Author's notes: Thanks to Leigh for beta-reading, kicking my ass, and thinking I'm funny.

Unified Fields
by Antimony Hayes

It was ten o'clock and we were cuddling on the couch, something I just don't get to say enough about Jim and me. We watched the end of the game with Jim's arm slung heavy and warm across my shoulders, me happy and smiling through a haze of alcohol and illicit lust, him happy and smiling through, well, just the alcohol. I was too high to care.

Jim smelled like motor oil and sweat and the really bad curry we hadn't eaten that was still spread out over the coffee table. He hadn't showered, and I was pathetically glad. The combination of sports and beer and affection and bad food and our first night off since the Reagan era had turned my insides to mush. I pushed my head back into Jim's arm and he tightened it around me and the mush turned to vapor, lighter than air. I had a second of guilt like lightning to the gut over getting off on Jim's innocent little show of friendly warmth - and then figured, fuck it. What he didn't know wasn't gonna hurt him.

There comes a moment in every basketball game when the final score flashes and the announcers start talking and the crowd starts filing out of the stands behind them. A moment when I come close to really knowing what a zone-out feels like. Jim took his arm off my back and reached for the remote with the hand not holding his beer. He flicked the TV off and had his arm back where I liked it almost before I registered it as gone. He sank deeper into the couch and stretched his legs out for miles, or at least so far he had to push the coffee table off center. He looked at me and smiled.

I looked at him, and smiled. It was ten o'clock and we were cuddling on the couch. The light from the kitchen fell on him and turned his face all planes and shadows, this geometric landscape of badass gone hopelessly to slush in the quiet half-dark of the privacy of his living room.

"Hey there," he said.

"Hey, Jim."

He pulled me a little closer to his side and looked at me some more and something connected in my brain and he said, "Aha," like he'd just gained an unprecedented understanding of the complexities of the universe. Only it wasn't really that because he was grinning and making fun of me, so it was more like he thought I had suddenly gained an understanding of the complexities of the universe where no such thing had existed before. His fingers came up from my shoulder and touched my neck, just the very far side with a light stroke, like air, hot and deliberate, and just like that order came out of chaos, the universe suddenly made sense. I could have taught grad-level physics, and me a humanities major. A lot of things made sense.

And Jim was still smiling. And the smile was still good and everything inside me went to liquid heat, straining toward him, hot as the sun.

He shifted. Just a little, an arch, a twist of his hips and friendship turned to sex. He was hard in his jeans, outlined tight and painful against his zipper and everything I ever understood about Jim and me went up in smoke. I didn't care. I wanted him like fish want water, inside and out, everywhere. I could taste him already and I hadn't even seen him, I could smell him, hot and bitter, oh, yeah, I wanted him. I wanted him at the subatomic level.

He must have said something that made it okay for me to touch him because I touched him then, ran my hand over his dick and God, the heat was good. I licked my lips and looked at his mouth, his eyes, everything shut tight, and his hand came down on mine and pressed down while his hips stroked up and then I must have said something because he opened his eyes and looked at me and said my name. Just once, just Blair, soft and easy.

I leaned in, and laid my head on his chest, and watched myself open his jeans. Felt him fight to breathe under my ear. Heard his heart pound. I put my hand inside over his boxers and he made a choked, helpless sound and I wrapped my hand around him and squeezed, slow and hard, breathing like I'd just created the science of it. His hips jerked up, my hand went down and there was a rhythm there, easy, easy rhythm too good to last, too much, too hot.

I let him go and moved. Over him, onto him, he reached up and centered my crotch over his and he shoved up hard, biting down on his lip so hard I thought he'd draw blood until the sensation hit and fuck, yes, that was it. That was it. And I wasn't thinking anything then, nothing at all.

I put my hands on his shoulders to brace for the next one and the pressure, the heat, just the right place, just the right everything, He came up again, and I looked down into his eyes and said, "Yeah, Jim, come on, come on," and he did, over and over, until I couldn't say anything and couldn't breathe and just moved. His hands moved over me, and everything was friction and sex and it was all tied in, who we were and what we were doing were the same thing. We hit it together, no subtlety or skill to it, just everything at the right place at the right time and I flashed right over the edge, shooting wet and slick and hot into my jeans, the world's first Zen fucking orgasm.

I fell onto him, my face smushed into his shoulder, dead weight. His hands moved up from my ass to go deep into my hair, holding me where I was. Like I could have moved even if I'd wanted to. His breathing evened out, slowed down, long before mine ever did. The more still he got the more certain I got he was holding my head like that to keep me from talking.

I made a noise designed to express disapproval and warn of impending chaos. He just held on tighter.

And maybe that wasn't such a crazy idea. In the normal course of events the need to open my mouth and complicate things would have been damn near overwhelming. There was a part of me in a small dark corner of my mind shouting, I just had sex with my research subject, my partner, my room mate, my best friend! And all of that was stuff we should talk about, stuff we should think about, stuff that mattered but given the current state of my love life I couldn't get past the first part of it, the most important part, which was--

--I just had sex.

Underneath me, Jim was laughing.

"What?"

"You said that out loud, Sandburg."

Oh. "Uh, which part?"

"Probably just the last part. Please don't enlighten me about the rest, huh?"

I grinned into his shirt. "You sure we shouldn't, um. You know--"

"Pretty damn sure."

I looked up at him, planning to say some things anyway, just process a little. Because it really was a thing that needed processing, because who knew what kind of bad shit could go down if you didn't process a big thing like game night sofa sex with the guy who was your best friend and partner and room mate and research subject and oh, yeah, a guy. Only when I looked up at him he was grinning, and he tilted his head and kissed me, right on the mouth, nothing passionate or meltdown-inducing or anything but enough to let me know it wasn't the kind of kiss you gave a guy because you thought he was fun to catch a game with. Enough to let me know whatever conversation I thought we needed to have we'd already had it, and it went okay, and henceforth this would be the Couch of Very Happy Thoughts.

So maybe it was just that kind of kiss. When he pulled back I shifted off him, just to the side, and he pinned me there with his arm and I looked at him like he was nuts to think I was going anywhere any time soon, and he smiled at me like that was good, like he could go with that.

And it was good. I could go with that, too. I turned and kissed him just the way he'd kissed me and with my newfound knowledge of the meaning of the universe I understood he really was a fun guy to catch a game with for a lot of reasons, this one not the least of them, and it really was that kind of kiss after all.

Exactly the right kind of kiss.

--
the end

Antimony Hayes, ahayes@storyteller.org
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