Author's webpage: http://drizzle.com/~eliade/

Author's disclaimer: Not mine, just these clonelike sort of things I found in my head when I was dusting last week.

Author's notes: Recently I went begging for story ideas. Thanks to Rachael, Francesca, and Seah for responding. I ended up going with only one of the ideas, but they were all great to have. In IRC, thinking little of her inspirational mojo, Rachael gave me: "So, they finish with a movie, they walk down the street to the car, passing this little ice cream shop. Blair nudges Jim. "Ice cream?" "sure." They go in and order. Blair takes a long time looking at the menu, and Jim thinks about it. Blair never orders the same thing twice. And Jim...there might as well not be a menu. It's always the same. chocolate with nuts." And from that, came this. Keeping with the theme, stuff happens. This is also on my website, by the way. Any uneven italics on this version should be clean there. I bow down and offer many thanks and rose petals to Margie for her yummy beta-reading.

"Why don't we take this again from the top?" said Jim reasonably. He glanced at the mirror, behind which he could distinguish Rafe's watchful form, the neat knock-off Armani-style suit, artfully tumbled hair, blandly handsome face. The youngster was eyeballing him again instead of the witness. Lovely. Just lovely. Blair'd been right all along. He owed him ten bucks.

"Yeah, okay," said Nelson Lewis. "I got plenty of time, right. Not like I have to be anywhere. Don't have to go get my shoes shined, my gold watch fixed. Don't have no party to attend this e-ven-ing, la-di-da, don't got no tickets to the grand old op-e-ra. Rah rah rah." Nelson Lewis wore a suit the color of split-pea soup, a yellow polyester shirt with a wide button panel, a pork-pie hat, blue argyle socks, and a pair of well-polished black shoes with thin laces. Large glasses with brown, thick rims sat halfway down the slope of his nose. He was black, fifty-eight years old, and he carried a copy of the Bible with him at all times. Just in case, he'd said to Jim.

Jim swiveled his head to focus on Lewis. "Uh-huh. Right. So on Saturday, May third, you were walking along 10th Street from the liquor store to your house." His jotted notes were in front of him, and he checked them as he spoke. "You were at the liquor store at approximately three forty-five p.m., which you know--or believe you know--because someone asked you the time and you didn't have a watch, but you heard someone else give the time."

"Yes, sir. But as I say, how do I know he have the right time, you know what I'm saying? His watch could be stop, broken, I don't know. Not like he goin' to tell me. Maybe he don't even know." Lewis scratched his left knee thoughtfully and nodded his head.

"Thank you, Mr. Lewis. Now, you reached--"

"Man don't take care of his watch, it stop on him any old time," Lewis said, staring off to one side with an air of authority and patience. "You don't know unless you miss an appointment. You got no appointments, like me, you don't know."

"Right. You reached the corner of 10th and Market Street, across from the Market Street Police Substation, at about four, four-oh-five. You waited for the light, then crossed, walked two blocks, and entered the alley between the Silver Scissors Salon and Oliver's Videos."

"If you say."

Jim closed his eyes a moment. "Actually, it's important that you say as well, sir."

"Sound about right."

"You mentioned earlier that you walk down that alley every day." Jim made the sentence lightly interrogative.

"Most days. I never look at no stores, though. Barber cut my hair." Lewis took off his hat and ran his hand over his head.

Jim smiled politely to acknowledge the smoothness of the job. "If necessary, we can go to that corner with you and confirm the ownership of the stores. Moving on...you walked down the alley, and you saw a car." He glanced at the note pad. "Green, maybe blue. An older model four-door K-car, like a Dodge Aries or Plymouth Reliant." Not unlike older models of police cars, he thought, noting the coincidence again automatically and wondering if it meant anything. "No recollection of the license plate."

"That car in need of a wash."

Jim looked up alertly at this new comment. "It was dirty?"

"Kinda dirty."

"In what way?"

"Need a good scrubbin'."

"Was there mud on the car?"

"Couldn't say."

"Did you notice spatters of mud on the back tire wells, as if the car had been spinning its wheels on soft ground? Mud on the license plate...on the doors?"

"Looked dusty. Like someone ain't got no pride to keep their vehicle clean."

"Did you see any writing on the car--as if someone had written with a finger in the dust?"

"You say, 'wash me, wash me!'" Lewis chuckled phlegmatically, and shifted in place a few times on the wooden seat.

"Is that what it said?" Jim's pencil poised itself over the note pad.

"Nah. I don't know. Didn't notice."

Jim put down the pencil and rolled his head, cracking his neck sharply. "Would you like a coffee, Mr. Lewis?"

"I take a Coke."

"Got it." Jim rose and left the interrogation room, meeting up with Brian Rafe outside.

"Could be worse," Rafe commented. "I checked for a rap sheet. One prior, back in '79, writing bad checks. Clean since then."

"Good."

"Tired?"

Jim didn't fully meet the other man's steady brown eyes. "Nah. Fine."

"I know you wanted to get out of here early. You want me to cut in and dance with him a bit?" Rafe was alert and poised to help, despite the smudges under his eyes. "Go over his statement, see if I can plug some holes?"

Jim felt an uncomfortable awareness of Rafe's cologne, his aftershave, his minty-fresh breath, and hair gel. He wanted to turn the offer down, but he'd called primary on the case without forethought and then reached his cap on overtime. Their budget was fucked; they'd hit the wall until June. Not that he cared about the money, and some slack in hours would even be a nice change after working double shifts for thirteen days straight. But he hated yielding case duties on the whim of admin.

"Thanks. Sure. Let me wrap this up, then you can do a little light typing, maybe some filing. Dust off the top of my desk. Oh, and take out the trash."

Rafe nodded earnestly. "You looking for a new bitch, Ellison? You need to buy me dinner. Movies. Flowers. I don't bend over for a few kind words, you know."

It took an internal effort, gears grinding, for Jim to shift down into the doubletalk that camaraderie required. What made it harder was the likelihood that Rafe wasn't entirely fucking around. "Not what I heard." He kept his face smooth with artifice, sympathetic. "But, hey, you won't hear me repeating that story about you and the mounted uniform and the horse."

"I was young, impressionable. I looked up to him like a father," Rafe said sadly.

Jim shook his head. "A horse is no substitute for your own flesh and blood."

Rafe finally cracked a grin; he pulled a strip of red licorice from his inner suit pocket and stuck it in his mouth, where it rolled to one side as if in emulation of Simon's cigar. He'd been trying to break a cigarette habit for the last month. "I'll be here when you're ready."

The words hung ambiguously between them for a second too long. Jim nodded and clapped Rafe on the arm and walked onward to the breakroom. His hands shook slightly from the fleeting, unwanted contact and he stuck them in his pockets as if searching for spare change. The evidence of weakness angered him, and Blair's grounding presence was not within range of his scattershot senses. He got by, but it cost him.

The banter that conditioned his job didn't come naturally to Jim. He was by nature a loner even in his frat house and in the army. After becoming a cop, he'd had to acknowledge fast that if he succeeded in being a pal to his fellow badges, it would be because he put up a convincing front, not because of any heartfelt brotherhood in blue.

Now Jim poured himself a coffee, stirred its black depths and pondered the question: was Rafe coming on to him? Blair asserted yes. Jim was ready to admit that Sandburg's intuition ran true, however much this might cost him--which was far more than ten dollars. But he still couldn't believe he'd missed the signs for all this time. Embarrassing, somehow. And he surely didn't need that kind of shit on the job.

Fortunately the case was down. Their homicide suspect of the day, Timothy Krieger, had been quickly identified and located, and had clumsily confessed enough to nail him, all within six hours of brutally knifing an elderly couple who lived down the block from his ramshackle motel apartment. Peripheral work on the case would keep them busy for the next day or two--or keep Rafe busy, at least; not a high investment of time. If he could catch a case like this every week, he could work bankers' hours and still keep a ninety percent clearance rate or better.

Jim returned to finish up with the erratically garrulous Nelson Lewis, then turned his notes over to Rafe on his way out, extracting a promise that the detective would call if any questions arose. Rafe smiled up at Jim from his seated position behind his desk and loosened his tie with one hand, note pad in the other, mouthing a few remarks that meandered from business to personal chit-chat. Jim barely followed; his hearing had begun to cut in and out, picking up distant sounds--phone rings on the floor below, change sliding into a vending machine--while laying a thick damper on what Blair called proximal noise. Blair would have something to say about that. If Jim told him.

"...you'd like it." Rafe's rolling voice chopped sharply, suddenly at Jim's ears. "The tempura's out of this world."

"Sounds great," Jim said, vaguely aware of the accompanying recommendation. Kim-Lo's Kettle. Kung-Po's Kastle. Whatever.

"They have a good bar, too. We'll have to grab a drink sometime soon. Next week, maybe, after work. Quick dunk on this one deserves a celebration. What do you say?"

"Yeah." Jim blinked. "Great." He managed a smile, made his farewells, slunk out of the squadroom before anyone could call after him. Little risk, swing shift was well underway and thinly staffed, but nonetheless he kept his eyes averted from those he passed, trying to look lost in thought.

His cell phone rang as he was descending in the elevator. He opened it and helloed the caller perfunctorily, thinking Rafe might have noticed an oversight and wanted to catch him before he left the building.

"Jim, hey. You busy?"

"I've got my hand buried up the wrist in a bloody corpse and maggots are crawling across my flesh," Jim said with morbid satisfaction.

"Yeah, right. Listen, you want to go to a movie tonight?"

Hell no, Jim thought. "What's playing?"

"There's a showing of Life is Beautiful at the CineMonde."

"Is it in English?"

"Um...no. Subtitles."

"What's it about?"

"It's, uh, sort of a comedy about the Holocaust. Which is probably not the best way to describe it. It's supposed to be really good, a little controversial, not "Springtime for Hitler", kind of a Charlie Chaplin thing. It's not due for general release until the fall but they've got this more or less bootleg copy. I mean, nothing illegal. I'm pretty sure. Forget I said that. Anyway, it's in Italian. There's a special screening tonight, unadvertised. I just found out about it from Rebecca. I'm still on campus."

Jim smiled with faint affection, but only because Blair couldn't see him. The other man sounded breathlessly excited. A comedy about the Holocaust. It didn't bear thinking about, scorpions in a kit bag would be more fun, but Jim heard himself say, "Yeah, I guess. Why not." Then: "Wait. This isn't some four-hour epic, is it?"

"No, no. It's shorter that that." There was the unmistakable sound of guesswork in Blair's voice. "Two...two hours...or so."

"Uh huh," Jim said dubiously. He glanced at his watch. "Starts when?"

"Eight o'clock."

"You eat yet?"

"Eat, no. You want to get dinner?" The rich voice lapping against Jim's ear was now pleased. "Cool. I'm starving, man. What'll it be--Mexican, Chinese, seafood--oh, hey, there's this new fusion cafe near the theater, a Japanese Indian crossover, with a bit of Scottish flavor mixed in. They've got a sort of blowfish meets curry meets haggis thing going."

Jim climbed into the truck, phone still held religiously to his ear. He noticed nothing else around him, could have been shot dead that moment from point-blank range and never seen it coming. "Tell me you're joking."

"Yeah, I am. But we could try that Seven Sages Grille we passed by the other day. I hear they do this thing with seared shrimp that makes grown men weep."

"I could use a good cry."

"Great. Meet me there. I'll head on over. How long--"

"On my way."

"Fantastic. Beer will be waiting."

"Ten-four," Jim said, and hung up with a sense of unrecognized anticipation. All he knew was that he was hungry and glad to get away from work, and he had tomorrow off, and it was only incidental that he was going to meet Blair, it was a submerged happiness, like getting a birthday present, something prosaic but meeting a basic need, a new sweater or a decent watch. He hummed as he drove. It was not quite dusk, but a premature cloud cover had fallen and rain was striking the truck's windshield and darkening the road, and bowing down the smallish trees anchored in the urban landscape.

Once he neared the university, the traffic thickened to an oily stew of cars, in which he and the truck both fumed. The length of Merriman Avenue stretched before him for a dozen blocks, detailed with an almost hallucinatory clarity. The light rain, which would have obscured anyone else's vision, only seemed to sharpen the shapes behind it. A reflex to hone his vision even further asserted itself several times as he drove, so that he was in danger of focusing too far along his line of sight. He jerked back to awareness more than once at the sound of a horn behind him.

After edging his way onto the main drag of University Drive, he ruthlessly scouted parking, finally pulling the pickup into a lot near the theater and obliging himself to seven-fifty's worth of rental space that made him question again the entertainment value of humor and the Holocaust. Walking around the corner to hit the streetfront, he had the kind of epiphany that blooms once a year, that he'd never have dragged his ass into the U district to see this movie for Carolyn, that it was odd for a man of thirty-seven to be striding among the scruffy youth on a collegiate strip on his way to a date--no, not a date, just a thing--with his male roommate. It was a mild but complicated epiphany that absorbed everything into its grasp for a moment, the densely populated sidewalks, the ice cream store, the cart of tattered books next to which a small dog and its owner crouched, both peddling for change, the dog with a tin cup in its mouth. It all meant something, it all meant nothing. Introspection irked him. It was an itch to be scratched, if not ignored.

A girl passed him on the sidewalk: slight bob to her walk, tumbling blonde hair, a nose ring that she managed to make look elegant; or at least sophisticated. She was maybe twenty, model perfect by Jim's reasonable terms, and she gave him a look--the look--when she caught his perusal. This was the type of girl he should be having stupid affairs with, at his age. They'd have randy sex; he'd take her out to dinner a lot; she'd be passive-aggressive, manipulate him because she was trying not to be hurt; he'd remind her of her father, the fact of which she'd betray in offhand comments, unknowingly; and of course she'd never take him to meet her father. They'd go out three months, run out of time and conversation, break it off, he for work, she for a college boy with his own nose ring and bad dreadlocks. And a tattoo. And a guitar. Not unlike the guy just up ahead who sat in front of Tower Records, guarding an upside-down baseball cap of small change and a latte while strumming 'Sweet Jane'.

Now that would be good, Jim thought. Predictable, safe, good. He wouldn't introduce her to his friends, but somehow it would slip out that he was dating a much younger woman. Blair. Blair, admiring or ribbing, would share the gossip with all Jim's cohorts and describe her with appreciative hand gestures; they in turn would work his case. Probably leave toddler gifts on his desk, or Barbie dolls; make comments like, "How's that little girl of yours doing, Ellison--she get her report card yet?" But they'd share the fascination and envy of aging men everywhere, and he'd feel comfortable with it all, underneath a veneer of disdain.

He needed to have a fling. It had been...well, a hell of a long time now since he'd gotten laid. It was a vague concern, like not eating enough greens, but now and then a more pressing urgency, a gripping and cumulative fear: If I don't start eating more greens soon, I will die.

When he spotted Blair he was thinking about getting laid, and that he was hungry. A disturbing sense of inappropriate neediness overlaid his sight of Sandburg leaning against the restaurant wall. It was as if all his problems had tangled themselves up into a hairball and been realized in Sandburg's lazy form. He ignored the lure as delusion.

"Hey," Blair said, straightening up and swinging his backpack onto his shoulders. He was wearing a battleship-grey mechanic's jacket with a red-and-white patch that said 'Joe', a Hawaiian shirt, and khakis. He looked godawful from the neck down; electrified from the neck up. Jim felt the swirl of people move around them, knots in the current, while Blair smiled. He nodded back once, not inclined to return the smile, acknowledging his own critical disloyalty and knowing at the same time that it was an empty gesture of resistance against everything he felt for the other man. The fleeting, ordinary feelings, the deep ones, all mixed together and resolved to the same plain grey of Blair's jacket. This wasn't recognizable as bad, though. And he couldn't have said why not.

"Hungry?" Blair said nothing of Jim's moodiness; maybe saw nothing of it either. If he did see it, he was probably accepting it as a given.

"Yeah. I could eat." He paused, shifted restlessly on the sidewalk and scanned the crowds with a cop's tic. His mind sought for distraction. He thought of Rafe. Best to save that for later, when they were sitting at the table and buffered by food and three feet of tablecloth.

"C'mon. I told them we'd want a table at seven."

Jim followed him into the vestibule, eyeing the local music flyers. Someone Like Omar. 38 Most Common Mistakes. Band Candy. Manic Defence. "You could have come in and ordered." Beer waiting, you said.

"Huh?" Blair glanced back as he waited for a couple ahead of them to be seated. "No way. I was cool. Watching the street. Anthro geeking on the fly."

"Ah."

Jim let Blair talk to the hostess in his flirty, off-the-cuff manner. He scoped the restaurant, noting the younger, casually-dressed crowd, the votives flickering from a variety of glassware, a papier-mache swordfish on one wall, all the trappings of funky dining that he usually avoided. He followed the crown of Blair's head as it bobbed through the tables, caught sight of a loose hair as it drifted off in the wake of his navigation, could trace it with his eyes as it fell and was lost. He nearly tripped over a woman's purse, excused himself, caught up to sit down across from Blair at a table against one green wall. The opposite wall--he checked to be sure--was blue. Mirrors in different shapes and sizes hung in a cluster next to them. He craned his neck for five hard seconds to stare at the mosaic of reflection and light, then irritably picked up his menu.

"You kind of hit the pissy lane coming in, didn't you?" Blair said, not looking up from contemplation of his own menu.

"How's that."

"We don't have to make a night of it. I'm just saying. You look like a dog ate your balls. You seemed up for things when I called."

"I'm up." Thai duck tacos, $15.95, he read. Celeriac remoulade. "I'm swinging from the chandelier." He continued reading, but the words softened on the page and instead he heard Blair's pulse rate accelerate a fraction, a tiny hitch in the mechanism of sound and sense that was the other man's body. The whelm of feeling came in like an ocean wave hitting a cliff pocket, suddenly, as it sometimes did. He could hear every rhythm of Blair, his breathing, his grumbling insides, the susurration of heart. Blair's body had taken on an underwater intimacy, while around them the restaurant roared, amplified but distant.

"...sauteed shrimp in tequila-lime cream over black fettuccine," said Blair. His voice knifed back into Jim's consciousness. "I bet those sweet potato fries are good, too."

"Too sweet," said Jim.

Blair looked up, easygoing in appearance. "Yeah, maybe." He set the menu down, sipped water, his hand clasping the stem a bit awkwardly, the hairs on his wrist coarse enough to catch a golden wealth of light. He'd taken his jacket off. The Hawaiian shirt hung on him like graffiti.

Jim caught himself nearly saying something about the shirt, and stopped the words mid-mouth. At that moment the waiter came by for their drink orders, providing diversion. He ordered a Beck's, and one for Blair over protests of his pecuniary handicap.

"Buy the popcorn," Jim said dismissively after the waiter had slid away. "Or new wheels for the truck. Should cost about the same." He paused. "Is this the theater where they use real butter--"

"--real butter," Blair chimed in, overlapping him. "Yeah."

Jim smiled despite himself. It took him a moment to even realize he had.

"I knew you'd cheer up, once you heard that arterial plaque was on the menu." Blair's face hung dry and reproving but he stored amusement in his cheekbones.

"Yeah, yeah." Jim settled back in his chair.

"What's up with that double 55?"

Jim waited two seconds to reply, pause enough to make Blair aware that this piece of slang hadn't rolled trippingly off the tongue; a subtle critique that he considered his duty. He'd told the kid. You had to have your shit down perfect, or cops would pick up on it and ride your ass through a grinder. "Both witnesses are solid," he said after this carefully judged moment. "Case is going down."

"Hey, that's great, Jim."

Jim straightened his knife and spoon. "I don't know if I mentioned but I'm going to be in court next week--Monday and Tuesday, maybe later in the week on redirect. The Czolgosz case. Testimony began this week; got the slip in my box this morning."

"The rape-murder?" Blair's gaze was guarded but concerned.

"Yeah. But the chickenshit prosecutor dealt it down to second degree and dropped the rape charge entirely."

Blair stiffened and straightened an inch in his chair. "Are you shitting me? No way, no way. How the hell did that happen?"

"Oh, it's even better." Jim, given a receptive audience, warmed to his irritation. "Czolgosz's lawyer actually made a motion to dismiss based on medical evidence that his client has PTSD from the Gulf War, and a claim that the vic invited him in and willingly engaged in sexual conduct. Says good old Joe was unable to control his conduct when the vic asked him--asked him--to erotically asphyxiate her."

"He never agreed to a polygraph, did he?"

"Hell, no."

Their beer came, the waiter left, and Jim tipped the contents of the bottle into the glass with respectful care for the process.

"He's not going to testify though, is he?" Blair wondered.

"Apparently so. They've got nothing to work with except their bullshit story."

Blair was watching his beer settle, frowning, his pupils expansive in the candlelight. "I don't get why they didn't agree to a guilty plea, then, if they dealt it down to a lesser charge and the only way he can argue it is to testify. That has to be a risk for them. It's crazy. Why even bother with a trial?"

Jim felt a pang of familiar empathy at Blair's frustration. Even after three years, the other man still had a civilian's difficulty comprehending the bloodless contrivances of justice. With good reason, given how fucked it was. "Mens rea. They're going to argue he didn't have intent."

"Right, but--"

"Victim was seen drinking with the guy in the bar. Left with him. No sign of forced entry. No weapon at the scene, no signs of violence except manual strangulation, no priors. I'm lucky they're trying the case at all," Jim said dryly, but meaning it. "If he hadn't shot his wad, I doubt he'd have ever seen the inside of a courtroom."

"God." Blair slumped in his chair, and they sat a minute in silence, each watching obliquely for the waiter, who returned soon as if mentally summoned. He took their orders with attentive nods, hip cocked, no notepad, then scooped up their menus, beamed and vanished again.

Expressionlessly Jim watched him go, a tidy ass in black pants, a weave of slim young body through his coworkers on the floor. He caught Blair watching him watch, which startled him, though he let his face reveal nothing. A lifetime of practiced duplicity, nine years of police work, a failed marriage, all had helped shore up the dam of his feelings. When he chose.

"So what's this movie about...oh yeah, comedy. Concentration camps." Jim's voice conveyed his dubiousness, which as expected was enough to launch Blair into an eager monologue of defense and explanation, accompanied by hand gestures and a ninety-second diversion into the history of Italian cinema. Jim nodded at the right places to ensure that the ball kept rolling, and flicked his gaze up just when the rules of eye contact demanded. It was a bit like soccer, if you were pacing a midfielder, but Jim wasn't trying to enter the conversational flow. He was content to listen. It usually took only five minutes--sometimes much less--for his central nervous system to remember its conditioning, and to acknowledge the lull of Blair's voice. He was almost conscious of this, and yielded some of the tight resistance he'd held onto since meeting the other man outside.

The waiter deposited a basket of bread, and this gave them something else to do with their hands. Jim tuned in and out. Clinks of glass and silver in the room around them. Voices rising and falling. The sharper, more businesslike voices of cooks escaping from the back as doors swung open. Threading through the battle of sound were the steady cadences of Blair speaking.

Conversation turned a corner, and turned again. They discussed Blair's school schedule, a few cases that were congealing coldly for lack of evidence, a recent meeting with Simon, a secondhand story of Rafe's about a particularly witless perp, and then it seemed the occasion for Jim to say,

"I think you were right about Rafe." He pulled out his wallet, made a show of fishing out a ten and tossing the folded money Blair's way.

Blair's brow furrowed then cleared. "No way." He took the money, tucked it in his shirt pocket. "Popcorn. So, what happened? He ask you out?" There was humor in his voice, something else in his eyes.

"He just sort of--" Jim waved a hand, reached for words, failed to find them.

"Played grabass in the locker room? Complimented your manicure?" Blair grinned. It was hard to tell how much of that enjoyment was real, how much was Sandburgian verbal peachfuzz covering a hard bite beneath.

Jim ignored the gibes. "He's been eyeballing me. Up close and personal. Making these little remarks that don't mean anything but could."

Blair nodded. "Hey, I told you. He's got a thing going."

Covering his discomfort, Jim picked up his beer. "A thing. Right." Neutrally. Then he sipped. Put the glass down. Snapped a glance Blair's way. The other man's lips had settled into a smooth line. A bad sign; too quick a transition. It told Jim the humor was indeed all surface.

"You just admitted it."

Had he, Jim wondered. And of course he had. His heart rate ran spooked while he tried to remain still.

"Does it bother you?" Blair asked.

A woman laughed on the far side of the restaurant. Jim unclamped his hand from his glass of beer, deliberately, moved cool palm to his own thigh underneath the level of the table. He had no napkin in his lap. It was a pointless gesture. "I suppose you'll tell me it shouldn't."

"I wouldn't say that."

"Why not. Maybe it shouldn't."

Blair's hands moved and clasped at the edge of his plate, as if he were about to say grace. Jim's eyes sighted there. "You're tolerant. I know you well enough. You don't have to try--I mean, you do have to try. We all have to try to be more tolerant. Of...things. Whatever. But I'm saying. You feel what you feel." Matter of factly. "We can't help that."

The waiter brought them their dinners, and Jim couldn't tell if he'd heard the remark about feelings. It would be par for the course. The waiter was ostentatiously gay. He smelled gay, looked gay, spoke gay. Jim, grimly resigned to the evening's theme, let the waiter hand off their dinners, setting one plate on top of another, then patiently waited as the man whisked away their litter, rearranged their table and asked if they needed anything. They both negated the offer with a head shake and, left alone, began the work of deconstructing their entrees.

"This is good," Blair said, between forkfuls of brightly colored squash. He seemed earnest. Jim accepted the testimony and began on his shrimp.

They ate with little talk, and the food was as good as promised, which lifted Jim's spirits. He ate methodically, ordered another beer. Ordered another for Blair as well, and received no protest this time. He noticed the waiter noticing, thought can't a guy order a beer for his friend, and knew even so how it looked. He hated being self-conscious, hated that he had no way to control his response. Even his senses were more obedient than his rebel consciousness.

"The waiter is gay," he heard himself say when the young man had left. It came out of his mouth with no anticipation. Absorbed in pulling the tail off a shrimp, he felt Blair's gaze. His ears burned with a heat that spilled down into his cheeks. Worse than his own comment was that Blair said nothing.

But with unstudied kindness, a minute later, Blair was praising the paella, rambling on about a similar dish he'd had in Mexico once, something something snails, something something cod. Jim nodded, ate. Inside he still hung on the sharp point of his own remark, listening for an opening that would let him resume a casual role in the conversation. He picked up on a few words, repeated them, listened to the diffuse gift of Blair's response, asked a question, and in this gradual way a semblance of their usual ease resumed.

When it was time to leave, Jim's stomach was sated but a hollow ache stretched the length of his skin. He paid for dinner, shrugging off Blair's weak attempt to split the check. He left a good tip and then they hurried out. They'd have been running late if the theater were not so close. They passed the guitar player again and Blair said, "Hold up," and paused to toss a few dollars in the guy's baseball cap while Jim stood waiting a few feet further on, pretending to impatience but bemused inside at the ordinary curve of Blair's hair tattooed in neon, at the motive behind this gift, for which the strumming man gave no thanks. His friend's large and complex personality revealed itself in the smallest things, few of which Jim understood; the generosity was commonplace, but it always left Jim fazed.

It had grown cooler, Blair rejoined him with a rush of air, and the theater lay ahead, its marquee of lights boxing in the words Life is Beautiful like the moral of a Sunday sermon on a church sign.

"I'm paying," Blair said, tone firm, pushing ahead of Jim to stand in the short queue. Jim moved over by the doors. Young people filed by through a painted wooden door, girls in short jackets and jeans, boys boiling over with testosterone-driven energy, jostling one another. He recognized the condition from twenty years ago. He hadn't gone locally to Rainier, but he'd once been a regular habitue of the college strip on a Friday night, strutting with his compadres, getting ripped and ogling coeds. Now, pushing forty, he stood waiting for Blair Sandburg to buy tickets to a movie he didn't even care if he saw or not, and he was here simply because....

"Okay, hup hup," Blair said, coming over and handing Jim a ticket. He looked at his watch. "Five minutes. Four minutes. Let's hope the line for popcorn isn't--" Murmur, twitter, chirp.

Inside, the dim lobby smelled heavily of popcorn, a waft of salt and butter and hot oil that elicited a Pavlovian lust in Jim that he did nothing to conceal. "Large," he said to Blair.

"Just contemplating the inside of your stomach terrifies me." Blair inched toward the counter through the crush, neck craned at the price board.

"I don't want you contemplating the inside of my stomach anyway. Get me one of those cream sodas, while you're at it."

"Your demand is my command."

Jim appropriated the bag of popcorn as soon as it was passed across the counter, and salted it while Blair grumbled and then cursed. "Shit, Jim--enough! I've got to eat it too." He grabbed the shaker and handed it to the clerk. "Here. Confiscate this." The clerk stared blankly at the metal tin shoved his way. "I swear," Blair went on, "I think you'd salt an apple if you thought you could get away with it."

Jim, tossing kernels in his mouth and chewing blissfully, ignored the other man and walked off. The tangle of hair and imprecation followed him with the drinks, and talked all the way into the darkened theater as if on autobabble. "...salt again. Oh, dark. Where do you want to...there are some seats up there...I know you want the back...what about...oops, excuse me, sorry...Jim, man, watch it, give a little warning...."

They shuffled into seats near enough to the rear wall that Jim's ears wouldn't bleed, and Jim settled almost immediately, stretching out, working his long legs into a soft pretzel of approximate comfort, while next to him Blair detached from his backpack, turned, bounced on the seat, wriggled, and in general made a lot of himself. He quieted down just in time to avoid a rude comment from Jim, and slouched his own more compact frame down into the seat. The previews started and Blair's hand extended into Jim's lap for popcorn. Jim felt self-conscious again, as he did on such occasions, with the disorienting thrill of proximity. When had they stopped buying their own popcorn? Within the last year, maybe. Even a detective couldn't trace every change in the routine of everyday life. The first time they'd shared a single bottle of beer. The first time their dirty laundry had mingled in the wash. With popcorn he'd once enforced the one-man, one-bag rule with a strict disregard for economy, a masculine boundary line that Blair had never argued. Yet somehow the rule had dropped from use, like so many others he'd once thought inviolable.

In the dark, with previews flashing across the screen and Blair's hand reaching for popcorn, Jim allowed himself to feel almost what he wanted to feel. Almost was the nature of his relationship with Blair. He wanted something like this, but better. Not much better, because this was damn good, but more honest. This was so close, though, in its imperfect way; they were close, Blair's arm moving across his lap, Jim tipping the bag, neither of them intent on the other but with gaze to screen, the motion of Blair's fingers in the popcorn carrying in tiny shifts through the bag, the clumsy rhythms of foraging transmitted to Jim's thigh, the smell of butter and Blair's nearness, nearness like a date. He could have put his arm around Blair's shoulders, but would never dare.

The movie started, and Jim gave himself over to the narcotic of entertainment. He surprised himself with open laughter; for nearly an hour he was diverted, only tangentially aware of Blair next to him, and the younger man's responses, more muted than his own, the throaty chuckles of someone whose intellect is more engaged than his heart. But as the movie went on, relocating from city to camp, the balanced changed. Jim grew more detached from the events onscreen, considering the details with a critical and interested eye, remembering his grandfather's stories of the war. The action on the screen disturbed the edges of his mind, but didn't draw him in deeply.

Beside him, though, Blair's breathing and heartbeat altered, and Jim tuned in, becoming aware of his partner's stiff attentiveness. He glanced over and saw the other man's face, bathed in film light, tense and concentrated. His left hand gripped the seat arm between them. Scenes flickered on his skin, but he did not move, unaware of Jim's look.

Jim turned his gaze back to the screen, but couldn't shut out the transmission of Blair's anxiety. He'd lost a few moments of incomprehensible dialogue while turned away, but now the boy was telling his father that they'd come to take all the children for a shower and he didn't want to go. The father was ordering his son to leave. Go take a shower! Go take a shower! Jim heard the new, sharp hitch in Blair's breath and any unease of his own was secondary to the instinctive concern this roused in him; watching the film's progress, he watched it only through the other man's eyes. The showers, the pile of clothes, the father's masked urgency.

They make buttons and soap out of us, said the young boy with the face which could have been Blair's own at four or five. By then Blair was crying a little, soundless but with the smell of tears, and Jim didn't know quite what to do. He stared ahead, jaw tight, uncomfortable. Surreptitious motion told him that Blair had wiped his face, off which heat poured. Jim wondered if he was embarrassed. Had the subject matter been anything else, the other man's emotional display would have moved Jim only to resigned dismay. But Blair owned a small slice of this pain, and Jim believed that respect was required. Some inarticulate part of him wanted to reach out, and then he did, disguising it even from himself as the accidental touch of a large man shifting in a small seat. His hand nudged Blair's on the armrest as he rearranged himself minutely; Blair's hand withdrew, but Jim caught and placed it back where it had rested. His own hand stayed there across Blair's, palm molded loosely to the rake of bones beneath skin.

They said nothing and the movie pressed on, and neither of them moved their hands. Jim saw little of what was playing out in front of him. The warm animal clasp bridged their bodies and he might have been sixteen again, sitting next to Tracey Edelman, pretending to watch Animal House but honed in utterly on his desire. He felt desire now, no longer incognito, but faced and named. He hadn't expected it. It was inappropriate, given the subject matter in his view, given that Blair was still radiating a quiet distress.

By the time the movie ended, their fingers were tightly entwined, a cramp of anxious need from Blair that Jim responded to without thinking. He was not aroused, but desire suffused his body. The death he'd witnessed left him cold, but Blair's knuckles were like rough jewels wedged against his own.

Blair disappeared with a mumble into the men's room when they exited, leaving Jim to stand and wait again by the doors, this time inside on the elaborately ugly carpet, where he could contemplate the walls of movie posters and the ancient potted palms. He had time enough to reconsider the weird intimacy he'd just shared, and to get nervous, before Blair returned. The other man's face wore the neutral mask which said back off and give me a few minutes. Jim decided he seemed okay, and that wry banter would be out of place.

They left the theater and stepped into the bracing March air, pausing at loose ends on the sidewalk while around them a second crowd gathered for tickets. Jim checked his watch and then stuck his hands in his pockets. Blair, one hand to the strap of his backpack, looked indecisively or maybe restlessly up and down the street. His eyes were heavy, hooded. Jim silently and without expression admired the shape of his face, the alarum of hair. The younger man was obviously cold, but it was hard to tell if he'd noticed yet. Unusual, for him.

"I'm thinking some ice cream," Blair said in a flat but normal-sounding voice.

"It's forty degrees out."

"There's that place down the street you like, where they mix up the ice cream on the counter."

"Oh, yeah." Jim perked up and scanned for the blue awning to confirm. "Okay."

They walked.

"Pretty good movie," Jim said lamely after a minute, not looking at the younger man.

"Yeah."

The ice cream shop seemed to have been the unlikely destination for a throng of moviegoers, some of whom were discussing the film. Jim listened half-heartedly to people's conversations and considered stealing a comment or two to pass along to Blair, but in the end, didn't speak. Blair took a long time looking at the menu. He never ordered the same thing twice. Tonight it was strawberry ice cream with chopped bananas and marshmallows. Jim tried not to gawk at the mess being shoveled into his friend's waffle cone. He ordered chocolate with pecans, which was what he always ordered. He liked this place for its ritual of the ice cream assembly, how the wedge of ice cream was slapped onto the counter, the nuts folded in with a kind of short spatula, the results smashed into a cone.

He paid for both their cones, and Blair didn't even peep.

It is a date, thought Jim. He'd denied it, but the actuality had crept up on him. He wanted to admit this out loud, force Blair to agree.

They ate outside in the sharp night air, not having anything to talk about, and this worried Jim, until Blair finished his cone and said, "Do you mind if we stop by the bookstore? I want to see if they have this book on prison life someone recommended."

Prison life. Jim figured he knew what that was about--it hadn't been all that long since he'd gone undercover--and felt a moment's strengthening bond between them. He liked it when Blair tried to find common ground, though a book was as close as Jim wanted him to come to understanding that subject. "Yeah, sure."

He lost track of Blair inside the bookstore right away. The two-storied maw of shelves swallowed him, and Jim was left on his own to wander the glossy floorboards and peruse the paperbacks. He picked up various titles, flipped pages, put them back again. He needed to read something. It was that time. He needed a book on his bedside table. A good novel, maybe, or a little light history. With this in mind, he bent himself earnestly to the hunt, standing among the new releases to peruse book after book as other browsers bumped around him. The scent of coffee permeated the air and a light jazz of the type he heard only in bookstores was drifting from speakers around the floor.

A while later, find in hand, he wandered in search of Blair and found him sitting crosslegged in front of a shelf of what appeared to be religious titles with a stack of books and a coffee next to him. Jim sat down on a wooden chair niched into the shelves directly across from him, and Blair looked up.

"Hey."

Jim nodded. "That's not decaf, is it?"

"No." Blair studied him as if about to say something portentous, then simply handed over the coffee for Jim to sip. Jim extended his legs slightly, so that one shoe toed Blair's sneaker; he was blocking the aisle and didn't care. He read titles from the shelves above Blair's head while Blair continued to absorb himself with the book in his lap. Jim felt an unhurried willingness to sit here forever. He set the coffee down, began skimming the first few pages of his own book. A minute later Blair stretched for the coffee, drank and returned it, brushing his arm against Jim's leg each way with what had to be deliberateness. The words blurred on the page Jim was reading and a flush rolled down his body. He remembered what he'd been thinking of earlier in the evening, the need for sex and the want of it.

Peering at Blair from under his lashes, he dwelled on sex while trying not to. It wasn't as if he'd never thought of the other man that way. In times of stress, when his mind cornered itself, raging and frustrated, he had submitted to fantasy. He'd never been pure, but he'd liked to think of himself as straight. The warm body across from him was no woman's, though, and he wasn't trapped on base or desperate at one a.m. when only the gay bars were a sure thing. He just wanted to get laid with someone friendly. Jim pitched this argument to himself. He questioned whether it was convincing, then focused on the open page of his book as a divining tool. I long ago developed a very practiced smile, which I call my "Noh smile" because it resembles a Noh mask whose features are frozen.

He closed the book. He had no idea what came next. A question. Dropped hints. Invitation as he paused to climb the stairs, kiss as Blair left the bathroom, casual grope by the stove. The memory of Blair's voice came back to him, saying, grabass in the locker room, and he thought, not a chance. But he wished it could be as easy and harmless as that.

"I guess I'm set," Blair said, rising. Jim rose too, and saw Blair's glance flick across the title of his book. He held it up with a touch of defensiveness, a literate badge. "Ah, I've heard that's good. I want to read it when you're done," Blair told him, and Jim was satisfied with the accomplishment of having chosen a book that merited his brainy roommate's interest, even when Blair added, "You should know that's not as smutty as you think."

The other man began reshelving his stack of books, leaving only one on the floor by his backpack.

"You're not getting those?" Jim asked.

"Nah. Just looking."

"If you want--"

"These? No," Blair said, quick and light, heading off the question. "None of them were what I wanted."

"If you needed them for...the project," he tried again, but Blair was shaking his head, naysaying the offer a second time, and Jim gave up.

"You bought me dinner," Blair said, turning so that they stood almost chest to chest. He made the plain statement sound a bit suggestive, as if it were the first time ever Jim had done so--or perhaps that was just wishful thinking. Mulling it over, though, Jim realized it didn't even logically follow from what they'd been talking about. Even in confusion, he found that promising.

Blair smiled in a funny-strange, funny-sweet way and turned to shelve one more book. Jim reached up and rested his hand on Blair's neck, beneath his hair, and stroked his thumb there as if this were something he did every day. He couldn't see Blair's face, but could hear him breathing through his parted lips.

"Jim," came a voice, not Blair's. A woman's voice. "Jim Ellison."

Jim took a step back from Blair and dropped his hand as he discovered that Wendy Hawthorne had just turned the corner of shelves. Ah. Joy.

"Wendy," he said, demeanor bland as he could make it. He looked past her to the man standing at her shoulder, who looked vaguely familiar and seemed to be wearing bronzer. A local weatherman, he thought. The man smiled at him with a white muchness of teeth. Wendy was smiling too, but her bright lips were closed and their subtly upturned line struck Jim as meaningful, if not dangerous. She was still blonde and attractive, and her timing was still annoying as hell.

"I can't believe it. I haven't seen you in ages." She cocked her head to the side in a way that made her hair sweep one shoulder. She was holding, Jim noticed, a cookbook. "Mike, this is Jim Ellison--Jim's a police detective. I think I've mentioned him. And--Blair, right? This is Mike Casey. Channel Nine News. You may have seen him."

Mike stretched out a hand that Jim felt obliged to shake, then shook hands with Blair, who looked dryly amused.

"I've seen you," Blair volunteered politely when Jim said nothing.

"Thank you," Mike replied with awful sincerity, as if he'd been complimented.

Jim worked his tongue between his teeth, determined not to be snide if he could help it.

"How are you doing?" Wendy didn't pause for answer. "You two still live together, I take it?"

"Um...yeah." Blair glanced at Jim. "You know. Perpetual student, shoestring budget."

Jim, irked at the explanation--as if they needed to make any--felt his face grow tight. He resettled his hand on Blair's nape with the same proprietary ease he'd once used to touch Carolyn. "How have you been?" he asked. "Must be good to get back in television."

"I've had to wake up and smell my calling." Her face contrived to a rueful noblesse oblige. "I tried to stay away, but they pulled me back."

"She's got the talent," Mike said fondly. Wendy turned her head and smiled up at him, over her shoulder. As if cued, he flicked a strand of golden hair away. Jim watched the choreography with detached interest.

"If I've got you, I do," Wendy said.

Blair made a tiny sound indicative of choking.

"We were just about to take off," Jim said. "Early day tomorrow."

"Oh, that's a shame." Wendy beamed a laser-sharp gaze his way. "I thought maybe we could get some coffee and get reacquainted--swap war stories."

War stories. Right. Jim wondered briefly what sort of war stories a weatherman and anchorwoman had to offer, then acknowledged to himself that she probably wanted to take this opportunity to grill him and dig out a news story; one related to policework, almost certainly, but even so he had no interest in feeding her information.

"Some other time, maybe," he said, hoping the maybe sounded like never.

"You two could come over for dinner next week," she said, dashing his hopes.

"Next week's pretty tight," Jim lied unblinkingly. "Why don't you e-mail me. I'll check my schedule." That sounded cold, even to him, but she was undeterred.

"I'll do that." She dug into her purse, handed over a business card--to him, not Blair. He tucked it away without a glance.

"Well," said Blair. He bent down to pick up his backpack and straightened again with all eyes on him. Jim, unwilling to relinquish his hold, had allowed his hand to slide down to Blair's waist. There was an awkward moment during which everyone redistributed their weight from foot to foot in preparation to move on. "Nice meeting you," Blair said to Mike.

Mike nodded graciously, and he and Wendy shifted aside as they all made their good-byes.

"It's not nice to eavesdrop on the normals," Blair said as he shepherded Jim down a short set of steps toward the cash registers. "...What are they saying?"

Jim, ear cocked, didn't answer immediately.

So that was the guy you described as an old, balding cop, Mike was saying. I wonder what you'll say about me a year from now.

Not very optimistic, is it, Wendy replied. Besides, he was just a fling. Cops don't make good bedfellows, unless you're trying to get the inside track. Not that he's very coplike. I should have known something was up. Living with his sidekick fuckbuddy and oh so polite--

--I thought you said he was rude--

--he was politely rude. My point was, straight men aren't that tidy. They don't have cute little male roomies and recognize that your perfume is made with jasmine. He was using me as a cover.

And you were using him as a cover story. Time to get over it, Wendybird.

I'm over it.

Jim, who'd been over it for quite a while, was nonetheless rocked by Wendy's characterization. She'd sounded so casual, so dismissive--but mean.

Blair nudged his arm as they moved toward the cash registers. "C'mon, Jim. Spill."

"Nothing. They're talking about...weather." The hesitation was minimal but lethal.

"Right. Because he's the weatherman. You lie like a cheap rug. Some days I don't know how you ever made detective, man."

"You know me," Jim pointed out with glum satisfaction, not looking at Blair. There were times he cherished the extra five inches; it challenged Blair to try and catch his eye.

"What good is it having a state-of-the-art listening device at my beck and call, if you won't share the dirt?"

Oh, is that how it is, thought Jim, giving in to glare at the other man. "They think you're my little fuckbuddy," he said loudly enough to make the nearest few heads turn and Blair's face flush with a barely visible wave of heat.

"Okay, maybe I didn't need to know that," Blair said, jokily but with an unnerved strain in his voice. "Though I don't know what else you expected, groping me like that--"

Jim interrupted him with a leopardlike cough of incredulity. "If you call that a grope, you haven't been getting out enough, Romeo."

They paid for their books in tense silence, Blair first, Jim second, Blair hanging around afterwards for no purpose, leaning with his back to the counter as if he couldn't, say, wait by the front doors. As if he needed to be exactly in this spot to observe the bookstore's patrons, as if leaving Jim's side for two minutes was unthinkable. Jim tried not to smell his nearness, like trying not to smell turpentine in a studio or roses in a garden. A grope, he called that a grope. Jim could show him a thing or two.

Outside it was still cold, and now Blair shivered.

"I walked over from campus," he said. "Left the car there."

Jim allowed this a moment of responsive face time, then walked away with the assumption Blair would follow. Habit had grown up between them. Jim figured Blair could read significance into silence. Silence was agreement, except when it wasn't.

Blair did follow, and Jim slowed his stride until the other man caught up. The crowds had thinned; only the homeless and semi-homeless, mostly truant, itinerant youth, were on the chilled streets at this hour. They stood in tiny clusters with pets and shopping bags, military knapsacks and cheap African drums, chipping change from passers-by. Jim, without intending, put his hand on Blair's arm as they walked by a knot of teens whose crudely dreadlocked hair and tattoos identified them as suburban expatriates in search of a tribe.

"Quarter for a cup of coffee?" asked a girl in pink sunglasses as they brushed by.

"Sorry," Blair tossed back, as Jim tightened his grip and drew him onward. "They're just kids, Jim."

"Last month, some of these same kids held up a man at gunpoint three blocks from here and left him for dead. I'd rather not have to shoot anyone tonight or drag your bleeding carcass to shock-trauma."

"It's not that bad. One exception proves the rule. They're harmless."

"Mostly harmless," Jim said darkly.

Blair amiably let himself be prodded across the parking lot toward the truck. "You know, a few twists of fate and I could have been one of those kids, out on the street, jonesing for a latte, trolling dumpsters for half-eaten cheeseburgers and fries--"

"Shopping in Goodwill stores," Jim ruminated. "Cadging money and a place to stay."

"Yeah, yeah. Very funny."

Blair broke away to round the truck, but Jim caught hold of him again and hooked him peremptorily into the darkness by the cab.

"What is it, Jim--" Blair's keen whisper frosted the air. "Did you see something--did you hear--"

Jim took his face in hand and kissed him. He hadn't known what to expect, or what he'd even feel. The kiss took shape in thoughtless impulse, dry and muscular, but grew stronger as Blair opened his ready mouth, talking desperately to Jim in this new way as if he'd had a lot to say before now and hadn't been able. Jim gave back everything he'd ever taken from Blair, glad he could do so without words. Blair was clinging to him, his backpack crushed to the truck door like a turtle's shell, his warm face upturned and busy. Jim inhaled and the other man was right there with his freckles smashed up against Jim's, evening bristles sanding his chin, his lips light as cream puffs and more soft. Crazy to kiss him, to feel Blair's tongue linked between their open lips and flirting against his own.

Dizzied, Jim ground his hips forward and struggled with the accouterments hampering them, pushing at the straps of Blair's backpack and trying to realign his shoulder holster to a less distractive angle; the book he'd bought he tossed aside. The backpack fell to the ground with a muffled thump and jingle of unseen coins and Jim pushed Blair harder against the truck, driving himself roughly over the other man's body. A detached iota of mind realized how wild his movements were, but he couldn't stop. Blair didn't stop him either; he scrabbled for Jim's belt and zipper one-handedly, that hand determined and strong. Jim ate the hollow of Blair's mouth and their breaths enveloped each other while their bodies enacted a clumsy cooperation, wave shoving up against wave of need.

Blair took Jim's dick out. Jim broke the kiss, his face sliding to one side along Blair's to bury itself in his hair. "Oh shit--oh, shit--" he breathed. He shuddered all over and grabbed Blair's hand, molding it more precisely to his length and then letting go helplessly. Blair's fist stropped him from base to head, over and over, warming him against the sharp air. Jim gripped Blair's shoulder, his arm; he wanted to return the pleasure but not if it meant interrupting his own.

When Blair's hand added twist to stroke, Jim began to push more demandingly into his grip. But as it turned out Blair was not all that selfless.

"Hold on," he murmured. He let go of Jim to undo his own trousers.

Jim's hands tightened on him with bruising reflex, then he forcibly relaxed. Mute with feeling, he butted his head against Blair's; its nearness exerted a gravitational pull that bowed his neck and the sweep of temple to temple made him ache all over. His nipples unexpectedly tightened, hard and fast, blood-knotted skin chafing on cotton. He roused himself while Blair fumbled below, lifting his head to scan the parking lot with slitted eyes. There was no one, just voices carrying distantly from the street, and a spark unrolled itself from his dick at the audacity of their embrace.

"Hurry," he said, not recognizing the harsh plea of his own voice. Two more seconds better do it, or he'd rut against the other man with criminal indecency.

"Yeah." Blair's head fell back against the truck window, displaying the heavy curve of his eyelids, his sensual monkish face of contradictions. He'd finally managed to unzip, and Jim felt a vee of released body heat breathe against his sensitized cock, Blair's shaft warming his own organ a moment before contact, before the other man's hand welded them together.

Endorphins feathered through Jim's body, melting him from the inside even as muscles tensed with the effort of deferral. His balls were already drawing up, his cock growing heavier with bloodswell. Blair was making small humming sounds, a sort of croon broken erratically by his labored breaths. It was a sweet sound and it made Jim crazy. He kissed the side of Blair's face, back downwards to his mouth. He let Blair do the work of stroking them both, because he was doing it good, so good; his fingers had no calluses, but dry threads at each joint and a tiny roughness of skin that dragged over Jim like sandpaper. It almost hurt; if he hadn't been so grateful and so close he might have snarled, but instead he lunged forward with the finish in sight, seizing Blair's kiss harder just as Blair pulled his hand away to grab a hold of Jim's shirt, nothing between them now except inevitable friction, every lustful thought Jim ever had reduced to this rude naked uprising.

"Oh, fuck," Blair said sharply between the swells of their kiss, "Oh, fuck, Jim, Jim--fuck--"

Jim grew even more frantic at his rising voice, at how it broke the quiet; he could feel that noise like a series of matches striking and flaring inside his dick. And then he broke himself, with a muffled cry into Blair's mouth, exhaling into Blair above, striping him wetly below. Blair clutched at him and twisted and then bucked, a handful of nasty, glorious movement as he got himself off independently, rubbing himself on Jim and then coming with a little seizure and more curses.

They slumped together against the truck when they were done, legs tangled, Jim shielding himself in the messy embrace, not really inclined to withdraw and bare his equipment to the brittle air even for those few necessary moments. But after a minute he did, and Blair, breathless and languid, followed suit.

"Wow," Blair said. He seemed happy. "Wow."

Jim endeavored not to dwell upon being sticky. He smiled in the relative darkness, not sure if Blair could see him.

"So that was groping."

"Yep."

"Wow." Blair shifted and ran a hand along the spattered seam of his khakis. "You know, I'd be up for that again."

"Good." Jim touched Blair on the jaw, just another caress of impulse, then cleared his throat and glanced around the parking lot. "We should probably get out of here."

"You think?"

They climbed in the truck, a certain furtiveness regulating their departure, along with a lingering frisson of excitement from the act. Blair's hair was mussed, his heartbeat still rabbiting away with itself, and he smelled spunky; underneath that scent was the alloy of many others strengthened by heat; all the esters and aldehydes and alkenols that Blair tried to help him catalog. Melon, citrus, mushroom, green.

Glancing over, Jim said, "Listen. I'll take you in tomorrow. You can pick up your car then."

Blair made an agreeable sound.

"So, does this mean," he began as Jim pulled out of the lot. Then he paused. "What, um, does this mean?"

"I haven't had a chance to give it much thought," said Jim with a tinge of defensiveness.

"Yeah." Blair gazed aside, out the truck window. "Well, you know"--brooding, plainspoken--"I'm not sure I believe that."

They reached the highway which ran alongside the dark water of the bay, a swipe of charcoal against coal with lights in the distance. Minutes passed.

"I'd like to do that again," Blair said, quieter now, his tone a renewed invitation that made Jim aware of his own surging blood, his dick's blatant eagerness.

"You mean...tonight?"

Blair laughed at him. "You got something better to do?"

That laugh tickled Jim on the inside, even though his face remained straight, eyes on the road ahead. "No. I guess not."

After another minute Blair said, "We kind of proved her point, didn't we. That whole fuckbuddy thing. What's that song. Talking. Everyone's talking."

"Everybody's Talkin'," Jim said, with a self-conscious drawl. Or lilt. Or twang.

"No, the other one, where everyone's talking about them--us. Where, they're talking, so you might as well just do it."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Let's just talk about it, people are talking about it, everbody's talking--shit, now I've got that song in my head. The other one's by Reba. Or maybe not. Something--talk about, let's give them something to talk about. That's it. Something to Talk About." Blair huffed with enormous relief.

Jim thought the younger man would make a great search engine, if you had patience enough. "The point being?"

"If they're already talking about us, there's no reason not to get it on."

"There's a twisted logic to that."

"You think other people talk about us?" Blair wondered. "I mean, you'd know, wouldn't you. You probably don't tell me half the things you hear."

"Most of the time I've got an earful of you," Jim said dryly. "It tends to drown out all other sound."

"Tonight you could have an eyeful of me. A lapful. A mouthful."

Jim swallowed, amazed to speechlessness at these possibilities. They were skirting the edge of downtown and its office buildings rose around them, windows lit on empty rooms. The Immaculate Conception Church appeared on their left, grey and elaborate, just next to the plain white sweep of the Maritime Museum. It was one of three or four routes by which he regularly drove home, all its landmarks recognizable and unchanged, but he felt he'd never seen it before.

"...can't believe I'm hungry again..."

The sense of newness and disorientation continued as they passed the King Street Pier and then the marina, slips thick with yachts and sailboats, houseboats and cruisers; beyond this the harbor, ridged by mountains, a vista interrupted as they reached the stretch of rolled-up bay doors for the Farmer's Market. Innisfree Books. Alaskan Cruises. The Piper Theater, its sign a long finger of neon pointing toward the obscured stars. The first seedy contenders of the hotel district. Eli's Deli. Nearly home.

"...never really thought you two were compatible, though I kept my mouth shut..."

He would park the truck, they'd get out and enter the building, wait in the lobby for the elevator's slow descent, and the off-white walls and gunmetal grey carpet would be the same, and the terminal ficus, and the stack of abandoned junk mail on the box-shelf. He hadn't planned ahead or thought about any of this when he'd kissed Blair. The part about waking up in the morning. The bills and the various women who called for Blair, and deciding on who would cook dinner.

"...guy's teeth were really white, weren't they, not really a color found in nature..."

He had no idea what to do next.

"...vanilla relationships..."

What to say, what to think, how to be.

"...actually want more ice cream. Do we have any?"

Jim blinked. "What?"

"Ice cream--do we have any? And please don't forget you're the one driving, if you don't mind. I like my limbs."

"Chocolate," Jim said.

"Same old, same old."

"I like what I know." And Jim thought about shopping, and how maybe next time he'd spend a little longer looking for something, a different flavor, new and risky, and then the idea faded and he knew that he probably wouldn't do this. He'd stay with what he knew was good.

"I like your limbs too," he said.

And next to him, Blair laughed at the senselessness of it, and Jim had to laugh too.

End.