Make Believe, a Sentinel Guide collaboration by
Glacis. Rated NC17 (for language and realistic representation
of minor-age character sexuality). No copyright infringement intended to
anyone. Takes place directly after Dead Drop. Inspired by
Jack Hart's excellent compilation, My First Time.
It had taken a couple years of cohabitation and risking their lives for
one another in everything from jungle paradises to industrial wastelands, but
Blair Sandburg believed that now, finally, Jim Ellison knew and accepted him
for who and what he was. His place in Jim's life was secure, or as secure as it
would ever be, given the carefully hidden volcanic nature of the man.
How somebody so controlled could go off half cocked so hard and so fast,
he'd never know. But Jim never ceased to surprise and intrigue
him.
Then he'd gotten stuck in the middle of free fall, with a fucked-up
millionaire's daughter and her megalomaniacal, homicidal fruitcake of an
estranged husband. He'd called on skills he hadn't used since before he'd
started to grow his hair out again -- didn't do to let the frantic people who
were counting on him know how close the 'fastest torch on the crew' had come to
becoming human flambé when a stray spark had caught in his hair -- and gotten
his panties blown up by a suitcase way too full of explosives. They'd made it.
He hadn't even peed his jeans. He'd kept his cool,
kept his fear under control, and used Jim's reassuring voice for a lifeline for
as long as he possibly could.
When they'd pried the doors open and pulled them from the hellhole masquerading
as an elevator car that had nearly been their molten coffin, he'd really,
really needed to lean on Jim for awhile. Who'd been there to pull him out?
Joel Taggart.
Not that he didn't like Joel. He did. But he'd needed Jim.
That freaked him out pretty badly. So he'd covered, like he always did
when too much of the inside started showing to the outside, and he'd been stern
with the idiot chick, teased the other Major Crimes cops hanging around the
lobby, and did his damnedest not to dive into Jim's arms when the man finally
showed up.
He was shaking.
Bright blue eyes in a sweaty face stared down at him. "You okay,
Chief?" Jim's voice poured through his ears down into his spine, and
stiffened it up a bit. The shaking lessened fractionally. "Your heart rate's off the chart and you're trembling."
Blair gave Jim his very best 'what the fuck do you expect?' look. Jim
gave him a half grin. His sentinel was many things. Stupid was not one of them.
But he could be misdirected. Blair was a master of misdirection. "It's
cool. Just coming down, you know?"
The laser look skipped from his face to his crotch. "Slowly."
He grimaced, forcing it to a cocky grin before it gave him away.
"You know what they say about adrenaline, man! And it doesn't get much
more pumped than the last half hour." If it worked for fighter pilots, it
should work for wayward scholars caught in the middle of bombs and sociopaths.
Jim bought it.
"Yeah, it happens." A gruff, friendly hug, much too short,
ended all discussion of Blair's boner, and the talk quickly turned to ancient
artifacts, stairs and Chinese food versus
He was in such incredibly deep shit he was never going to see daylight
again.
Jim'd wanted to kill
him. When he'd heard the bomb go off, everything had blanked out. All he had
seen was the goddamned smirk on the weaselly face,
the triumph in those washed out crazy eyes. All he heard was the harsh rip of
breath panting in and out of his own lungs and the echoing silence that was the
wake of a bomb blast. No heartbeat, no chatter, no reassuring gurgle of blood
flowing through veins. He knew Sandburg was dead. And he knew this son of a
bitch had killed him.
Jim didn't know what he'd said. Didn't know why he didn't actually pick
the bastard up, break his useless neck, and throw his carcass out the window.
Time and space contracted to one focused point with a single purpose
: kill.
Then something shifted and the world sped back up again. It took him a
second to pinpoint the difference. The shock wave from the explosion had passed
and his hearing was back on-line. The blast had been too close to the
accelerated heartbeat he'd been monitoring since he'd entered the building, and
had temporarily washed over it. Now, it was back, a little less frantic, still
strong. Still there. Still alive.
The instinctive part of his brain, the part that clicked in when there
was no hope, nothing but death, calmed and receded. He didn't kill the bastard.
He arrested him. Threw him bodily at the uniforms there to
take him away. Ran down too many flights of stairs to
get to the lobby.
Sandburg was standing there. Sheltered by Taggart, a
weird juxtaposition to reality. Should have been him. The woman was led
away, footsteps clicking loudly on the tile. The ambulance siren whooped too
near, jolting him again. His hearing was totally screwed up. He could hear
Joel's belly, digestive system wrestling with whatever the man had eaten for
lunch. The near silent whining screech of the abused elevator
cables, swaying in the shaft, echoing just enough to make his teeth ache.
His own lungs, wheezing the slightest bit from over-exertion
and stress. Underneath it, Sandburg's heartbeat thrummed. The only real thing in a fucking unreal world.
He forced his feet to move. Slowly, then faster, until he was close,
close enough to touch, not touching, just staring at him. Sandburg finished
speaking to the stupid bitch who'd helped cause the
mess, and turned to smile up at him.
Sight wobbled, like a tunnel at high speed, edges of his vision weaving
in and out. Bright blue eyes laughed up at him, fear behind the laughter,
tension and fatigue behind the smile. The tunnel firmed and filled out, and Jim
could answer the smile. Sandburg said something. He answered. "Let's get
out of here, Chief." "Next time, take the stairs." Don't ever
scare me like that again.
Words failed him, and action would be inappropriate here, now, with this
person. Instincts howled at him, but he pushed them back with a feral mental
snarl of his own. Not here. Not now. Not with Sandburg.
No fucking way was he going to lose this. It meant too much.
It meant everything.
"Seriously, man, it was from a battle-axe. He was the tribal chief,
and I guess they determined disposition of power the old-fashioned way, even
twenty four hundred years ago in the Siberian steppes. He was one of several
bodies recovered in a dig at a place called Pazyryk,
mummified, frozen solid, though who wouldn't be, dead or not, in
The words flowed over him, interspersed with something about urban myths
and ten thousand year old hikers who'd slipped and frozen to death and had
their penises stolen by the modern men who'd found the bodies. Or something like that. Jim freely admitted, to himself and to Sandburg
if the other man asked, that he could understand everything Blair said, he just
didn't often listen. He didn't need to listen. He needed the timbre, the tenor
of the voice, the undulations of sound washing over and through him. He'd never
realized until his senses went nutso on him just how
much he relied on his hearing. Thankfully, it was back on-line, and he hadn't
had to actually admit to Sandburg just how jacked up he'd gotten when he
thought he'd lost the man.
Oh, shit.
"You okay, Jim? Please don't zone on me. I'd hate to think I bored
you into a zone, man."
"Wouldn't be boredom, Chief." Shit, shit, shit. "You done? We ... I
have to get back to the station. Don't you have papers to grade or office hours
or something?" Please, please, please.
Sandburg was looking at him as if he'd grown another head. The intent
eyes sharpened further. "You wanna tell me about
it, Jim?"
No. No, no, no. Realizing that he was babbling to himself, Jim clamped
his jaw so tightly shut several muscles twitched. Sandburg paled slightly. Jim
just shook his head. He couldn't have spoken at that moment under threat of
extreme torture.
"Okay, it's okay," Sandburg said softly, still looking at him
searchingly. "Tonight." It wasn't a
question. "I'll cook?"
Jim nodded. Sandburg opened his mouth. Jim shook his head. For once in
his life the kid actually took a hint.
"Catch you later, then."
Jim nodded again. Sandburg shook his head, still looking over his
shoulder at Jim as he left the Thai diner. With a life-long student's radar he
managed not to run into any other customers or any walls as he left, continuing
to look at Jim until he was all the way out on the sidewalk. Finally, he pursed
his lips and said softly, "Don't bottle it up, Jim. You know what
repressing things does to you." Jim heard every
word, of course, like it was screamed in his ear. Then his partner and
tormentor finally climbed into his car and drove off.
The muscles in his jaw gradually unclenched. Staring down at the
too-sweet cloudy brown fluid that passed for tea, he watched the swirls of
liquid slosh against the sides of the glass, and remembered.
Too much.
Only the one.
He had been enough.
Alberto LaVigne was as exotic in Cascade
Kids did shit together. Boys discovered that piss wasn't the only thing
to come out of the end of their dicks, and got so impressed by the whole thing
it became a group activity. How far could he shoot? Who'd win in a competition?
Everything was a competition. Nobody ever did anything a faggot would do, like
kiss or butt fuck or whatever. But they'd touch each other. And they'd discover
things. The first time he had a wet dream, he'd cried. Thought he was sick,
thought he was gonna die. Didn't
dare tell his dad. Couldn't bring himself to
mention it to Bud.
Told Sally, instead.
She'd been great. She'd fed him cookies and lemonade and explained that
he was becoming a man, and there were things that happened when boys became
men. Then she'd gotten him a library book, and he'd hidden it under his pillow
so Stevie wouldn't see. No need to scare his little
brother to death. Jim was twelve years old, and he was becoming a man.
After that, he didn't compete quite so often, at least not with that. He
did start to look more often, though. In the shower. At the urinals. In the locker room.
He looked, and he wondered. The dreams happened more often, and he
experimented, out in the woods, hearing stretched out as far as he could get it
to make sure nobody caught him. It worked, too, for a long time. He learned all
sorts of things about himself. It was all pretty exciting. And
lonely. He couldn't tell anybody. Not even Sally.
One thing he didn't realize was that right there at the end, when his
skin tensed up and his head spun and his fist clenched and his body spasmed, his hearing didn't work. That's how Bert found
out.
He didn't realize Bert was there until another hand joined his on his
dick. Scared the crap out of him. He couldn't move,
just lay there and panted, staring with eyes that felt like they were popping
out of his head. Bert didn't say anything. Just leaned down and licked him.
Fear melted into excitement so great he nearly passed out.
Turned out Bert was a fairy after all. By the end of that afternoon, Jim
decided he'd never been more glad of anything in his
life. It was a great summer. Bert knew all sorts of interesting things, and Jim
learned every one of them and improvised with Bert on just about all of them.
The next fall, Bert moved to
Until now.
The tea splashed over the rim, bathing his fingers in tepid stickiness,
jolting him back to the present. He grimaced at the mess and swiped at it with
a napkin. No use wanting what he couldn't have and hadn't needed in thirty
years. Not now, not here, not with this man. For all his hippie appearance,
Blair had always been perfectly happy with women, and even if he wasn't, Jim
wasn't going to screw up what they had by instigating a relationship he'd just fuck up anyway.
He always did.
Tossing the napkin on the table, giving up thinking as a bad job, Jim
clamped the unwanted thoughts into the dark box at the bottom of his
subconscious that he never looked at if he could help it, and went back to
work.
Blair stared at the clock and wondered if office hours were ever going
to end. It was still relatively early in the quarter, and not many students
were desperate yet. Besides, Jim had made it plain he didn't want company, so
Blair was perforce stuck in his office at an hour when he was usually tagging
along behind Jim at the precinct. None of the few lust-struck students who
usually came by before they actually needed to beg for help even knew he was
there.
He had no pressing papers to grade or compose,
no research that couldn't wait, no advisors' meetings; for once in his life, he
actually had a couple hours of down time. It happened so
seldom he wasn't quite sure what to do with it. Even if he had been able
to come up with a project, the unknown problem with his Sentinel was too
distracting for him to be able to concentrate on anything else for long.
Something was definitely up with Jim.
He'd been pretty jumpy, himself, when he got
out of that damned elevator, but Jim had been spacey. One pat, one short hug,
then all business as usual attitude. Belied by the stunned
look in his eyes and the fact that he stayed in lockstep three inches away from
Blair for the rest of the afternoon. There was a minute there, before
he'd been sent off to school like so much unwanted baggage, when he'd thought
Jim was gonna follow him in to pee.
Weird.
Maybe it was a territoriality thing? Fear response? Lack
of control issue? Unresolved need to reassure that the
Guide was in one piece after all? But if that was the reason ... why'd
he practically shove Blair out the door of the diner and tell him to go away?
Well, actually, that fed pretty well into both the fear and control
issues. He sat there thinking about it for as long as he dared, trying to
ignore the pink elephant that was sitting in the corner of his mind, patiently waiting for the peanut of his attention.
When he couldn't ignore it any longer, he caved in.
He was chin-deep in shit with no shovel in sight. He'd come to a radical
conclusion when he'd been trapped in that elevator, awaiting certain and gory
death. Jim's voice had been his life-line. Jim's concern had been his strength.
Jim's belief in him had motivated him to find a way out of the seemingly no-win
situation. Jim's fear for him had calmed and centered him, concentrating him on
saving himself, oddly enough, not just to save his own life, but to reassure
and comfort his sentinel.
Maybe it was a Guide thing. Another unexpected and
unexplained manifestation of the definition of Shaman to the Sentinel.
There were times ... entire months at a time ... when he really wished Incacha had lived longer. Not just 'cause he'd liked the
guy, but because he could really use some guidance himself at times like this.
Not that there were too many times like this. After all, how many times
had he realized he was in love with another guy?
Never.
Ever.
Not in his wildest fantasies.
Not in his most secret dreams.
Sex? God,
yeah. He was anything but a blushing virgin. Not quite as experienced as
Jim assumed with the ladies, but with enough sampling on both sides of the
fence to know what he wanted. He'd lusted after any number of men in his short
but inventive life. Had crushes. Infatuations.
Worshipped heroes. Nearly as many
men as women. But love?
He'd fallen in love once. She'd been a target, at first, and he'd stopped
himself from taking the gift of her innocence, offered as it had been under his
false pretenses. He'd redeemed himself, but destroyed her life, and she'd left,
only to come back again and wreak complete havoc in his life. And in Jim's. There was a Maya-sized ache in his heart that
was only now fading. But it didn't have anything to do with the Jim-sized ache
that was threatening to swamp him.
Twirling a pencil absently between his fingertips,
over his knuckles, under his palms, his eyes unfocused. He hadn't a clue what to do about this. If it had just been lust ...
that'd be easy. Naomi, for all that the outside world saw her as flakier than
pastry crust, had been a fiercely protective mother. She'd made damned sure he
knew all about private and public, and who could touch what, and who'd better
not. She taught him the parts of his body, used the correct words, and never
copped out with a euphemism in her life.
As a result, the only time one of her boyfriends tried to grope him, they'd left so fast he hadn't even had time to pack his
telescope. And the only time one of her girlfriends tried to 'make him feel
good,' the resulting bitch slap had echoed the length of the county, not fading
until they were two time zones away. Or, at least, that was the way it had
seemed at the time.
As a result, he'd never had hang-ups about gender, loving the person,
not the package. He'd also always had an advocate, a protectress,
and a nonjudgmental ear. He grinned, remembering the first time he hadn't
availed himself of that ear.
He'd been geeky as a kid, but his chest and underarms grew hair earlier
than the other kids in his gym class in eighth grade, his voice deepened, and
his penis grew, all good things when he stopped
getting any taller while everyone around him was shooting up like weeds. Being
the smart one as well as the short one, the jocks decided at an early age that
Blair Sandburg, he of the girly name and pretty girl eyes, was the One To Pick On. Usually, Blair could get out of most situations
with humor. Once in a while, he got the snot beaten out of him. Occasionally,
he fought back, then got the snot beaten out of
him.
When he was twelve, all the dirty names and pack animal behavior of the
bigger boys took on a different tone. The first time he sucked a cock, he did
it to keep from getting his nose broken, halfway home from school late in the
day after a speech tournament. There were three of them, egging each other on,
ganging up on him.
He took to it like a duck to water.
What they didn't know is that he'd spent four years in a commune, from
the time he was five. Naomi had been good about keeping him safe, but he'd been
just as good at finding out whatever he could about everyone around him, and he
had big ears, big eyes, and was small enough to get all sorts of places without
anyone noticing. He'd seen many things, most of which didn't interest him in
the least, a few that stuck with him and sparked his
ever-active curiosity. That day, he added a weapon to his arsenal to protect
himself from getting stomped. He also got himself a gang of protectors.
Jason was the ringleader. He was tall, blond, brown
eyed, athletic. The football player, the baseball player, the
soccer player, the wrestler. Wherever he led, Matt and Dave followed.
When he pinned Blair against the stone wall in the alley behind the dry
cleaners, Matt and Dave were all set to jump in and beat him to a pulp.
Instead, Jason unbuttoned his jeans. Looked down into
Blair's eyes. "You gonna do it?"
God, yeah, he was gonna do it. Had been
wanting to do it since the first time he saw Jason in the shower. Not
that he'd ever admit it. It was one thing to be called a faggot. It was
something altogether different to eagerly proclaim himself one. A strong hand
gripped into his shoulder. Blair could practically feel it pushing him down to
his knees even know, sixteen years later. Then the first rush
of scent. The first taste. The first time
someone bigger, more powerful, stronger than he, had trembled at his touch.
It was addictive. All of it.
Dave had been next, then Matt, neither one taking very long, both too
excited and new at it to last. The two boys had strutted away, chests out,
heads up, while Blair spat into the gravel and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
Jason hadn't moved, just stood there, leaning against the wall, looking at him. Blair had looked back up at him. He still
remembered the look on the other boy's face.
Want.
Jason had come back. Without Matt and Dave.
Eventually, they'd actually talked. Blair learned how to dribble a basketball
without losing it. Jason passed biology. Nobody picked on Blair the rest of the
school year. Blair got better and better at sucking. By Spring break, Jason
returned the favor. Blair had never been happier in his life.
They moved that summer, and Blair never saw Jason again. He wondered,
sometimes, what had happened to the other boy, now man. It was the first time
he'd had a protector besides his Mom.
He'd never told her.
Now he had another protector.
And he wanted to suck him with all the fervor of the last sixteen years
spent building on that initial experience. Suck him, hold him, kiss him, fuck
him, wrap himself around him and never let him go.
The pencil snapped between his fingers.
The sharp sound jerked him back to the present, and he snorted softly,
laughing at himself for his fantasies. Jim was straight as an arrow, and had
the attention span of a gnat when it came to romance, anyway. Being a Guide to
his Sentinel was the most important thing he'd ever done in his life. No way
was he gonna fuck it up with fucking.
No matter how much he loved him.
Now, if he could just get Jim to tell him what the hell was bothering
him, maybe Blair could get over his distraction and get on with his life.
The day lasted forever. Simon had to kick him out. He wanted to go home;
he was sick of paperwork. He was nervous about going home; Sandburg with a bee
in his bonnet would work at him and work at him until the truth came out. Then
the shit would hit the fan, and he'd find himself abandoned again.
Jim stared at the front door to the loft. This was ridiculous. It was
his home. Not an Army colonel gone bad and hostile
black ops interrogation teams with syringes and brass knuckles. This was
Sandburg, for god's sake.
He swallowed. This was Sandburg. For an instant, he almost preferred the
hostiles.
He shook his head. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. He put his key in the door, stared at
the knob for a ridiculously long period of time, straightened his back, squared
his shoulders and shoved the door open.
The loft smelled great. Lasagna, with pesto sauce instead of tomato,
since they'd discovered by accident that the acid in the regular sauce twisted
his sense of taste off the map. Mozzarella and provolone, portobello
mushrooms, garlic cooked until it was sweet, not sharp. His nose finally let
the rest of his senses catch up, and he slowly pushed the door shut, leaning
against it.
Courtship ritual or seduction scene. It could count equally well for either.
There was drumming in the background, not the jungle kind, but the Latin
kind, and Santana curled over his eardrums. Supernatural was just that, and
some of the tension oozed out of him. No candles, since even the plain
unscented kind Blair used in his rituals gave him sinusitis, but the windows
were open, and the night air smelled good, like sea and sand and leaves and
grass all at once. The table was set with gleaming silver and stark white
china, garlic bread and salad and beer sweating in the bottle. Sandburg swept
around the butcher's block and settled the steaming dish on the table, grinning
at Jim, peering through curls that had fallen over his eyes.
"Hungry?"
God. Yes. He may have
growled. He didn't know. Sandburg paused, startled, staring at him.
"Jim?"
He closed his eyes, firmly ordered his hands back to his sides from
where they'd nearly rebelled and reached out to push those errant curls back.
Inhaled, reminded himself that he hadn't eaten since breakfast, and bit his
tongue to keep from moaning when he caught a good lungful of Blair-scent along
with the cheese and mushrooms and pesto. He'd been sweating. Kitchen was hot.
He should strip. He'd be more comfortable. Then Jim could lay him across the
table and lick the sweat off him.
The thought brought another bitten-off moan to his mouth. When he forced
his eyes open again, he knew he must look a little wild, because Sandburg
tossed the oven mitts in the general direction of the kitchen floor and flew to
stand in front of him.
Too close.
Smelled so good.
Sounded even better.
Soft voice, deep, demanding, commanding. Steady thrum of his
heart, slightly accelerated by his worry for Jim. Reassuring rush of blood
through his veins, rustle of hair and skin against layers of cotton,
displacement of air as his arms moved, hands settling on Jim's biceps, that
voice again, wrapping him up and holding him tight.
Pesto was forgotten as hunger of another kind swept over him. Words had
never done him a hell of a lot of good, but action, whether considered or not,
had always borne him through the tight spots. There wasn't anything tighter
than this one.
Flavor exploded across his tongue as he kissed Blair for the first time,
vying for the warmth beneath his crushing hands as he wrapped his arms around
the sturdy body and held him close. Firm roundness of a
buttock, springy energy of curls, enough to keep his hands happy. His
entire body was hyper-alert, the way it got when he was under fire, but without
the need to kill anyone. Instead, his skin prickled, trying to get closer to
Blair's skin, reacting to the tiny hairs along his forearm, now pressed against
the back of Jim's neck, and the stubble that was burning Jim's lips.
The heat was incredible. For a guy who was always bitching about being
cold, Sandburg was a fucking furnace. Maybe that was why. Maybe Blair was all
the time giving up his heat, so he didn't have any for himself. Jim could fix
that.
The couch was soft. Blair wasn't. Not really. Lots of angles to go with
the curves, a surprising amount of bunched muscle, a
compact fire plug of a man. But his mouth was soft. Hungry.
Saying something, not that Jim could hear, over the roar of their hearts,
pounding together. A solid thigh worked its way between his, pressing up into
his erection, and he did growl, then. More of a howl,
actually.
Then the world tilted, and Blair wasn't there, and his hands moved, to
tangle in more curls. The air from the window was cool on his skin. His jeans
were open, and Blair's head was moving, and every nerve ending from the tip of
his cock to the heels of his feet to the back of his brain blew wide open. Wet.
He could feel individual drops of saliva work from the corners of Blair's mouth
down paths of fire along his balls, between his thighs, scorching him. Hotter than hell. Sweeter than heaven.
Jim could feel himself slipping into a zone, overloading on pure
sensation, and dialed up his hearing, trying to balance the incredible
sensations moving like a liquid acetylene torch over his cock. Wet flesh over
wetter flesh, the suck and slide of vacuum sealing and releasing, slurp and
slip of tongue over flesh, lips over tongue over wet over hot over sweet over
too fucking much.
The world contracted to tiny pinwheels of light, bubbling sounds of
throat moving and tongue swiping, sensation of his skin being turned inside out
and shaken, hard. The light snapped and sang, and the world jolted. Blair was
laying over him, staring down at his face. Kissing and licking his open mouth.
Taste kicked in with a vengeance, cheese and black olive and butter and semen
and mint and tea and Blair.
Heat was branding his thigh, and he moved his hand without breaking
contact with Blair's eyes. Jim's fingers curled around the dripping evidence of
just how much Blair had enjoyed sucking him off, and for an instant, he saw
profound vulnerability in those shadowed blue eyes. Too
naked. Too much visible. For the first time
since he was a kid, Jim deliberately dropped every last shield he'd spent a
lifetime building, and let Blair see just how damned much Jim needed him.
The shadows disappeared.
Jim moved his hand, fingers seeking, palm pressing firmly, wrist
twisting rhythmically, and leaned up to catch Blair's mouth. Matching the
exploration of his tongue with the milking motion of his hand, Jim gently,
slowly, thoroughly loved him, until Blair was shuddering against him, and the
heat diffused, spreading to land in strings of molten lava against his belly.
For a long time, there was silence in the room. Eventually, Sandburg
took a deep breath. Before he could say anything, Jim said firmly, "I love
you."
Sandburg pushed himself up on one arm and locked his elbow, far enough
off Jim's chest to meet his gaze without losing any more bodily contact than
necessary to do it. "I don't want to fuck this up. You don't have the
greatest track record, and neither do I-"
Jim cut him off with a breath-draining kiss, nearly throwing his back
out when Sandburg didn't relax down to meet him. Taking pity on his own
straining muscles, he lay back against the arm of the couch and looked
seriously up at his Guide.
"Do you love me?" He felt stupid for asking, but it was,
really, the only question that mattered. Everything else was ... details.
"Yeah, I do, but I don't see how that's going to solve-"
A finger across those full lips cut Sandburg off this time. Jim shook
his head at him. "Future starts now."
Blair kissed the finger softly, then nipped at
it, startling a laugh out of Jim. "What are you trying to tell me, oh
cryptic one?"
"Past doesn't matter. Just us. Now. We're different together than anything we ever had with
anybody else. In all the ways that matter, this is my first time. Is it
yours?"
Sandburg stared back down at him, taking it all in. Jim could
practically see the gears mesh under that mop of hair, and he did see the
moment when the decision was made. The glowing smile Blair gave him reassured
him that it was the right one for both of them. "Make believe it's your
first time, and I'll make believe it's mine, huh?"
"Sing at me and sleep alone, Chief."
Blair grinned, kissed him soundly, and gestured over his shoulder with
his chin. "Now that the future's settled, how
about we eat before the lasagna gets stone cold?"
"Too late for that." Jim kissed him back. "Might as well skip dinner and go to
bed."
Blair beat him up the stairs.
FIN