Rite
of Passage
by lamardeuse
Rating: NC-17
Pairing:
Jim/Blair
Warnings
(highlight to view):
explicit sex
Written for
the TS Ficathons Cliché challenge
Jim could deny himself a lot
of things, but no matter how hard he
tried, he couldn’t stop watching Blair.
In a week, Blair would be
finishing his weapons training course, and
the week after that he’d finally be Jim’s partner for real. Which
meant Jim had been watching Blair—hell, ever since the dissertation
fiasco, ever since Blair’s life went straight into the crapper.
What exactly he was looking
to find, Jim couldn’t really say; all he
knew was that it was his not paying attention to Blair that had brought
everything crashing down on their heads, and he wasn’t about to let it
happen again. So for a long time after Sandburg started at the
academy, Jim would spend 99.9% of their time together looking at Blair
when he was in Jim’s sight and listening to him when he wasn’t.
He’d drop him off at the academy (Blair having sold his car to pay off
some of his student loans), then sit there and push his hearing past
the cab of the truck, past the sound of the idling engine, past the
knot of students talking outside the building, and focus on the sounds
Blair made as he walked away. For the first three weeks, Blair’s
heart always sped up when he entered the building, and his breathing
developed this funny, quiet little rasp on the exhale that Blair
probably couldn’t even detect.
For the first three weeks,
Jim felt like the worst son of a bitch on
the face of the earth.
About halfway through the
two-month course, they went to another one of
those pain-in-the-ass awards banquets, although thankfully it was Simon
receiving the award this time. Seemed that some pencil pusher at
the
Mayor’s office had finally clued in to the fact that Simon deserved
about
ten awards by now, and so was kind of overdue for one. Darryl was
there,
looking ready to pop all of his buttons with pride, and nearly every
member
of Major Crimes past and present was in attendance to honor the best
damned
captain most of them had ever had.
In spite of the happiness of
the occasion, though, Jim couldn’t help
thinking back to the disaster of the last award ceremony they’d been
to, and so when he took a look around and couldn’t locate Blair right
away he got a little panicky.
Okay, maybe more than a
little.
Jim told himself sternly to
calm down, that Sandburg was allowed to go
to the bathroom if he wanted to, but when five minutes turned into
twenty, Jim’s Sentinel instincts went on autopilot. Extending his
hearing into
every nook and cranny of the crowded room, he strained to pick up the
low,
distinct sound of that familiar voice.
When he didn’t find it, he
started systematically searching the room,
walking from one end to the other and back again in a grid
pattern.
And when that didn’t work, he just stood there for a few seconds
listening
to the sound of his blood roaring in his ears.
And then he caught it.
Over by the exit to the balcony, he
detected a faint trace of the aftershave Blair had put on
earlier. The aftershave Jim had kidded him about, because usually
Sandburg didn’t wear any in deference to Jim’s senses, though Jim had
told him a hundred times this stuff didn’t bother him. It was
mild, from the same manufacturer as the hemp oil soap Blair used, and
Jim had never told Blair it reminded him of the first day they met,
because that would have sounded…well, intimate. And
whatever else he and Blair were to one another, they weren’t
that. Even after all they’d been through over the past three
years, there were parts of Blair he knew he’d never seen, just as there
were huge expanses of
his own inner landscape that he kept walled off. Their deepest
feelings were expressed in actions, in gestures, in looks exchanged
between them. Evidence that was intangible, easy to deny later,
to themselves, to everyone.
Shaking his head at his own
bizarre thoughts, Jim headed for the
balcony. The night was cool, an onshore breeze dispelling the
residual warmth of the midsummer day. Blair was standing over by
a potted cedar, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slightly
hunched as he leaned against the sturdy railing.
“What’s the matter,
Chief? You get shut down by the girl serving
the hors d’oeuvres?”
Sandburg turned and looked up
at him as he approached, his expression
difficult to read. “Nope. Just wanted a little alone time.”
“Uh,” Jim said intelligently,
suddenly feeling like his hands and feet
were too big for his body, “sorry. I’ll—”
“No, no, hang on,” Blair
said, and Jim felt strong fingers wrap around
his wrist and hold tight. “I didn’t mean you.”
Jim snorted to dispel the
awkwardness. “So being with me is as
good as being alone?”
“Something like that,” Blair
said, patting his arm before letting
go. Jim figured that was his cue to keep his mouth shut, even
though there were a hundred questions running through his head.
It seemed like too much of a coincidence that Sandburg, after several
weeks of training to be a cop, had turned melancholy at a cop
function. Jim was desperate to know
what the hell was going on, but he didn’t have the first idea of where
to
start, so instead he leaned against the railing beside Blair and
contemplated the night sky, or what he could see of it through the
light fog blowing in off the water. After a couple of minutes he
turned his attention to Blair again, because he was still revved up
from his search earlier, and filling
his senses with Blair always calmed him, grounded him, brought him…
…home.
Jim’s heart started racing
again. Mouth dry, palms sweaty, he
kept his body still and his gaze riveted on the horizon while he fought
a full-blown panic attack that would’ve kept Blair’s analyst busy for
weeks.
Jesus Christ, Jim
thought. If Blair was home, where the hell was
Jim going to live when the kid finally woke up and decided he didn’t
want to do this any more? What sights and sounds and smells would
be strong enough to bring him back to himself then?
He risked a glance at Blair,
who, as if sensing his gaze, looked up at
him and gave him a smile. Jim couldn’t tell what kind of smile it
was,
so he smiled back as best he could and tried to keep his heart from
beating
its way out of his chest, tried to store up the sound of Blair’s
breathing
and the faintly spicy scent of him for the time when he wouldn’t have
them
any more.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
After that—well, actually,
after he’d caught himself standing in the
bathroom a couple of times with Blair’s aftershave bottle in his
hand—Jim resolved to back off, to get some fucking perspective before
he caught himself licking Sandburg’s neck in public places, or worse,
in private places. He dialed down everything when he wasn’t
actively working a case, and he limited himself to only tracking Blair
with his sight. Sight he could handle, sight was normal.
Listening for the rhythm of your best friend’s heartbeat in the middle
of the night or inhaling the tang of his sweat after a pickup game was not
normal.
So he did it, he shut down
and backed off and sometimes he caught Blair
looking at him oddly, like he’d noticed, although how he could have
noticed Jim had no idea. Jim was particularly careful to treat
him the same way he always had; okay, maybe a little better than he’d
been doing lately, but still. There was nothing in his behavior
that should have given away the fact that he was dying inside.
And then two weeks before the
end of his course, Blair bounded out of
the academy like Tigger on speed. Jim bit his tongue until they’d
returned to the apartment.
“So, what?” he’d demanded,
while he was trying to make lasagna and
Sandburg was still bouncing around. “You find the really good
crack today, Mr. Hefner?”
“Nope,” Blair said, smug
smile adorning his goofy mug as he came to
semi-rest beside Jim. He picked up a block of parmesan and
started grating enthusiastically.
“Then you mind telling me
what’s got you running at triple
tempo?” He paused, suddenly feeling like a moron. Of
course. “That self-defense instructor—Natasha—she finally agreed
to go out with you.”
“Nice try, but no
cigar.” Another grate, another bounce. “I
have finally figured out what I need to do.”
“You’re gonna quit,” Jim
said, his stomach doing a credible imitation
of one of the Flying Wallendas, because he’d known it was coming, but
that didn’t make it any less painful. “And that’s okay,” he added
hastily, not wanting to appear pathetic now of all times, “I mean, if
it’s what you want.”
Blair stared at him, a crease
appearing between his brows.
“Uh. No. You really suck at this guessing thing, you know
that?”
“Then why don’t you tell me
and put us both out of our misery?” Jim was
proud of the fact that he sounded like he was mildly pissed off, not
like he’d just had all of his internal organs rearranged.
Sandburg smiled at him again,
though this time it was a little
guarded. “All in good time, my friend. All in good time.”
Jim gritted his teeth and
took shallow, even breaths and focused as
much of his attention as he could on stirring his sauce.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“This is what you need
to do?” Jim asked incredulously.
Blair stood with his head
tilted back and his feet planted firmly, a
huge, open grin on his face. “Yeah.”
Even dialed down as he was,
the rattle and whoosh of the cars
overhead nearly deafened him. He watched them crest the top of a
rise and heard the cacophony of screams as the riders picked up speed
on the descent.
“You need to go for a ride on
a roller coaster,” Jim said slowly, still
unable to process that this was the big event Sandburg had been
building
up to for the last eight days. Days in which Jim had lost
countless
hours of sleep trying to figure out what Blair was so crazy to do,
stared
at the skylight above his bed for hours as if the moon could tell him
what
had happened to his life that the prospect of losing Blair made him
feel
like he was losing a limb, a vital organ, his fucking heart.
And now it turned out all he
wanted was to ride on a roller
coaster. Jim didn’t know whether to laugh or bang his head
against the nearest wall.
“Jim, I don’t think it’s been
any secret that I’ve been having a little
trouble processing my sudden change of career. It’s not that I
don’t want to become a cop—but the fact that I had the other choice
taken away
from me kind of sucked, you know? The path I’m on now might have
been
something I would have chosen for myself eventually, but I’ll never
know
that. Sure, I know I should reconcile myself to the
capriciousness
of fate, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still be pissed.”
Sandburg paused, searching
Jim’s face for some kind of answer that Jim
didn’t have the faintest idea how to give. After a moment, Blair
sighed and continued. “Anyway. The point is, suddenly I’m
on this path, right, no control, no fanfare, no nothing, and it’s—there
was a transition there that needed to be marked by some kind of
ritual. Also, when I went to see my analyst—” Jim narrowly
avoided rolling his eyes “—and he asked me what I thought was the real
problem here, I told him it was that, well, I was scared shitless,
really.” Jim looked at him sharply, and Blair held up his
hands. “No, not so much of the guns or the bad guys or the blood
or any of that—hey, I got over that a while ago—but of not being good
enough to back you up when you needed it. That scares me,
Jim. And so I figured, hey, I’m an anthropologist, right?
And every anthropologist knows there’s nothing like a good ceremony for
purging the demons.”
Jim pointed a finger
skyward. “And the roller coaster fits in
how, exactly?”
“That object in front of us
was my biggest childhood fear,” Blair
explained. “As you can imagine, when the other kids in my grade
were hitting the ‘you are now tall enough to ride this ride’ bar, I was
still under it by a few inches. Not only was I younger than the
other kids, I wasn’t exactly at the top of the growth curve.
Seventh grade—” He shot a look at Jim, who remained stoic “—I’m
trying to impress this girl, and she saunters up to the roller coaster
and on she gets, no problem. I, on the other hand, am rejected
like a guy in a plaid leisure suit outside Studio 54.
“The humiliation, you would
think, would be enough, but oh no, I am up
for more. When the fat guy at the gate isn’t looking, I sneak
on. The roller coaster starts up, and by the time we’re heading
into the first loop, I am beginning to understand why they have such
silly rules.”
Jim frowned. “You
didn’t—”
Sandburg nodded. “I
did. Almost. I feel myself start
to slip out from under the bar, and my whole life flashes before my
eyes. Eleven years—it was boring as hell, believe me.”
“How did you stay on?”
“Wrapped my arms around that
bar and held on so hard I think I dented
the iron. By the time we stopped, I think I’d sweated out every
ounce of water in my body and peed the rest. Suffice it to say
the girl did
not consider me boyfriend material after that. And I haven’t been
on
a roller coaster since.”
“Never?”
“Never, until today.
Right now.” Holding up a hand, Blair
displayed several amusement ride tickets. “Time to purge.”
Hell of a choice of words
considering what happened the last time,
Jim thought. “Uh, look, Chief,” he began. “Are you sure
this is such a good idea?”
“It’s a great idea. I’m
not saying it’s going to magically fix
all of my hangups, but it’s a start, a cathartic event. It’s what
I need to make me realize I’m headed in the right direction.”
“Then let me go with you,”
Jim blurted. He was getting caught up
in this too, which was totally ridiculous. After all, it wasn’t
like Sandburg was going off to war or certain death; an amusement park
ride was not a big deal.
And then Blair looked up at
him and it hit him that yeah, it was a
big deal, because for whatever reason Blair had built this thing up in
his head, made it some kind of weird initiation rite, his final
qualification before becoming a cop. If he didn’t perform well on
this test, maybe he’d tell himself to go out and get himself another
fate. Maybe he’d pack his bags and move off to some place where
they’d never heard of him and he could finish his doctorate without
having all that Sentinel shit hanging over his head.
Oh God, Jim thought,
as his life flashed before his eyes.
Without Blair, it would be as boring as hell.
“Sorry, Jim,” Blair was
saying, “but some things a man’s gotta do
alone.” And then he tipped an imaginary cowboy hat at Jim and
turned toward the ride. Jim stood there and watched him go, all
of his senses shutting down one
by one.
It would be easier that way.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
In the end, Jim had to leave
at least one sense up and running; he was
afraid he’d go into some kind of reverse zone right there on the
midway, turn to stone until somebody noticed and they carted him away.
So he turned down everything
but sight, down so far they were almost
off, and it was cool for a while, like a silent movie reeling out
before his eyes. Blair was Charlie Chaplin with a hippie twist,
loping stride taking him
up to the carny to hand over his tickets, then into the narrow car in
the
middle of the train, where he sat alone. As the guy strapped him
into
the safety harness, Jim zoomed in on the place where Sandburg’s hands
gripped
the side of the cart. He studied the chipped paint, worn by years
of
use, covering the dingy metal, his sight taking him into every groove,
every
rust-laden pit in the surface. Widening his scope, he took in the
other
passengers; directly ahead of Blair, there was a skinny, long-haired
kid
who made Jim think of the boy who’d gotten on a roller coaster almost
twenty
years ago to impress a girl. To make himself visible, to make
himself
heard.
Try as he might to shift his
focus, Jim kept coming back to Blair, his
gaze cataloguing the grim set of his mouth, his rigid posture as he
waited, the widening of his eyes as the car jerked into motion.
The temptation to dial up his hearing then was almost too much—he
needed to measure the pace
of Blair’s heartbeat, to listen for that rasp, to gather evidence that
this
ritual was leading in one direction or the other. But he fought
it,
because he couldn’t afford it, couldn’t take the risk of getting lost
in
Blair this late in the game.
Sandburg’s mouth was open
slightly as the coaster cranked its way up
its first climb, like he was concentrating on not
hyperventilating. Getting in closer, he could see the sweat
beading Sandburg’s upper lip.
He backed off immediately,
because God, that was way too close, that
made him imagine—
Blair under his hands,
mouth open and gasping his name as Jim slid
into him, as Jim took him slowly, rocking with deliberate, reverent
care. Blair gritting his teeth and urging him to move, for
Christ’s sake move in a voice that was strained with need—
Blair needing him,
needing him—
And Jim leaned forward and
licked the sweat from Blair’s upper lip,
the salt tang exploding on his tongue like the most exotic spice, and
Jim’s next thrust was a lot less careful, the urgency flowing from
Blair and into him, powering the deep, pistoning movements of his hips—
Jim plummeted back into
reality as Blair began his first descent.
Body throbbing and emotions careening into one another like bumper
cars,
he stood helplessly as the coaster picked up speed. He tried to
keep
from watching Sandburg too closely again, but it was a nearly
impossible
task, because every sense was screaming to be let loose on Blair, to see
him smell him hear him touch him taste
him—
Blair was definitely
breathing harder now; his mouth was open in a
tight O and Jim could see his chest rising and falling,
rapidly but not quite to the point of full-blown panic. The first
car slammed into the
bottom of the curve and nosed skyward again, and Sandburg was pulled
along,
hair flying behind him.
Jim knew this experience was
worse for Blair, but right at this moment
he couldn’t imagine how much worse it could get. He was standing
on a dirty, dusty midway in late July with stray popcorn and dried
puddles of Coke under his feet, getting jostled by cotton-candy-crazed
passersby and watching his partner sacrifice himself to the gods of
personal growth while he tried to keep his senses from spontaneously
generating a fantasy so vivid he was close to embarrassing himself in
public.
To distract himself, he
dredged up some of the old resentment, not that
it was particularly hard to uncover. He hadn’t asked for this
Sentinel thing, hadn’t asked Blair to seek him out, and in the end
Blair was as responsible for his own actions as anyone. It wasn’t
Jim’s fault Sandburg had decided to get on this roller coaster, just
like it wasn’t his fault Blair had gotten on the ride three years
ago. He could’ve gotten off at any time, after he’d been held
hostage or kidnapped or shot or a hundred different times
when Jim had pushed him away, but no, he had to keep coming back for
more. He had to stay, had to worm his way deeper and deeper into
Jim’s life until Jim was standing here like a dick waiting for the
fucking axe to fall and his life as he knew it to end.
When you thought about it
that way, standing here seemed like a damned
stupid thing to be doing. Blair might choose to walk out on him
the moment he got back on solid ground, but Jim didn’t have to be
around to witness
it. Where the hell did Sandburg get off asking him to be a part
of
this, anyway?
He was about to turn around
and head for the truck when he heard a
loud, joyous whoop pierce the air, so loud it registered even on his
dialed-down hearing.
Or maybe he heard it because
the sound was coming from Blair.
Jim raised his head just in
time to see Sandburg hanging upside down,
centripetal force battling the pull of gravity in a spectacular show of
defiance. The kid ahead of him looked green, but Blair was
laughing,
yelling, triumphant, his expression wild, glorious.
Jim would never be sure how
the transformation had happened, but
somewhere between Jim’s Technicolor fantasy and figuring out he was
royally screwed, Blair had sorted himself out. Blair was fine,
Blair was good, Blair was gonna be a cop.
Terrific.
Slowly, carefully, Jim dialed
up his other senses one by one, until the
stink of stale beer, fried foods and sweat was hovering just below the
threshold of nausea and the clang-crash-clatter of the midway’s
mechanical beasts duked it out with the bleats and whimpers of the ones
scurrying around on two
legs. It was another form of defense against Blair; this time,
instead
of silencing him, he’d let the world drown him out.
Hell, he
reflected. This Sentinel thing turned out to
be useful after all.
And then the ride was over
and Blair was leaping off the roller coaster
like he’d discovered the Fountain of Youth while he was hanging in
mid-air, and Jim wanted to grab him and taste the triumphant glow on
his skin, make sure he wasn’t faking, convince himself that the fear
had finally been purged from Blair’s pores for good.
“Did you see me?”
Blair’s enthusiasm was that of a kid who’d
managed a grownup task all on his own. “Man, I have to tell you I
was just about ready to jump off after that first run, but after that
it was like—” he smacked his hands together “—wham! Gone!
Disappeared! I don’t mean to get all Tammy Faye Baker here, but I
am healed, Jim!”
He looked up at Jim
expectantly, still grinning, and Jim felt a sudden
wave of cold, unreasoning fury, because what the hell was Sandburg
expecting, he’d never given Jim any clue that he expected anything from
him, how was he supposed to—
Dimly he realized he had
wrapped his fingers around Blair’s
wrist. They both looked down, and Jim watched his own hand tug
hard. Startled, Blair took a couple of stumbling steps toward him
before righting himself and digging in his heels. His smile faded
abruptly.
“Jim, what the—”
Jim glared down at him as
Blair’s gaze rose again, and something in
Jim’s expression must have made sense to him, because he stared at Jim
for a moment, then nodded once, as if giving permission. This
time when Jim pulled him, Blair let himself be pulled. Jim led
him away from the roller coaster, across the midway and down a narrow
alleyway between a fast food restaurant and the Wacky Fun House, a low
building painted in psychedelic colors that made Jim’s eyes hurt.
The only other person out
back of the buildings was a heavyset guy in
a hair net standing by the restaurant’s back door with a cigarette in
one
hand and a hot dog in the other. He gave Jim and Blair a cursory
once-over, then returned to his dinner.
Jim hauled Blair over behind
a maintenance shed, blocking Hair Net’s
view of them, and pushed him gently but firmly against the cleanest of
the available walls. Blair stared up at him, obviously pissed but
willing to let Jim have the first word.
The fact that he was so Zen
about being dragged around like a toddler
annoyed Jim even more. He wanted a shouting match, dammit, wanted
fireworks and yelling and shoving, something to make this choice real,
a
ritual of his own. So he leaned into Blair’s space and growled,
“Yeah,
I saw you, Sandburg. Now what?”
Blair scowled. “What do
you mean?”
“I mean, great,
congratulations, you passed your fucking rite of
initiation. So is this it? Are you done, here?”
“I don’t—”
“Because I’ve been waiting,”
Jim said, shocked both that the
words were coming out of his mouth so easily and shocked that they were
true, “for something. I didn’t have a clue what I was
expecting—a couple of stone tablets, a burning bush, a roller
coaster—but I was.” He
leaned in closer, one arm bracing against the wall above Sandburg’s
head. “So I’ll ask you again: is this it?”
Then he finally let himself
open up a little and read Blair’s
heartbeat, and he wasn’t surprised to hear it running at double speed,
a strong, steady thumpthump thumpthump thumpthump you could
dance to if you wanted.
Blair’s clear blue eyes bored
right into him, searching for something,
and Jim wondered if they were looking for the same thing.
To know,
finally. To be sure that neither of them was
going to run tomorrow, or the next day, or at some point in this
lifetime. That this was it, for both of them.
“And if I say it is?” Blair
murmured, and oh, Christ, they were, they
were. “Will you believe me?”
Jim’s answer was to raise one
shaking hand to Blair’s lips and gently
swipe the pad of his thumb across Blair’s upper lip, gathering the
half-dried and slightly sticky sweat there. Jesus, it felt like
his skin could taste the salt it found, like all of his senses
were melding together, like his whole body was becoming one big
receptor for Blair.
Blair sucked in a breath and
Jim’s thumb cooled at the rush of
air. Blair’s heart sped up, its rhythm missing at odd intervals
like an engine with faulty timing.
“Don’t, just please don’t do
this if you’re gonna take it away again,”
Blair was saying fervently, head shaking, dragging Jim’s thumb across
his lips as he moved. “Because I really, really couldn’t
handle it
if you did that, Jim. What you said to me after the diss, the way
you
were, man, it fucking gutted me—”
Jim shut his eyes and leaned
his forehead against Blair’s, pressed his
thumb against his mouth to quiet him. “I won’t, I won’t, don’t
you get it was the same for me, God, Blair—” And then Jim’s hand
slid sideways, cupping Blair’s jaw and freeing Blair’s mouth, and Jim
wasn’t sure which
one of them moved first but suddenly Blair’s mouth was pressing against
his,
then sliding wetly and oh fuck it felt fantastic.
Blair made a low noise in his
throat, the sound vibrating against Jim’s
lips, and Jim suddenly went a little crazy. He pressed the whole
length of his body against Blair’s, trapping him against the side of
the building; yeah, he knew he wasn’t going anywhere, but it didn’t
hurt to have insurance, right? Then Blair pushed back and for a
moment Jim’s heart stopped, but Blair had just been trying to get his
arms free so he could grab Jim’s hips and pull him in closer. In
relief and gratitude, Jim dipped his head lower and licked the length
of Blair’s neck.
“Nnnnnng,” Blair said,
arching his head back, offering as much
skin as he could to Jim’s questing mouth. Blindly, his hands left
Jim’s hips and burrowed between them, then went right to work on Jim’s
fly. Some small part of Jim’s brain reminded him that sex in a
semi-public place wasn’t a really smart thing for a cop and an
almost-cop to be doing, but the
larger part told it to shut the fuck up and told Jim’s cock to push
against Blair’s hands, which it did, happily.
Then Blair’s fingers
stilled. Jim nearly bit his own tongue off
as his jaw clamped around the groan of frustration.
“Oh, shit, oh, shit,” Blair
hissed. “I can’t—we can’t—some kid
could walk by here any second, Jim.” When he raised his head, his
expression was both apologetic and lust-fogged, and Jim couldn’t keep
from kissing him one last time, hard and fast.
“Yeah, okay, okay,” he
murmured, trying not to sound as desperate as he
felt.
Blair stayed propped against
the wall after Jim released him, as though
his legs needed the support. Jim could feel his gaze on him as he
zipped and buttoned himself back to respectability.
“How long do you think it’ll
take us to get home?”
Jim’s head snapped up.
“I’ll use the siren.”
Blair grinned. “Cool.”
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Jim spent the whole ride
home—all thirteen and a half minutes of it—on
the ragged edge of arousal. Keeping his hormones at bay so he
could focus enough of his attention on driving was about the hardest
thing he’d ever tried to do, because every one of his senses was pushed
to the maximum and clamoring for Blair. If he gave in to
them he’d end up wrapping the truck around a lamppost, though, so he
kept his eyes forward, his ears trained on the sounds of the late
afternoon traffic, and his hands at ten and two.
Walking into the apartment
building was like flipping a switch.
As soon as the elevator doors closed, Blair shoved Jim up against the
back wall and pulled his head down to kiss him, and Jim felt himself
open wide, finally allowing himself the luxury of experiencing Blair
properly. It was like falling into deep water and expecting to
drown, then discovering you could breathe underwater. Jim pulled
Blair close and kissed him like he was breathing him, like every kiss
was oxygen, was life.
When the doors opened on the
third floor, Jim registered a small sound
on the outskirts of his awareness, but since it hadn’t come from Blair,
he
didn’t care.
“Jim. Uh, Jim.”
Reluctantly, Jim let Blair
leave his arms. He looked up to find
Mrs. Wanamaker from 301 staring at them from the hallway like they’d
been
caught violating sheep in the lobby.
“Hi, Mrs. W,” Blair said,
wrapping one hand around Jim’s waist and
waving the other one feebly. “Beautiful day.”
Jim and Mrs. Wanamaker said
nothing. She stepped aside to let
them pass, and Jim put an arm around Blair’s shoulders, fingers making
themselves at home on the nape of Blair’s neck.
“That’s too bad,” Blair mused
as the doors closed on her thin-lipped
disapproval. “She made great bundt cakes.”
“I’ll make you bundt cakes,”
Jim growled. “I’ll bake you fucking
French pastries if you want, but not now.”
Blair grinned up at him
evilly. “Getting a little frustrated
there, big guy?”
Jim leaned in and molded his
hand over Blair’s dick. “Aren’t you?”
Blair closed his eyes and
swallowed hard. “Hell, yeah,” he
agreed, nodding fervently.
And then they just started
moving and didn’t stop until they were
standing by Jim’s bed, flushed and panting and clawing at one another’s
clothes. Jim kept trying to undo Blair’s belt and failing
miserably; his brain couldn’t summon sufficient power to figure out how
to do it backwards, which was either a sign he was completely turned on
or about to have a stroke. Blair, who was doing much better with
Jim’s shirt buttons, glanced up at him and muttered, “Sometime this
century, Ellison,” which made Jim pick him up bodily and throw him onto
the bed.
“Holy shit,” Blair
gasped as he bounced, staring up at Jim
wide-eyed. “That was fun, we gotta do that again.”
“Don’t worry, Chief,” Jim
growled. “I think I can come up with a
few other fun things.” He shrugged his shirt off his shoulders
and started on his pants while Blair took care of his own
clothes. When he finished tugging off his socks, he looked up and
saw Blair lying naked and sprawled on his bed, his gaze hot and avid on
Jim’s body.
Jim shivered, although it had
to be at least eighty degrees in the loft.
“There are times I wish I had
your sight,” Blair said huskily, as if
he’d read Jim’s mind. “I wish I could see things the way you
do. But right now, I think if I could see you any better my head
would explode.”
Jim sat on the edge of the
bed and Blair rose to meet him in a kiss
that started out hot but ended gentle. Jim never had a kiss do
that before, and it staggered him. Obviously Blair hadn’t either,
because when they parted he had the same stunned look Jim imagined was
plastered on his face.
“God, we’re really going to
do this, aren’t we?” Blair breathed.
Jim stroked along Blair’s jaw
line with one finger. “If you want.”
“I want,” Blair confirmed,
kissing Jim again. “Boy, do I
want.” He leaned over to lick Jim’s earlobe, and Jim shivered
again. A soft, teasing bite, another shiver.
“Is that me? Am I
making you do that?” Blair demanded, voice full
of wonder, like he’d discovered a new continent.
“What do you think?” Jim
growled, trying to decide whether to get
annoyed or aroused. He shoved Blair onto his back and crawled on
top of him, decided the second option was probably the better one, and
proceeded to set about making Blair shiver.
And shake. And
yell. And curse. And plead.
Eventually, because he’d
never really been good at staying in the
truck, Blair insisted on reciprocating, and pretty soon they were
reciprocating all over one another, and then Blair leaned down and,
without any prior indication he was going to do it, sucked the head of
Jim’s cock into his mouth. It was right about that time that Jim
figured it would be a great idea to shiver and curse and yell and come.
So he did, in approximately
that order.
When Blair had finished
licking him clean—Jesus, just the sight of him
doing it was enough to make Jim hard again—he straddled Jim, shoved
Jim’s thighs together and pushed his dick between them. Then he
started rocking, slowly, and Jim watched his face tighten and the
urgency build in him. Dialing down everything as fast as he
could, he left sight alone up and
running, because if he let himself feel the brush of Blair’s cock, the
press
of his hands as they wrapped around him, if he could hear the racing of
Blair’s heart and the soft, urgent sounds he was making, he wouldn’t
last
another five seconds.
As it was, he managed to hold
out until he saw Blair’s eyes snap open
and stare at him, until he felt the weight of that gaze on his, and
then
it was too much, that too-sharp connection sliced him open and laid him
bare and he surrendered to Blair’s hands and Blair’s cock and Blair’s
blue,
blue eyes.
Afterwards Blair lay sprawled
on top of him in a messy, sticky heap,
finally brought down by gravity.
“M’I too heavy?” he mumbled
into Jim’s left nipple.
“Nope,” Jim said, wrapping
his arms around Blair’s back and holding on
tight. “You’re just right.”
Blair’s lips brushed over
Jim’s chest. “So is this it?”
Jim buried his nose in
Blair’s hair and smiled. “Yeah," he said,
getting on the roller coaster and strapping himself in. "This is it.”
End
July 2005
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