Archive of Our Own ^beta

Author's email: [email protected]

Author's disclaimer: These wild creatures belong only to the spirt of ingenuity and soaring passion, the human spirit, the spirt of poachers and lovers everywhere. And some guys in suits.

Blair Sandburg was in the land of the Giants. The shelves and ceilings were so tall he felt as if a foot of his height had been lopped way. A foot he couldn't afford. Jim on the other hand looked right at home as usual, striding easily into the maze of lumber, tools, and fixtures like a woodsman into his forest.

"You know, Jim, they have, like, those rods that fit right in the frame without screws. I bought some once. They worked fine."

"Spring-tension rods," Jim said automatically, scouting the aisles.

"Yeah, so. That's all we need. It's just one window." He snorted. "It's not as if we'll have a lot of guests who'll care. Of course, Naomi has this whole feng shui trip going now. You shouldn't plan too far ahead. She might make us redecorate. Hell, she might redecorate all by herself."

Jim's head swiveled. "Is your mother planning a visit?"

"No, I'm just saying--"

Jim relaxed and resumed his search. "If you're going to do something, you may as well do it right."

"Far be it from me to dispute the ancient wisdom of the Ellison tool gods. I just thought you'd prefer something that doesn't mean putting holes in the walls."

"Says the man who mounted a bookshelf in drywall with three-inch nails."

"You're questioning my manly prowess, aren't you," Blair said. "I knew that once you had your way with me this day would come."

"Chief, I hate to break it to you, but your manly prowess has been in question since day one."

"Ah, screw you," Blair said amiably.

"Those are fighting words." Jim looked him over, a doberman considering its meat. "I could arrest you for disorderly conduct. Inciting a breach of the peace."

"What if I say, screw me?"

"I'd arrest you for propositioning a police officer with inducement to commit lewd and lascivious acts."

"That sounds a lot more fun."

Jim had to admit to himself it did.

"You know, we should really paint that room as long as we're at it," Jim mused aloud as they passed a ziggurat of paint cans. "Hasn't been painted since I moved in."

"You mean I should paint the room."

"I'll paint it," Jim said with a mild glare.

"Uh-huh. And pass out like a man on a tequila binge."

"I don't drink tequila."

"Yeah, but that time you varnished the bookshelves--"

"Don't even start."

"--and you staggered around, dripping varnish and giggling--"

"I do not giggle."

"--and pulling at your nose like a tequila worm had crawled up there--"

"Just keep it up."

"--and then you crawled around on the kitchen floor and stuck your head into the cabinet under the sink and sung for a while. Man, it kills me that I don't have video."

"You done now?"

"Come on, Jim, lighten up."

"Lighten up? Lighten up? You dragged me up to the roof and left me there and went to call your girlfriend."

"Excuse me, I had a date that I canceled for you, and I took you to the hospital if you recall, and sat in the waiting room again, like for the hundredth time, while you sprawled like a big hamburger on the gurney and howled sea chanteys, not that you know the words to any. Everyone gave me funny looks like I was the kind of guy who feeds pot brownies to puppies."

"That's ridiculous...you've never owned a puppy, have you?"

Blair pushed Jim hard enough that he staggered a little in his laughter, then rambled on. "I'm serious. You should see the way those people look at me. And every time we go in now, Newell gives me the beady eye."

"You're usually the one with bruises," Jim pointed out. "He probably thinks you're a domestic abuse victim."

"Jesus, Jim. Has he said that to you?"

"He's hinted at it." Despite the serious nature of the subject, Jim could not stop grinning.

"It's not funny," Blair grumbled pissily. "I don't want people thinking I'm some sort of masochistic ragdoll."

"That just proves how little they know you, Sugar Ray."

Blair grinned, bounced into a few dance steps, threw a few punches.

"What are you now," Jim said, giving his partner a critical look. "Light heavyweight?" He snuck a tiny pat in against Blair's abs.

Blair batted his hand away while Jim chuckled. "I'm not the one courting death by doughnut."

"Funny, you're also not the one in the gym every day."

"Yeah, well I'm still a welterweight, thanks very much."

"Give me a break."

"Okay, okay. Junior middleweight, maybe."

"Super middleweight."

"Middleweight."

"I was not singing sea chanties," Jim said.

"The lyrics to "Da Le Yaleo" don't include yo ho ho and a bottle of rum."

"Thanks for the tip, Alanis."

They made their way to the aisle of curtain accouterments and Blair stood with his hands in his pockets watching Jim deliberate on brackets and rods. The Ellison lifeform gave the matter about three minutes worth of attention, and though this was about two minutes more than Blair would have spent, it was still a far speedier job than expected. Jim's break from a focused Thoreau-on-Walden contemplation of curtainy minutiae to abrupt decision was especially striking. Like a hawk he struck! Rod gripped tightly in his talons, he rose on wings of victory!

"Something funny you want to share?" Jim asked, turning his head about ten degrees to direct at Blair a detached and speculative look, as if he were mentally calculating the precise amount of pressure to apply for an interrogation.

"No, no." Blair held his hands up in the brief placatory gesture which was so useful for all occasions. "We all set then?"

"I need to pick up a few things. Since someone lost my one-sixteen drill bit."

"I'm sure it's somewhere."

"Somewhere? Of course it's somewhere, Sandburg, but it's some other where than where I put it. It's not my where, anymore. It's your where, and your where is usually floating off in orbit."

"I cop to it, man. I launched your drill bit into outer space."

"You took my c-clamps to your office to attach lamps to your shelves, you use my pliers to pry the keys off your keyboard, and you took my chalk line to draw pictures--"

"It was a Navajo sand painting."

"--on your classroom floor."

"Yeah. That didn't work out too well, to tell the truth."

Jim just shook his head and laid his hand on Blair's back, that good spot just under the nape of his neck and above his shoulder blades that seemed to be exactly sized and suited to accept Jim's warm palm. Blair liked that. Liked it a lot. Coming to the hardware store with Jim was an anthropological wet dream, almost as good as traveling with a Dani tribesman to market. Jim's studious examination of DIY pamphlets, the skeptical scrutiny he gave to novelty gadgets, his exchanges with sales clerks which could be anything from laconic grunts to sophisticated debates on the merits of water-based versus solvent-based polyurethanes--all this fascinated Blair. And on those rare occasions when Jim casually touched him, buddy to buddy, or drew him into his consultations, he felt a complicated mix of homecoming and tension. No conflicts arose from his usual observational dilemma, to balance himself between acceptance and assimilation, but from a sense of all that he'd missed by not having a father or brothers. He'd forever be a geek in the woodshop; his personality had formed around an entirely different set of conventions and left him immune to the lure and language of power tools. He was here on Jim's passport.

They made it out of the store with a single bag, whose contents for the most part would wind up in their basement storage locker.

Now for the hard part.

"Urban Outfitters has curtains, I think." Blair anchored himself with the seatbelt as Jim turned on the truck's ignition.

"Yeah, and you want some trendoid Guatemalan hemp-threaded fabric, I bet."

"Jesus, Jim, I'm not going to smoke the curtains."

Jim ignored him as he pulled out of the parking lot with the same concentration a captain might exhibit as he steered his ship from port.

"There's a Wal-Mart just before the turn for the freeway," he noted as they reached the stop-light.

"Nah." Blair shook his head in adamant refusal. "You could never live with yourself if you furnished your home courtesy of Wal-Monster."

"More importantly, I could never live with you."

Blair shrugged. "Hey, it's my sacred duty to guide you safely out of the sprawl."

Jim glanced his way skeptically. "I beg your pardon?"

"The sprawl, man. Wake up! The poorly planned, low-density, auto-oriented development that spreads out from the center of communities. The suburban blight. The megacenters, the superstores, the enviro-sucking evils of the glutted retail landscape. Not unlike that cavernous monument to the gods of hardware that we just left."

Jim chuckled rudely at him. "Well, I'm sure you'll be safe once you reach the moral high ground of Urban Outfitters."

"Wow, that was like, a tiny shoot of social consciousness poking through the dry earth, man. Nurture that baby. It may be the only sprout you have this year."

"I'd say that's about right."

"I suppose we could go to Pottery Barn," Blair said facetiously.

"Sounds good," Jim said in his agreeable way, as the arrow of sarcasm flew over his head and out the truck window.

They drove, they parked, they shopped. Jim bought them coffee and ate a croissant, flakes of pastry drifting down his shirt-front as he chewed oblivious to the mess. Blair watched him fondly, and let him walk around with a sugared almond stuck to his collar for the remainder of their outing.

The upscale mall was brazen and busy. There were almost no children present. Yuppies walked in pairs, or in small well-dressed herds. Women with leather purses. Men with gold watches. A trapped bird swooped once across the atrium and then took perch and cheeped irritably. ATMs and credit card machines whickered, a juice machine churned, three middle-aged men in suits laughed heartily. Jim began to zone. Tiny withdrawals of attention. Once, staring at a pair of diamond earrings. Then standing between a soap shop and a restaurant, reading a window-displayed menu. And finally, as he fingered curtains in the store they'd reached.

"Jim, yo." Blair tapped him, then removed Jim's hand from the fabric. He snapped his fingers. "Wake up, Jim. Hello...hello."

Jim blinked. "What?"

"What," mimicked Blair gently. "Jim, you're up, up in the air. Do you think we can maybe get a controlled descent back to the ground?"

"Sorry."

Blair rubbed Jim's arm, hoping to soothe. "Malls suck. I know. We'll find some curtains, hit the road. Hey, these look good."

"I didn't think you'd go for a football motif."

"Well, it's kind of a sepia-toned, nostalgic sort of football motif. Sporty. And, um...sporty. And it has ducks, too. Ducks and footballs. That's ambitious, you have to admit."

"Uh-huh," Jim said, viewing him sidelong. You are insane, his clear blue eyes said.

"You pick one, then."

"How about this?" Jim suggested, pulling out a swathe of blue, red, and green.

"Plaid? We might as well hang golf pants on the wall." Blair shoved a few more of the hanging panels aside, eliciting creaks and clinks of metal on the rod above. "Okay, this is a kind of a retro-eighties thing with the squiggles and the...never mind. And, um...wow. No. Flowers, no. Oh, look, green."

"So it is."

"Okay?"

Jim nodded, shrugged, made a placid humming sound.

"Because if it's, you know, a wrong sort of green--"

"A wrong sort of green?"

"Like, off. An off green." Jim stared. Blair felt as if he were speaking alien gibberish. "What, no green is ever wrong?"

"I'm sure they are," Jim said, bemused. "But I think we're safe with this."

They left with the righteously green curtains in hand, in bag, their hips bumping as they shifted in tandem to let a woman of significant heft and baggage through the store's doorway. Jim slung an arm around his shoulders as they re-entered the tiled well of the mall proper. Blair felt obviously gay, and couldn't decide if he liked it. Decided, a few moments later, that he must, and that it would be nice to get laid sometime soon. Very soon. He made goofball eyes up at Jim as they waited for the elevator; Jim looked down at him, bland of expression and terribly handsome.

And then, reading him, Jim's face altered to register a vague hint of alarm. Or excitement. One or the other. Or both. Blair shimmied against him, hips friendly with Jim's hips. Friendly hippie. He smiled at Jim's half-formed consternation.

"I could do you in the truck," Blair offered. "In the parking garage. You could let me know if anyone is coming."

Jim, predictable as a spawning salmon, looked quickly around. "Sandburg!"

"Remember, if we get arrested, you could always claim you were about to pull a bust. Solicitation."

"Shut up," Jim said, hustling him onto the elevator. "And stop bouncing on my foot, Spring-Heel Jack." He did not, however, let go of Blair as he poked the button for the parking garage. Jim kissed him as they sank two short floors, a little hello of tongue. Blair fondled Jim's crotch with lewd indifference to their surroundings and Jim breathed through his nose like a bothered water buffalo then released him with abrupt force as they were decanted to the parking level.

"Do you even know who Spring-Heeled Jack was?" Blair asked as if uninterrupted, once they were in the truck.

"Will any force in the universe prevent you from telling me?"

This and the aborted kiss deserved retribution. Lecturing while Jim tried to maneuver the truck through a densely packed parking garage was cruel, dangerous, and of course fun. "Reports date from the 1830s, London, of this mysterious figure able to leap over fifteen-foot walls and across streets in a single bound."

"Like Superman," Jim said abstractedly.

"Well, close, if Superman had, like, long bony fingers, glowing eyes, and pointed ears. In some accounts he wore a metal helmet, shiny garments and a cape--other times a white robe. He'd jump out at courting couples, leap up on sentry boxes and mock the guards, fly over rooftops. Once he walked up to a sentry and hit him in the face with a wet fish. Another time when a woman answered her door, he scratched her face and sprayed her with an anesthetic."

"You are such a bullshit artist."

"How could I possibly make that up?"

"You could make anything up."

"I think you mean I could get anyone up."

Despite a promising start, it turned out to be a trying ride home. Jim swatted his hand away more than once, and complained--in blunt words--about his octopedal tendencies. Blair called him an old fogey, purely as a tease. Jim, to Blair's surprise, glared at him with affront and launched into a stupid and convoluted argument about golf pants, mid-life crises and 401k plans that Blair did not entirely understand. He tried to follow along and match suit as best he could, but it was difficult and he grew bored, and as they were nearing their building said impatiently, "Well, you know what, I love you stupid, Jim." Which silenced Jim long enough for them to park. After which they climbed out, went inside, and rode the elevator to the loft, holding a careful truce all the way.

As soon as they got through the door, sex seemed the next logical move. Blair bravely jumped the other man, and Jim oofed and smiled.

"You know, Jim," Blair said, with a pretense of earnestness. He'd meant to finish, you're a charming old geezer, on principle of puncturing Jim's occasionally inflated ego and ensure that he got the last word in every fight, no matter how absurd. But gazing into Jim's relaxed and expectant face, he found himself caving into dopey worship. "You're a love god."

"Oh?" Jim eyed him suspiciously anyway, damn him.

"I'm serious."

The faint crease did not leave Jim's brow. "When are you ever serious. And how can you possibly be serious when you're calling me a 'love god'?"

"I don't know. It just comes naturally. Like screaming your name at the neighbors when you screw me into the sheets."

"Hmm," Jim said reflectively. He looked as if he felt better about this trend of conversation.

"I can say dumb things and mean them with all my heart," Blair said, proving it even as he spoke. His heart, as if crying foul and slander, knocked him rudely in the ribs. But it was only the truth. "About the sheets..." He broke off as Jim kissed him on the neck, then bit along his strumming pulse line with restrained vampirism. "Um. Oh yeah."

Jim peeled Blair out of his shirt--dragging cotton, a confusion of arms--then left it draped backwards over his hair like a nun's wimple. Blair shook his head but it didn't come off and Jim was pinching his nipples, so hey ho, pay attention. He cheeked Jim's collarbone, felt it drawn hotly across his face, a knife-blade under skin. He discreetly ate the almond off Jim's shirt collar. Jim's strong-fingered hands held him in place, gun hand clutching his backside, the other high up under his armpit, thumbing the sensitive, tufted hollow. When Blair turned his head, he bumped Jim's nose and a lazy kiss followed. Jim's substantial territory of muscle shifted in his arms. Blair rubbed himself against Jim's chest.

The phone rang. They separated. Blair divested himself of his ersatz headgear and went to flip through the mail; Jim went to the phone. When Blair next looked his way he was unbuttoning his jeans, running a hand along his zipper to adjust himself. He didn't even seem aware he was doing it. Sexy bastard.

"Sounds familiar." Jim said. Blair ambled over the dining room table and sat on it; he put his feet on a chair to remove his sneakers. Jim frowned, but at him or the caller Blair couldn't tell. "Ninety-two, ninety-three. Yeah. Ricky the Crump. Birdsong. Bidwell...something like that. Birdsell. Richard Birdsell. B-I-R-D-S-E-L-L. I have to eat on that table, you know. Nothing. He was a witness to the Lonnie Chamberlain hit. No, you're thinking of the Chapman case...I don't know. No, .30-caliber. Well, they found a dead dog at both scenes." Jim was staring patiently off into space. Blair laid back on the table and slowly unzipped his jeans. "The killer cut the dog's throat, put the head between the woman's legs, and made dinner with the rest. He was from Thailand...I have no idea. Maybe. I think he was just hungry." Jim leaned back against the wall and turned his gaze onto Blair, the phone held to his ear. "Did you try the crabcakes? Ah. Yep. Okay then...no problem."

Jim hung up and came to the table, where Blair lay on his back, feet at rest in the ladder of a chair back, idly stroking himself. He grasped the inside of Blair's right thigh, caressing flesh through denim. "Comfortable?"

Blair turned his head on the hard wood. "Truth? Yeah. Look, you could sit in the chair and have me for dinner."

"Very funny."

"I'm not trying to be macabre. I'm saying--"

"Not on the table."

"Why not?"

"It has...associations."

"Like what?"

"You're not my therapist, Doctor Freud. Get up." Jim's hand rose to a vague proximity and threat of Blair's balls.

"If I were your therapist, I'd be a rich, rich man." Blair sat up and Jim pushed the chair away and stood in front of him, nicely level. Jim held his hips, studying him below the waist, like a kid estimating the merits of a new slugger. It was reassuring to know that his dick could command attention. Blair swung his legs to wrap them loosely around Jim, behind his knees.

"You could be a rich man right now."

Blair grinned. "You think I have a career in porno? Escort services?"

Jim blinked, looked up. "I was talking about letting me put a deposit--"

"No, no way--not now," Blair said, overriding him. "This conversation always creeps me out."

"Fine." Jim backed down easily. Too easily. He'd clearly decided weeks ago that this was going to be a waiting game. He'd bring up the subject when he could, drop it obediently after a small wrangle, and then carry on watchfully for another opportunity.

"You do realize that you just stared at my dick and offered me money, you fucker." Blair glared at him, unsure how annoyed he really was. Or should be.

Jim put on an amazed face, before laughing it off. That little scratchy laugh which was more hostile than heartfelt. He held up his hands and backed away. "Fine. I said I'd drop it. What do you want me to do?"

Disgruntled, Blair hopped off the table and made for the stairs. "I'll think about that while I'm lying in bed jacking off." He heard hurt silence behind him, didn't glance back, but added as he ascended, "If you're lucky you'll be up here before I finish." A minute passed while he undressed and flung himself with naked, prickly abandon on the bed, then Jim climbed the stairs after him. He stood next to the bed and quietly pulled off his clothes. Blair spectated from the corner of his eyes, feeling flushed and embarrassed at the reactions triggered by Jim's offer; and feeling not especially good about himself as he realized he'd been more or less ragging on Jim all day for no reason he could think of. Which meant that deep down there were probably a dozen reasons lurking in the currents.

Making it up to him in the middle of a Sunday afternoon was an attractive prospect, though.

Jim might have been thinking so too, but as ever it was hard to tell what was on Jim's mind. Blair suspected, or maybe just feared, that whenever Jim appeared reflective he was actually thinking of cheesesteaks. Only one experience weighed in as evidence for this theory, but it was a memory difficult to shake. They'd been staking out a suburban split-level. Carolyn, in town for a conference, had dropped in earlier that day to Major Crimes with a well-groomed smile and the Plymouth rock of engagement rings. Their last case had been plea-bargained down to manslaughter. The Heaven's Gate Cult had recently committed mass suicide. Simon had been grouchy for a week, wrapped up in some personal shit and taking it out on the world in small, professional ways that couldn't really be faulted. And now here'd been Jim, moody and shadowed, jaw grimly set, eyelids heavily folded down on thought, staring silently through the windshield, grunting his off-key monosyllables to Blair's questions. A classical bust of pain and introspection. And then, at Blair's exasperated badgering, he'd admitted not that he was contemplating life or lost loves, or trying to decide how to talk to Simon as a friend, but that he was hungry, he could murder a cheesesteak, Chief, and he didn't know how to solve this thorny problem without leaving his post or calling in a favor.

And he'd been covering for nothing.

No layers of hidden angst there, no sir. Once prompted, he'd talked on the subject with passion and articulate detail for five minutes straight. ("Brown lives about a mile away, and there's a Famous Phil's Phillys on Harrison Street, but it's after ten and I hate to call him. He owes me twenty bucks though, so it's the least he could do. Though come to think of it, maybe they close at ten. Julio's is open until eleven, but they use that thin marinara sauce. I swear that shit tastes like window cleaner and gets everywhere....") And with insightful clarity Blair had realized that Jim Ellison, his sentinel hero, had size-eleven feet of clay, just like most other size-elevens of the world.

A few more illusions might have been rocked off their pedestals since that night, but Blair loved Jim like a happy sickness. He just worried, now and then, that when the big guy looked at him with those blue oblique eyes he was thinking not of romance but of shaved beef.

"What?" Jim said, standing alert and proud in his tight boxer-briefs.

"What what."

"You're thinking something." He paused infinitesimally. "Cut it out."

Jim's renewed ease of manner relieved a pinch of Blair's guilt. "I'm thinking of a hot beef injection," he said affectionately.

Jim climbed on the bed, and on him. "You're a crude pup. Carolyn was never crude."

"Did Carolyn ever do this?"

Jim took a deep breath at what Blair's fingers were twiddling. "Nope, never."

Blair gazed up at Jim's smooth forehead, the neat hairline, the tender luminosity of his eyes. "Were you really thinking of Carolyn?"

"I was kidding, Blair."

"Odd thing to say."

"We were joking about it last week."

Blair searched back. "Oh yeah...man, how can you remember that far back."

Jim shook his head, kissed him.

"Expiration date on jokes is forty-eight hours," Blair mumbled into their next kiss.

"Okay."

"New house rule."

"Got it."

"Number ninety-one."

Jim licked his eyebrow and got busy not answering him. Blair stretched luxuriously under Jim. It was, he imagined, rather like trying to shift under a full-body x-ray blanket, but silkier. Jim already had some hip action going and his mouth grabbed at Blair--temple, ear, neck--with its own erotic volition. Blair slid his hands into Jim's stylish briefs and encouraged his movements to slow. The other man's mouth, though, was on its own relentless speed setting. Its separate hunger made Blair heat up with a recognition of urgency; his chewed ears burned; his nipples ached, seared by Jim's teeth and tongue.

"Good. Oh, man. You're so good, Jim." Positive reinforcement was said to be the most effective form of behavioral modification, and Jim gave proof by exhibiting by a burst of lingual artistry on Blair's chest that made Blair tilt his face to the ceiling and groan. He might have been Stevie Wonder singing with sightless bliss. Damp curls were beginning to adhere to his cheeks, while his pulse beat rapidly in throat and scalp, driven by his thumping heart. He stroked Jim's hair, short and spiky from a recent cut. His palms bled with pleasure, and Jim's head in his hands felt heavy and warm. Blair's eyes were still closed but his hands were full of vision; Jim's skull hard and faceted; ears pliant as flame against his palms. Lips waylaid his fingers now, teeth on their tips, which were sliding inside that heat just a fraction.

They stayed this way for a while, Jim allowing himself to be slowed down even further, to a taffy-pull of rhythm that moved them from head to feet. His broad chest covered Blair's belly; his head dusted itself across Blair's own chest. They tangled on the comfortable bed, then Blair drew up a leg and tried to push his foot under Jim's hips, see what was happening there. Jim captured his foot, sat up, and opened Blair's legs wide as a wishbone.

Swallowing down the impulse to talk, to divert the unbearable lightness of being, Blair flung one arm across his face, hand half-covering his eyes. His dick had been startled to fullness, and rolled hotly near the whispering skin of his abs. His balls were a soft aching knot of need, which Jim handled and tugged. Blair made a whimpering sound, shoved once toward the source, toward Jim. It accomplished nothing; Jim was intent on playing with him, and sat between his legs, pulling his dick with aimless skill and releasing it, drawing his balls down and then squeezing them roughly.

"Harder," Blair demanded. Jim flicked two fingers hard on the underside of his organ, tapping the root of him, not what he'd requested, but delicious; when he repeated it, more so. He pushed a hand into his own hair, made a fist of nervous strain. Jim was rubbing his thumb down between his balls, shoving them apart, massaging downward. Blair breathed awkwardly, cried out once, then gave into the sweet jacking cadence Jim's other hand was demanding of him. His hips twisted upwards with greed into the callused clasp. Too much, not enough. Below, he thrummed hard and deep along a corded fault-line of ecstasy that was nearly pain. He didn't have to think. He found relief in arching his neck back, pushing his head into the pillow. One hand still clung to his hair with grievous, taxing force to counter the pull at his hips; his other hand corkscrewed the sheets.

He was making reckless noise, a croon that went on and on, rising and falling with pleasure, but in a moment of interruption he heard Jim's ragged breath, the characteristic sharp-throated utterances he gave as he lost himself and approached completion. Were they that close--oh, fuck, yes they were. Jim moved up against him at that very moment and worked their dicks together, his leaking a wealth of ropy heat that he spread fluently over their cocks, balm to raw flesh. Blair sighed and thought he might be dying; he unlatched his hand from his hair and pushed it between his teeth, trying not to spill too soon. Above him, Jim grunted, a bridge of sleek, dominant muscle that arched then collapsed; he hadn't come yet, but he lay sprawled across Blair, pinning him down with the skill of a wrestler, riding him to the edge.

Their faces brushed and Blair's hazy sight was filled with Jim's vacant, psychedelic expression, that of a man on a journey which from the outside appears vague and inane. But then a spasm of intense joy crossed his features, an anguish, and he opened his eyes and gazed down at Blair and kissed him unhesitatingly as if to tell him something wordless with his mouth, with his entire body, and Blair came with a sharp blossoming, a rose of orgasm bursting within the head of his cock, its mess arcing like a blood-spatter pattern across his chest and Jim's.

And so they lay as vivid corpses on the bed until a half-hour or so had passed, and the phone rang again, someone else from the station, or the same someone, Blair didn't ask. He curled up on his side and inhaled the scent of Jim's sweaty body as the other man sat on the edge of the bed, talking into the phone. It was good, and the change of late afternoon sunlight from minute to minute was good, and the prospect of dinner.

"You want to hang those curtains now?" Jim asked when he was off the phone.

"Green is the color of sensitivity," Blair mused aloud. "Compassion, growth, calm. With a dark green you get jealousy, self-doubt."

"You're still worried about the color of the curtains." Jim's tone was disbelieving and indulgent in equal parts.

"More about what Naomi will think." Blair smiled, patted Jim's hand. "I lied, man. She'll be here on Thursday."

End.