasps as he pushed in. It hurt, it hurt good. Fucking good, fucking tight, a brutal sweetness. I moaned and plucked at the sheets and worked my thighs back as if I could grip him. He struggled and hitched himself in deeper. I screamed into the pillow, a dry thin scrape of ecstasy in my throat, not truly a scream except in feeling. He was in balls-deep and he fucked me then, groaning, loving it. I shook beneath him, loving it too in different ways, how the small of my back ached, how he was bruising my hips, the obtrusive rub of his balls against me as he jerked inside, rhythmic and rudely powerful.

It was over too soon. I wanted him to fuck me for hours, leave me a wrung-out heap--I was nearly so already, my face dripping sweat, my thighs trembling--but he lasted fewer than five minutes, about what I could have expected. It was sharp and satisfying when he came in my ass, exploding into the latex, whispering several fucks in a roughened voice.

I hadn't come; I was still only half-hard when he pulled out. We rolled into separate heaps, panting. At least, I was panting. He breathed deeply and then his breaths juddered into laughter, as if he'd just finished a race and won. I flexed my ass on emptiness and felt triumphant, turned-on, and a bit irritated. I lay on my side, hair sliding into my face, and watched through its fan as he drew off the condom, knotted the end with his big careful fingers, and threw it away. I think there was a trashcan there. Contemplating the alternative amused me, and I smiled as he heaved onto his back and slung his arms over his head with a doglike sigh. His nipples were tight and sharp on his chest, his dick not entirely soft.

"Hey, Jim, what's 'reciprocal' mean?"

He raised a lazy brow. "I thought we had an understanding." The words were casual but his tone was insufferable. "Rent for you, pony-ride for me...."

I approximated a snorting sound to let him know what I thought of that. "Fair trade, not free trade, man."

He looked me over, his arrogant gaze migrating slowly southward to fasten on my dick, which I was stroking in anticipation. He shifted closer so that we lay within kissing distance, and began to jerk me off one-handed with a satisfied look on his face. I closed the distance and let my lips meander across his. He didn't seem to mind, but closed his eyes. I kissed him with my eyes open, and allowed myself trite and poetic thoughts that evaporated on realization. After a few minutes, I began to shove more urgently into his hand and emit the kind of tiny, rat-squeak sounds you'd be embarrassed to make if you weren't aroused or high.

And then he took his hand away, the son of a bitch.

"No," I said, with pitiful entreaty.

But he pushed me onto my back, blanketed me, and took command. The soft kisses I'd attached to his lips were blown off, petals by storm, as he positioned my head to his liking and fucked my mouth heavily with his tongue. I arched up, dazed, my mouth awe-struck, and grabbed for a handhold; I got his ass, a couple of ribs, but he was moving and I was flattened under him. He was on me, then half off me, sliding down my body, biting, sniffing with harsh interest, tonguing me in places that hadn't been tongued for a fucking long time. I tried to skid my dick against whatever was handy as he moved, but he made it difficult.

When he'd had his fill, he said, "Roll over," and I did. Hastily. As if I had a collar on my neck and it was attached by tugging leather to my balls. I tried to work myself against the mattress without him noticing, but he pulled me onto my knees so that I was spread out for him and forced to wait. I hadn't come yet; my genitals hung full and stiff from my hips, impossible with their need. My body felt tender and swollen behind, like a scream in front, and inside I was insane, in rut, wanting to take it deep and fast and hard--wanting to take it in the gut with a bullet, so I could feel it for hours or even days.

After suiting up, he seized my hips and then he was back inside with a thrust that made me sob, just once. He'd obviously taken the edge off for himself and planned a more leisurely back-alley stroll. I worked my ass on him, hoping to change that, and he chuffed with resistance.

"Count," he said.

Hello, what? my mind said. "Huh," I said.

"Count to three hundred...dollars."

"Oh. Oh, fuck," I said, jolted by his directive and by his hand on my ass; another porno slap but a gentler one. "One."

"Dollar."

"One dollar--fuck. Fuck. Two. Dollars. Three dollars. Four. Four dollars." He rode me harder, and my breath hitched in synch with his, excitement in cadence, and I had a sudden, stupid fit of the giggles and sputtered out in a terrible Count von Count accent, "Five, six, six beautiful dollars!"

There's bad sex, and then there's good sex where with unerring timing and idiocy you make a bad joke and suddenly your partner goes perfectly still and quiet behind you as if contemplating pulling out mid-fuck and never speaking to you again, and maybe tossing your clothes and stereo out the window besides, and that's about where I was at that moment.

"Sorry," I breathed. "Sorry, sorry, sorry--"

"I've got my dick in an asshole and that asshole is you," he said, rather peevishly. I could feel him sweating, on the brink of abandoning me. He was still hard, though.

"Agreed, agreed," I said. "Man. Bad...bad me. Bad."

"Shut up."

I shut up and he twitched inside me. He pushed at my ass a few times with lackluster spirit. Fuck, fuck, fuck, I thought unhappily, imagining I could feel him soften. Mood spoiled, fantasy punctured, and at least one pair of blue balls. "Tell me what to do. Let me make it better." My voice came out husky, my words lame.

"Don't say anything," he said. He sounded angrier, like he'd been working up a head of steam on the other end. "Put your face in the pillow." I did. "Bite it." I did. He began riding me again with goading jabs. "You want to make noise. Make sounds like a bitch in heat. You should know how." I groaned into the pillow and made some noises I thought he'd like. He began talking then, some unbelievable story about how years ago he'd been on leave in the army and picked up this candy-ass, party-boy pansy just like me with a blow-job mouth and shared him with three friends and all the things they'd done in a hotel room somewhere, and how the little fairy had flirted like a girl and moaned and bared his pretty ass, how much he'd begged for their big meaty cocks, and so on. The fabricated story was obviously meant to illustrate all the cheap wiles I'd worked on Jim, but after a few minutes I maybe believed it anyway, because he got off on guys like me and probably had for years, though I wouldn't call myself girlish or even vaguely femme. It didn't matter, he was digging it, I was digging it, he was digging me, it was all good.

He continued his tale, contriving ways to saying ruder and filthier things to me, and I began to lose it, bucking and rolling for him, fluttering the muscles of my ass around his cock, wanting to be the same tawdry butterfly that he was breathlessly describing. When he finally touched my cock, I was slick and throbbing; as soon as his palm cupped the head, it drooled hotly for him. He worked the stuff around with a knowledgeable technique. He was starting to lose track of his story. I couldn't say a word; I was bound and gagged by wanting him, afraid to say anything further that would interrupt the jacking movement of his hand or the sweet thrusts of his cock. I came with muffled agony into his hand, into the pillow, come and a wail of ecstasy. His fingers were thick and warm as they finished me off.

As I gasped and melted, he let go of my dick and returned his focus to pumping inside me. He kept it going for longer than was purely comfortable, but I didn't care much. I purred--okay, but I did--and slithered on the damp sheets and let him support my upraised ass for his use until he was through with me. He came with bone-deep shudders, in his own good time, and then we fell apart again.

He pawed off the second spent condom and flung it trashward--I heard it hit plastic with a wet whack, confirming something was there. Then we fainted. Or slept. Whatever, it was dark under my eyelids and when we woke it was full darkness outside.

"Hi," I croaked.

"----," he muttered in some language I didn't grok, though it trembled on the edge of sense. He went off to the bathroom to shower, while I diddled around the kitchen then went to slouch on the couch, cool but happy in my boxers. He came and joined me ten minutes later to watch the local news and filch slices of banana from my plate. He wore sweat pants, no shirt, and his feet were bare; big feet with interesting bumps and a few red places where his shoes must rub. He got up and fixed a bowl of ice cream during a commercial. He wasn't saying much, but I could tell he still liked me. I was doing something right.

I was twenty-seven that year and pleased with myself, and mostly stupid. But it was the first year of the best of my life, and I haven't paid rent since.

End.