Private Universe: Shelter
by Mab
Jim got out of the truck and, with a straight-armed, roundhouse swing, slammed the door shut. Blair reached across and locked the driver's side and then shut his door and watched as Jim stalked into 852 without so much as a backward look.
"I'm not holding the elevator for you," drifted back across the road.
Blair sighed and headed into their building. He was in no position to help Jim with the processing he had to do. He would have enough of his own. Despite his words, Jim was waiting with his finger on the 'open' button, although he was getting impatient. It wasn't a large elevator, and right now Jim crowded it, with the emotional force of his distress as much as his physical presence. Blair zipped into the tiny space without a word. They rode up in silence. They walked down the hall in silence. Jim unlocked the door to 307, and they walked into the loft in silence.
Jim went straight to the refrigerator, pulled out two beers, and offered one to Blair. He opened his own, but he didn't put it to his mouth. Instead he stood in his kitchen, looking at something far away and unpleasant. Blair held his bottle, feeling the slippery gather of condensation on the glass, and wondered if he could put it down, reject Jim's offering, without precipitating crisis. But then he knew that crisis was coming anyway.
Jim spoke, his voice pushed out from the back of his throat. "What the hell makes something like Matheson? He walks like a man, he talks like a man, and then you look behind it all and there's nothing that you recognise as human at all."
Blair was quiet, his head bowed. With great interest, he watched the gentle slide of a drop of water down the slope of the bottleneck.
"No answers there, professor?"
Blair looked up. "A few papers in psychology don't equip me to work out what makes a serial killer, Jim. And I doubt that you're interested in an academic answer anyway."
"Damn straight."
Jim lifted the bottle, took a swig. He swallowed, hard, and disgust crossed his face.
"Fuck, that tastes awful," he snapped. He turned, and with a strangely elegant flick of his wrist, flung the bottle into the sink with enough force that it broke explosively. Most of the glass stayed in the sink, but small slivers rose in a cloud, and sprayed around the counter and onto the floor. Blair started forward, cursing at the mess, and eyeing Jim's hands. Tiny flecks and smears of blood stood on the backs of his hands, and Blair turned them over to see the same on Jim's palms. He turned to find the pan and brush, but Jim's hand gripped his forearm hard.
"Leave it." Jim dragged Blair hard against him, his hands grappled across his back like handcuffs across the wrists of a suspect. He bent his head to bury his face in Blair's hair and breathed in a shallow, steady rhythm, the breathing of someone consciously fighting nausea or faintness.
"I can make myself stop seeing that god-awful room but I can't stop smelling it," he said. Blair shuddered. The sour stink and miasma of that dreadful little basement room had been bad enough without sentinel senses. "I can't stop smelling it. Please..."
"Shhh, shhh." Blair stroked his hands up across Jim's head. "You can stop it. We're not there anymore, he can't hurt anyone anymore, we're home, we're safe. Shhh."
Jim pulled his face back and reached to tilt Blair's head back for a kiss. It was gentle, unlike the grip of his arm around Blair's back, but his tongue moved restlessly inside Blair's mouth, tasting, searching.
"You taste good," Jim muttered. "You taste human. You understand me?"
"Yes, yes, I understand."
"Come on," Jim growled. The two men left the litter of broken glass behind and, hand in hand, climbed the stairs to the bedroom. At the top, they stood still for a moment, recognising their safe place. Except that nowhere is really safe, Blair thought, before he began to undo the buttons on Jim's shirt. There were smears of blood across his fingertips, not just from Jim's grip on his hand, but new from undoing the shirt, from tiny pieces of glass caught in the material. It didn't matter. He pulled the shirt off, interrupting the ceaseless wandering of Jim's hands across his head, his neck, his back. Jim's expression was intent, and every now and then he lifted strands of Blair's hair and inhaled deeply.
"What do you want, Jim?" Blair whispered. He wondered if Jim was on the edge of a zone, although there was a quiet desperation in his sensing which suggested that Jim was uncomfortably present.
"Inside you. I want to touch somebody human every way I can. Is that all right?"
Blair reached up, pulled Jim's head down. He wanted to touch, to taste something wholesome too, wanted to exorcise from his own mind that sordid room where Matheson enjoyed hurting people.
"Touch me wherever you like." They shuffled awkwardly to the bed and fell together side by side. Long moments of stroking and petting followed, misery gradually giving way for desire, before Blair pulled away. Jim reached out his hand. "I'm just getting my clothes off, man." His mouth lifted at one corner. "You might want to do the same."
Jim sat up on the edge of the bed just long enough to swiftly strip off the rest of his clothes and then gathered a now naked Blair up against him, his hands restless as his mouth had been earlier, always stroking, caressing, with long gentle touches across Blair's back, his buttocks. Blair squirmed happily against Jim's warm smooth skin, used a hand on Jim's shoulder as leverage to grind his erect cock against Jim's, danced his tongue inside Jim's mouth. He pushed Jim gently onto his back, and leaned up on an elbow to look at his friend. Jim was looking back at him, the blue eyes steady, and wanting.
"Yeah, straddle me, ride me. Do that."
Blair grinned. "You are so predictable."
Mock irritation crossed Jim's face. "It's your habit, Chief." His voice dropped low, a rumble that reverberated in Blair's groin. "You love it like that. Love it when I push up into you."
Blair warmed all over, and rubbed a possessive hand against Jim's solid thigh, let it roam around to gently cup a buttock. "Hey, gym bunny, these glutes have to be good for something besides decoration."
Jim's response was to flip Blair to his back, but only in passing as he reached across the bed to the nightstand. Blair sighed at the pleasurable feel of Jim's weight and heat pressing him down, and also in approval at the military mindset of order which enabled Jim to reach into the drawer and swiftly and neatly lift out the tube of lubricant.
"Tell you what," Jim murmured into Blair's ear, "since you're going to be doing most of the work shortly, how about I do this little job for you?" A finger, cool and slick with gel, pressed against Blair's anus, and he arched up, partly in co-operation, but mainly in simple pleasure. His eyes shut, Blair drifted on good feelings; Jim's arm under his neck, Jim's fingers busily working his hole, the feel of satin skin as Blair aimlessly travelled a hand up and down Jim's back. There was a brush of lips across his forehead, and then Jim's hand was on his hip, pulling him across as Jim turned onto his back. No more drifting. Instead, Blair happily settled into 'work,' and guiding Jim's cock with his hand, gently moved back, moved a little forward and then back again, until his ass was cradled against Jim's groin.
Blair surveyed the view from his position. Jim's spectacular torso was laid out beneath him. Beautiful as the sight was, more beautiful still was Jim's face, strained in pleasure. Blair flexed his thighs, moved against the cock inside him, and struggled not to let his own pleasure distract him from watching the movement of delight across Jim's face. He leaned carefully down, and claimed Jim's mouth in a slow, wet kiss, before lifting a little and bracing his arms against the mattress.
"Is this what you needed? Is this what you want?" He rocked persistently now, working with the rhythm that Jim was falling into. His answer was a moan of "Yes, just like that, god, yes, just like that." 'Just like that' suited Blair fine, a slow slide of sensation, interspersed with shocks of almost ecstasy. Almost, but not quite, and he moved one hand to his own cock and began to stroke himself luxuriously.
Jim's hands reached up to grip his shoulders, and Blair shivered and leaned into the strength holding him, moving his hips and his hand in tandem, while Jim muttered his approval, "Yeah, give me all of it, babe, come on, come on." Blair had to shut his eyes sometimes, it was too sweet to not focus just on the incredible feelings, but whenever he opened them again, Jim was watching him, his own face caught in a grimace of pleasure, his eyes never leaving Blair.
Blair had a favourite fantasy for these moments. He pretended that he was the sentinel, that he could experience everything the way that Jim could, wrap himself in Jim's body and smell the way that he hoped Jim did with his. He shut his eyes again, trying to be one with Jim every way he could, but his own insistent stroke on his cock brought him solely into himself, the pleasure he felt, the way it felt, ah god, to come. He dragged in a breath and opened his eyes, looking down at the smear of semen glistening across Jim's belly. They were both still for this moment, and lazily he reached a hand to rub it into Jim's skin, smiling at the twitch of muscles under his fingers.
He let his hands roam further, up to Jim's nipples, tweaked them with a hand still moist from the mess he had rubbed in. Jim breathed in, not an open mouthed gasp, a harsh inhalation through his nose. Blair began to move again, resting his palms against Jim's chest, enjoying how the nipples peaked against his hands. "You like that smell, don't you?"
There was no answer, just a tightening grip of Jim's hands against Blair's shoulders. Blair shifted his hands up to rest on top of Jim's wrists, and braced himself against them to move a little more vigorously. "Blair." Jim's voice held a warning tone.
"Oh, yeah, sure. You're going to get pissed at me because I'm going to make you come. Right, man." Blair's voice lowered to a croon. "You don't have to wait."
"What if I want to wait? Feels good."
"Surely does." Relaxed after his own orgasm, Blair found plenty to enjoy in the sensation of Jim filling him, moving in him, and suppressed a mischievous impulse to see how quickly he could make Jim lose it. Instead he moved into an easier rhythm, the two of them steady together, but only for so long. With a low moan, Jim twisted his hands away from Blair's shoulders to wrap them around his back, and pulled Blair down to rest against his chest. His thrusts into Blair came quick and hard. Blair felt him shaking in tension and ran his hands in small strokes across Jim's shoulders and head, yearning to settle that tension, somehow, knowing that there was only one way, and it was coming fast, that Jim was coming, voicing his pleasure with Blair's name.
When Jim was finally still, Blair shifted a little, sighing as Jim's softened cock slipped out. The two of them wriggled under the bedding, while Jim groused about “more damn laundry”. Blair was getting hungry, but not so hungry that he was ready to leave the refuge of bed and Jim's arms. He snuggled into the big body like a child hiding under the blankets from the monster in the closet. And if Jim held Blair like a child clutching at a favourite comforting toy, then that was just the way it was.
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