How It Works
by Mab
I don't want to think about how many ways this is wrong, so I'm not going to. Cue a memory of Sandburg rolling his eyes in exasperation about something or other. Too bad.
Instead of thinking, I'm driving. Half an hour in Sandburg's wake. Lianna (and who the hell gives their daughter a name reminiscent of creeping vines?) offered him a home cooked meal as a date option. Yeah, something's cooking, all right. He headed out all bright-eyed anticipation, and here I am, driving my truck through Cascade on my way to my own special stake-out. I park across the road, feeling pretty safe. It's dark enough now, and I'll lay bets that Sandburg's concentrating on the action inside.
Whatever she's cooked for him smells good. She might even eat a decent serving of it herself. She's a curvy little thing, small and dark the way Sandburg likes them, and with a working brain by the sound of the conversation. They're showing off for each other – aah, limerance. And I guess that since I haven't even known Sandburg for those three years that he was yapping on about when he was explaining that word, that I'm still in the throes of it too. Limerance. Infatuation. What a joke.
Kissing. I can hear it, tiny, wet noises, the occasional low hum from her, from him. Then he laughs, and the chair scrapes against the floor as he stands up from the table. “Think I'll get a little closer,” he murmurs. More kiss noises. I think about the shapes that mouth of his makes whenever he's sounding off about the obsession of the day. Which is me, often enough. No, not me. The Sentinel. But maybe me, maybe sometimes. Not now, though. Now it's Lianna with her heavy breasts and her big brown doe eyes. She sighs. Is he a good kisser, honey? Make the most of it. He never stays with any of you for long.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for. I've sure been anticipating it, ever since I realised that there was just the tiniest crack in the join of the curtains. Nothing that anyone else could use. A tiny split where the material doesn't quite fully veil the window, and a view, not to the bed, but to the mirror on Lianna's dresser. Good enough for government work, huh, Jimmy? So long as their youthful ardour doesn't mean that they end up on the couch, but no. Patience is rewarded.
He's undressing her. He likes to do that. I wonder if he'd do it to me with the same single-minded attention. I like that thought. Sandburg's face caught in concentration, those broad hands of his trailing over my skin, drawing cloth over my body, drawing it away from my body, leaving me naked. Yeah, I like that thought. He's kneeling on the ground in front of her, kissing her belly, gently fingering her between her legs. He looks up at her and smiles, pleased with himself, and pleased with her response. She fondles her breasts, and smiles right back at him when his breath catches. I can make him catch his breath, although he recovers pretty quickly. But he likes to watch from under his lashes when I'm not wearing that much. Thing is, is he watching me, or his fucking Holy Grail?
Really should pay more attention, Ellison, because they're on the bed now. Do a little piggy-backing there, sight on to sound, and I never know how the hell this works. Synaesthesia? Or just a vivid, perfect fantasy of sight my brain builds out of the jigsaw pieces that other senses throw down in front of me? Sandburg doesn't really know either. Simply said that it seemed like a good idea at the time. He got uncomfortable there when he realised that he didn't know why or how it worked. He's a guy that likes his why and how, nearly as much as I do.
But the why and the how don't matter as I see the foreshortened line of his body leaning over hers, reflected in the mirror. She's pretty, with a rich, creamy skin, but that's just something to note for the record. The real fascination is his skin, olive where the sun gets to it, but just as pale as hers where it hides under his clothing. No hiding now – she's pushed him onto his back and he's grinning as she pulls his pants and his shorts away. And now for sure it's fantasy as I close my eyes and stroke against my dick under my sweats. Loose pants. Wouldn't want to hurt anything important now, would we? Him grinning at me as I strip his layers off.
I wonder if she knows how little she's getting of him right now. Yeah, he's having fun, he's got his head in the game. Literally, given she's just gone down on him. But that's all it is, just a game. He's cute when he's playing, but I've seen him when it's not a game, when everything is serious, and he's god damned beautiful then. His hand rests on her head. That makes me shiver. His hand resting on my head, stroking down my cheek to my wide open jaw. And there's no ugly stretch of latex between me and what I want, just him and the scent and taste of his skin.
He moves his hand to her shoulder, mutters that he's going to come. She doesn't move, instead keeps at him, and he gives in to the inevitable and lies back, the angle of his jaw settling into pleasure. When he's finished, he leans up on his elbows and raises his eyebrows. His expression is good humoured though. “Do you want me out the door that quickly?”
She slides up his body, wriggling like some pale, sweet-fleshed fish. “Not at all. I've got a lot of confidence in your powers of recovery. Now that the edge is off, you can fuck me a long time.”
He chuckles at that. “Bossy girl,” he says affectionately. “But I like a woman who knows what she wants.” Especially when what she wants is you, right, Chief? But never let it be said that you're not eager to please. If the lady wants fucking, then you're more than happy to oblige, once you've returned that little oral favour. You and that mouth of yours.
I ache. It wouldn't take much to finish it, but I want to wait for him, and I shake my head, because I'm the dumbest of dumb shits right about now. So I rub myself, just enough to promise my dick that yes, it will get to come, delayed gratification's a great thing. But he is fucking her a long time, and she likes it plenty if all those breathy little sounds mean anything. I can just see the fine sheen of sweat along his spine, the way his ass works, his head dipping below his shoulders to whisper something dirtily beautiful into her ear. He's breathing hard, his biceps standing out as he supports his weight.
They're both going for it now, and it's going to be good, which is probably exactly what he thought would happen. Cocky little bastard, you think it's always going to go right for you, whether it's helping your lover come, or jumping out of planes or following me into gunfights, don't you? You ought to be a little less sure of destiny, Chief, because it ain't necessarily so. I want to do right by you, but bullets make it tough.
I'm into fantasy again. He likes to fuck. Wonder how he feels about being fucked, and I lick that long line of sweaty spine in anticipation, rub that gorgeous ass and let my palms feel it all, skin, the slide of the muscle under all that gorgeous skin, fine hairs turning into coarser hair low to his cleft and running into his thighs. He shudders, maybe not just pleasure, maybe he's a little scared, maybe he wants to say no. But I won't listen. God, no, not to hurt him, but - I want him to know how it feels, to be under the hands of someone who doesn't really know what the hell he's doing, however much he wants to do it right, to do right by someone...
He's all I hear now, him fucking Lianna, getting fucked by me, while I take the last risk and finally let myself have what I came here for. It lasts a long time, my noise and his echoing together in my head, until I gulp in my breath, damn near tasting solitary sex, and tuck my dick tidily away and stuff slimy wipes into a plastic bag.
Nearly time to go, but I have to listen just a while longer, to tired, happy murmurs, to the sound of Sandburg getting out of the bed and drawing the curtains back. I sit there, frozen in his gaze, even though I know he can't see me in the gloom of the street. He's looking towards my position in the cab, he knows it's me, but his eyes don't quite look the right way to meet mine. It makes him look uncomfortably like a blind man, but he's not blind. He is naked, though, standing there in challenge. I followed him here, this is what he is here. Anyone else walking by might see him standing there in the dark, might realise that he's naked by the lines and shape of him, but they wouldn't actually see that much. I do.
He shakes his head. His lips move, air barely moving past them but I hear him, as he knows that I will. “Guess that we have to talk. Whadda ya think, Jim?” That damn sureness deserts him, for a bare moment, as his look turns inwards in trouble and the back of his knuckles stroke just under his collarbone. Then he's gone.
Lianna sleepily asks why he went to the window, and the great Sandburg Travelling Show is up and running again, as he makes some stupid excuse about going with the vibe, and she laughs, hardly more than a puff of breath in his face.
I pull out onto the road wondering how the hell he knew that I was there. Whether he saw me some other time, or whether he just knew I was there, the way he knew about the dials idea or piggybacking my senses. Our very own travelling show, but I want something real, damn it. I'm not as anxious as I ought to be because I remember that uncertain, sensual touch across his chest. Maybe, maybe the professor is ready to believe that there's more than one way that we can do right by each other. However scary it might be.
Not Going To Work
I'm not freaking out.
Okay. Yes, I am sort of, but this is pretty mild compared to some of the panicking I've done in my time. I'm still functional. My heart is going like I've main-lined about ten espressos, but that just means I look jittery, and hyper. Normal state of being for me, that's what most people would tell you.
Jim, for example. Jim takes non-jittery to an art form. Statues could learn from Jim Ellison's stone-face. But unlike your average statue, there's a lot going on behind the impassivity. Hidden depths.
I think my take on this lecture on the ethnographic tradition in domestic cultural studies is starting to wobble. But it's nearly over, and then I'm going to meet Lianna for lunch, enjoy some multi-disciplinary communication, and that makes me smile at an inappropriate part of my notes. Discipline. Now there's a word that goes all sorts of places. A field of study. Regulation. Control. Restraint. Punishment. Special discipline. Military discipline. And this lecture is over, before my own lack of discipline gets any more apparent.
So, so totally screwed. Never mind what the hell's gotten into Jim, what the hell got into me? Because I'm willing to bet that the so-called normal reaction to figuring out that your best friend is stalking you when you're out - well, let's call it socialising with a female friend - isn't usually to stand like a peacock in full display in front of your voyeur friend with the telescopic, microscopic and any other 'scopic' you care to mention vision.
Fuck this. Instead of heading for the student union I'm heading for the phone, to make my excuses. Lunch with Lianna is off the agenda as of now. I have a talk to try and script out, because I'm willing to bet that Jim Ellison will be in his home tonight, inconveniently willing (for once) to listen to what I have to say. And stating your intentions in the warmth of after-glow and bravado is one thing, and carrying through those intentions in front of Jim is another story altogether.
I sit in my office, my enormous basement office, of which about twenty percent is mine and the rest is artefact storage. But there's some cool artefacts in here. Right over there is the shelf with basket work and carved heads beside where Jim threw me up against the wall. I was kind of surprised I didn't leave a Blair shaped dent in the plaster, but I guess Jim had more discipline going for him that time than I realised.
Bastard! Bastard! Who the hell does he think he is? My hands are shaking with fury. The boundaries have always been a little blurry with me and Jim, but last night – that was straight out creepy, and rage inducing. And I'm uncomfortably aware right now that bodily arousal comes out of a whole heap of emotions. I'm panting, and my skin is flushed, and my body feels poised for – what? Kicking James Ellison's pervert ass? I sure hope so, know what I mean?
It doesn't help that the Rainier day goes mind-numbingly slowly. I feel like I could run a million miles and still have to *move* so as not to jump out of my skin, and I'm willing to bet that the dragon with the designer horn-rims in the Bursar's office thinks that I'm on something. Nothing stronger than adrenaline laced with caffeine, ma'am, those handy drugs of survival. Although if I thought I could get away with it, a quick toke would be a damn useful thing – but no. Turning up to face Jim stinking of weed would catapult farce into disaster, if it isn't already heading that way anyway.
I'm nuts. I don't have to *face* Jim about anything. He has to face me. I'm the injured party here. I didn't do anything, and that means that I have control here, more than I think, and nothing has to turn to disaster unless I let it. Yeah, right. Which is why I'm standing outside my car in that lot a half a block down from the loft, looking at the uncommunicative walls and blank windows that you see from the Prospect street-side, and remembering a few times that Jim Ellison lost his stone-face. Even then, no jitters from Jim, no, my good friend is always a very purposeful man, no farting about from James Ellison, former soldier, cop of the year, sentinel and stalker.
I start walking up the street. I'm calm, I'm relaxed, and I don't have a clue what the hell I'm going to say to him. It has to stop, I'm not your little fantasy toy. And if he doesn't say what he's supposed to? I'll have to get…out, I'll have to follow through and - leave, which is not going to work, no way, I can't *leave*. What about my thesis, what about my career? What about Jim? And how the hell did I know he was there, anyway? Why the hell did I have to get up and look out that damn window, when I knew what I was going to see?
Working It Out
I've just brought the laundry up from the basement when Sandburg jitters in. He eyes me, and the pile of clothes being swiftly sorted and folded on the table, and says, “Hey.”
I nod. “Chief.”
“Got home early today?” he asks.
God and criminal psychopaths willing, I thought that this might be an evening to be in. I've been waiting a while for Sandburg to show up so I've been very domestic to pass the time and give myself something to do. Cooked a halfway decent meal, cleaned up after it all, did this laundry that right now I'm folding with neat precision. Just like the little woman waiting for the roving husband to get in. Your average jealous spouse would probably kill for my surveillance advantages, but I think most of them would pass on this set of circumstances.
“There's food,” I tell him. “Should be okay reheated.”
He's not really looking at me now. “Yeah, thanks, man.”
He eats it, more or less, sitting in his room before bringing out the plate and tidying everything away. He moves quickly, suppressed energy coming out in the way he wields the dish cloth. I wonder how much he ate during the day. It's pretty normal for him to forget to eat, like he forgets to sleep, and then he has these binges of food and zees to refresh him for the next attack on life. He's quiet in his sleep, but it's not like I can't hear what I need to.
I realise that for all his bravado last night, I'm going to have to start this – standing tall because there's only so much ground I'm willing to give up. “Can we get this over with, Sandburg?”
He looks up at me then. His face is as blank as I've ever seen it, which is totally unnatural. Last night's mood is past. He's nervous now, but tamping it down behind meditational calm. The little shit only does that when he thinks I need humouring.
“So what do we need to get over with?” And fuck the Socratic method.
“I'm sorry, okay? It won't happen again.”
“That's good to hear, but my mind is still pretty blown that it happened at all.”
Not half as much as mine is, Sandburg. Trust me on this. But I don't say anything, I shrug instead.
“I mean, what the hell was all that about?” His hands wave in incomprehension. “How many times were you spying on me? Because it damn well better not happen again, that was totally beyond the pale.”
My head is up, and my jaw is out, all the better to look down my nose at you, my dear. Guess I've been as conciliatory as I'm going to be this evening. “I told you, Sandburg. It won't happen again.”
He nods his head decisively. “Good. That's good, Jim.”
He turns back to his room, and I know that my little fantasies aren't coming true. Sandburg doesn't want to think or ask about this, and I can feel the anger boiling up. Not so interested in the weird sentinel stuff when it gets you right where you live, are you, Chief?
“That's it?” I say.
He stops, not looking at me. “What?” he snaps.
“No long rambling questions about my potty training and how many times I jerk off, and the deep anthropological sentinel reasons for my weird ass behaviour? Just, 'that's good, Jim'?” He can't miss the mockery in my tone. Hell, a five year old couldn't miss it. I'm operating about at kindergarten level right now and from the look in his face, that's registered at least.
I take a step forward, and he takes a step back. What, baby, you don't like this dance step because you just figured out that you're not leading?
“You've told me it won't happen again. Fine.”
“And you trust me, do you?”
He flushes at that.
“Gonna stay living under the same roof as the pervert, huh? Damn, Chief, you really want that PhD bad, don't you?”
He visibly reins his temper back. He doesn't lose it often, he's too laid-back to get really pissed off – yeah, sure. But I'm pushing him hard.
“Jim.” Deep breath. “We're friends, right? And we've been living in each other's pockets for a while now, and the boundaries got a little blurred. But friends overlook aberrant behaviour, and work past conflict, y'know?”
I'll show you aberrant behaviour, professor. All these months trying to come to terms with this shit, with the fact that I want you in my bed after a lifetime of assuming that I'm straight, and you want to generously overlook my aberrant behaviour? I don't think so.
“So this desire to work past conflict, that would be why you didn't drag on a shirt and pants last night, and come out and rip me a new one?”
If he was flushed before, I could warm my hands at the heat that comes off his skin now.
“That was stupid. I was stupid.”
“You were beautiful,” I blurt. I'm stupid too.
“I...whoa! Jim, last time I checked, you and I were straight.”
“I've had to recheck my checking, Sandburg.” Oh, articulate, Ellison. That'll win him over.
He shakes his head, more in bemusement (I hope) than denial. I'd hoped that maybe I hadn't been alone in this head-trip, but I can tell that it really is all new to him – or at least that some of the implications are. He did know I was there. He did come to the window naked. He knew that I'd been getting off on listening to him, and he stood there, showing himself to me. Come on, Blair, get a fucking clue.
I try to start again. “You knew I was there.” And isn't this a piece of irony? Who wants to have that little talk now?
“Not…” I'm ready to shoot some half-assed obfuscation down in flames, but he tells me the truth. “Yeah. I knew you were there, well, not knew precisely, but when I looked out Lianna's window and saw your truck – it wasn't exactly a surprise.” He pauses. “I felt kind of a fraud when you told me how great I handled Lash. I knew you were coming, and that, that was absolutely sanity-saving.”
“And you're not all eager-beaver to figure it all out? What happened to that scientific curiosity?”
“Because this isn't part of the deal, that's why! Jesus, Jim, I'm straight!” There's sympathy caught in with my frustration, because this deal I remember, except I did this months ago.
“And you can't know that I'm near you and still be straight?” I get a little closer, slow and easy, trying not to spook him. Then I put out my hand and run it over his hair. I've touched his hair before, but not with this sort of deliberation. His eyes are big and getting bigger by the second. He's breathing hard, and he smells, god, he smells good. Really good.
And then he breaks away and heads for the door. He looks back at me and his face is strained like he's just run a race. “I don't know if I can do this, man, I just…I'll be back when I'm back, okay?” And he's gone, and this apartment is empty enough to echo.
The silence is way too loud, so I go over to the stereo, try to pick out something to listen to while I wait for him to come back. There are various of Sandburg's CDs scattered all around, and instead of listening, I set to sorting out the shelf and the rack, everything alphabetical, regardless of who owns what. If he ends up taking every thing of his out of the shelf, the spaces will be small and subtle and easier to ignore than one big gap. That's the idea, anyway. That make-work done, I actually listen to something, music by the Neville Brothers, sweet and melancholy.
I fall asleep on the couch and when I hear him come in again it's about three in the morning. He's not particularly quiet, and when he sees me on the couch he's not surprised (again), although maybe he's exasperated. I sit up.
“I guess it's been a busy day for you, Chief.” Banalities are all I can come out with this time of the morning.
“You could say that.” He's looking at me like he's never seen me before. Not like a scientific specimen, but a puzzle. He smells of beer and marijuana, although the scent of the weed is only attached to his hair and clothes, and isn't coming off his skin. He doesn't smell like Lianna or sex, and I didn't realise how damn braced I was for that until I know I don't have to be braced any longer.
He takes a couple of steps towards me and stops. His hands fumble to try and express something and fail.
I don't beg. Jim Ellison doesn't beg. But wordlessly, I put my hand out to him. He hesitates so long that I'm nearly rehearsing my excuses to the Bullpen as to why Sandburg won't be hanging around, when he practically launches himself at me, and lands astride my lap. He kisses me.
I've had better kisses. Our teeth click together with that disgusting, hollow pain, and I think that a pinch of his lip is caught against his left canine tooth. It can't be comfortable for him, but he's too busy trying to prove something to me or himself to care. I don't dare move because I'm terrified that I'll scare him off, so I lean back against the hard arm across the back of my neck and let him get it out his system. He pulls away and buries his face in my shoulder.
“Happy now?” he mutters into my shirt. His arm behind me is rigid with tension, the fingers of his hand digging into my back; the other hand grips my shoulder hard enough to hurt.
Happy is too positive a word for this, but I'm willing to settle for being a lot less terrified. This is just the beginning and I know that as well as he does. I put my own hands in the small of his back. That gentle grounding touch works for me, I hope it'll work for him too.
“So, Blair, buddy, friend, pal, when are we going to have that talk?”
A long shudder runs through him as the death-grip becomes something more like a hug, and his breath puffs against my neck. “Dick,” he pronounces, but I can hear the start of a smile in his voice.
Working Up To It
The loft is full of smells. Before, there was the oil heating in the skillet. Now, the sharp smell of raw onion is gradually changing to something sweeter and mellower. Then Sandburg adds some more vegetables – peppers, mushrooms. I lean over from the other side of the kitchen island and throw in the steak I've finished slicing. It hits the skillet with a hiss.
There are plenty of other smells. There's the smell of home: fabric and wood and laundry powder and Sandburg's teas sitting on their shelves. There's the smell of Sandburg. He's nervous, but he's anticipatory too. So am I.
"Won't be long," Sandburg says, and his tongue swipes over his lips; it's part hunger, part nerves.
"No," I reply, but I'm not thinking about the food. I guess something in my voice clues him in, and he looks up then, and smiles.
We got home later than we'd hoped. It always happens that way when you have plans. Yeah, I have plans. Sandburg and I have plans. Action at last. If talking could be compared to books, I think that we've damn near filled Rainier's library. Or at least Sandburg has.
"Smells good," I say, walking around to look over his shoulder. I put my hand in the small of his back, and rub; slow, small circles against the smooth comfort of one of his favourite shirts. He leans back, experimentally at first, but I'm not going anywhere.
"Yeah," he says, but his nose is turned towards my neck.
My hands are on his shoulders. "Proof that you're not a sentinel there, Chief."
He turns his attention back to the cooking food.
"You think? It's not like today featured any adrenalin rushes. You smell fine to me. And you haven't demanded that I hit the shower before food; or bed."
"Yet."
"Showers. So whitebread, man, so unspontaneous. What happened to the concept of indulging that first, fine careless rapture?"
I sigh. "I didn't notice anything careless, or spontaneous, about getting us to this point, Sandburg." This point where we stand together like the lovers we're going to be - once we've eaten. Because it's been a long day, and we both need food, and maybe we both need a normal beginning to this new thing we're planning on being.
He tenses against me. "I don't know," he argues. "You were kind of careless about the stalking thing. And I was totally spontaneous about the exhibitionism thing." I don't say anything or even twitch, and he relaxes before his thoughts turn to practicalities. "Get us some plates, will you?" He has to move then, to empty the noodles into the mix.
His shoulders were solid and warm, and the plates are sharp-edged in my hands. I know what I'd rather be holding. I put them down beside him and grab some silverware and a couple of beers and put them on the table. Then I sit and watch him stirring the noodles through, his face all concentration; I see how his hand curves around the serving spoon, the crook of his elbow as he dishes food out into the plates.
He bustles over and lays the plates down. "Here ya go." Then he starts shovelling it in like it's his last meal.
"In a hurry there, Chief?"
He looks up and has the grace to look abashed, before he gets this goofily lecherous expression. "Now that you mention it..." Jesus, there's eyebrow waggling going on.
"So long as you don't have to leap out of bed to grab the Pepto-Bismol at a crucial moment."
"You will have my full attention, man. Guaranteed."
"Good." I eat my food. Since Sandburg has gobbled his like it's a race, he's finished now, and he's watching me, like I watched him. Exactly like I watched him, I think, with a spark of anticipation and fascination in his face. "See something you like?" I ask.
A slow, secret smile curves his lips. "You know it."
I shrug, entirely for effect, and stand and take our plates back to the kitchen. I'm not about to do anything more than a speedy rinse. More can wait until later. Much, much later.
I hear his steps, and then he leans against my back, his arms around my waist. His nose is rubbing somewhere around the back of my neck and I swear he's snuffling, his breath warm and moist against my skin.
"This is weird," he says. "But in an entirely good way."
"I think it could maybe be better," I tell him, and turn and put my hands on his shoulders again.
"Hey, you're right," he says, all mock surprise. I shake my head in disapproval that's about as serious as his surprise, and kiss him. It hasn't lost the thrill of novelty yet. From that scary night I confronted him with this – thing – that's going on between us, to now; not so long. We stop for a while, and just stand there in each other's arms until he runs his hand along my jaw. His thumb strokes my cheekbone and there's a look in his eye that I'm not sure of. He's thinking too much.
"Upstairs," I tell him.
"Sure." He walks a little ahead of me, which is fine because the view is fine too. We go up the stairs to my big bed, which we made up together with clean sheets this morning. It was, I admit it, kind of cute watching Sandburg corner the sheet tuck-ins. I wonder who taught him, or if he figured out the mechanics on his own to please me. It's not something that he bothers to do too often on that rickety futon of his (which I am never, fucking never having sex on, ever).
He turns when we're both by the bed and swings around with his arms out, like there's some discovery he's just made that he wants to point out. But what he does is put his hands on my shoulders, draw close and say, "Here we are."
"Yeah. Here we are." And I kiss him, and I'm not holding anything back, I want his mouth, I want him, I want the both us of us on that bed sweaty and gasping and touching everywhere. Getting clothes off is a good place to start. My hands hook and haul his sweater, up his torso, over his head, no catch and release here. The tee-shirt follows and there's only skin. I've strapped kevlar on him, bandaged his ribs, watched him with his women. This time is different. This time he's entirely mine and my hands go check out what I've got. He has one hand hard against my nape as he pushes and pulls himself up to kiss me again.
He stops and I swear I whine. God. He's breathing hard.
"Okay," he says. "Here's the deal. I take off my clothes, you take off yours, we get on the bed."
I can do that. I can strip off all my clothes with ungainly speed and I can drag him down with me. I can kiss his mouth, and his neck and run my hands through his hair. He's strong. He writhes under me, and that's when I stop, and stare down at him. I'd stare past his eyes to every thought in his head if I could.
"Sorry," he says. "It's...there's a lot of you, Jim, and that's great, totally great but right now I think I'm freaking out."
I'm pinning him to the bed, and I'm hard; and the last time Sandburg was in bed with anyone as turned on as I am, he was with a woman.
I'm nearly ready to get right off him when he grabs at one arm and hooks his other arm across the back of my neck. "No! No, Jim, I didn't mean...." He wrestles with me for a moment, and I'm willing to go with it when I realise what he wants.
So, now he's pinning me to the bed.
"Damn it," he says, and lowers his head to hide it in the pillow. His skin is hot against mine, and I blow a strand of hair out of the way where it's tickling my nose. "I think there are some things I have to work my way up to," he explains, his voice muffled between the bed linens and my skull.
"Okay," I say. I can live with the current arrangement. The caveman who hangs out somewhere in my reptile brain isn't so impressed, but he can wait. Blair's body covers me, and his dick is still half-hard even with the freak out. Maybe this is better anyway. I can reach more of him like this. I can feel the strong, smooth lines of his back; I can cup that gorgeous ass in my hands. He lifts his head and he licks from my throat up my jaw to somewhere around my ear, and I shudder.
"Yeah," he whispers. "This is okay, very okay..." He sets out to prove it with more kissing. He likes my chest. Hooray for bench presses if they get me the type of attention he's giving me now. His mouth is all over me, same with his hands. He's lying between my spread legs, and as he kisses and licks he's rubbing himself into the mattress. The head of his dick is nudging behind my balls. My dick is rubbing against his torso; sweet friction. I shut my eyes and cradle his head in my hands, but then he's gone. I have one moment where nervousness leaps in my gut again, but it goes when I hear his voice.
"Whoa..." It's stunned but entirely happy. He's sitting aside my thighs, and I think that stunned and entirely happy works for me too as he gathers our hard-ons together into his grip. I suck in a breath. It's the look on his face as much as the touch of his hand and our dicks skin to skin. Curiosity, sure. He's never not going to want to try to figure out everything. But whatever ideas he's got going are heating his skin, making the musk pour off him even more intensely. He has both his hands involved now, and I just hold onto his thighs and let him play. He knows the best games. It looks like one of them is 'give Jim a really great hand-job', and when I come, he's still watching. My eyes are closed, but I know. I know that he's watching me.
With a sigh he plasters himself back across my body and I put my arms around him. His own dick is still waiting, still hard, and experimentally he rocks against me. Looks like the preliminary results are satisfactory, because he keeps going, and I hold him, and maybe in the cold light of afterwards what I'm crooning into his ear would sound stupid, but right now I don't give a damn. He makes this surprised little noise when he comes, before he finally lies still, gasping like he's just run for his life.
He shifts after a while. "Double the fun but double the mess," he says, and hunts up some wipes from the side of the bed and does a basic clean up of us both. "Now would be a good time for a shower. Because I'm going to be rank with this gunk all over me."
"In the morning," I tell him. I'm going to be out of bed in the morning agreeing with him over the 'rank' concept, but now I'm too wiped to move.
"Your nose, man," he says, but lies back down beside me. He's on his side, staring at me. "Well, that worked."
I can hear the question in the statement. "Yeah," I tell him, and he comes closer, and I offer an arm for him to support his neck.
"You know," he says, "I think that maybe I'm bigger than you are - just."
The little shit. But I'm too pleased with the world right now to take offense. Besides, this is Sandburg. He's pointing out an observation as much as he's boasting. "Yeah, Chief, you're all man."
He snorts at that. "Thanks, Jim. I appreciate the reassurance."
He wriggles closer against me, so I guess he's not too much man to object to post-sex cuddling.
"What are you thinking?" he asks.
"What we'll do next time."
"Next time. Got ideas?"
"Lots of ideas."
"Cool." And he's asleep, just like that, warm and heavy and mine. Sandburg. Blair. Mine. Works for me.
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