Author's website: http://home.earthlink.net/~t.verano

Set during Switchman; written for the Moonridge 2008 Guppygasm anthology.
Much gratitude to Jane Davitt for beta'ing this, and to Caro Dee for putting the anthology together. It was very cool to be part of such a wonderful (and very hot ::fans self distractedly, thinking about the other fic and the artwork::) anthology.

This story is a sequel to:

Closing the office door behind him isn't enough, he needs to lock it, but the key isn't sliding cooperatively into the keyhole. He's hurrying too much, and the part of his brain that normally handles his fine motor skills is too far north of the current location of ninety-eight percent of the blood in his body to give a crap about what his fingers are actually doing.

He gets the door locked, finally, on the fourth try. And the key -- the suddenly helpful, sympathetic, one-of-the-guys key -- doesn't slip out of his fumbling fingers and hit the floor until the door is safely locked. Which is really very understanding of the key winking up at him from the floorboards.

Very understanding, yeah; the key's a brick. He swallows a couple of times, fast, in relief.

Of course, the key was in his pocket up until a minute ago, in his front pocket, so it ought to be understanding; it knows exactly how tight his pants are right now, and why.

And shit, the process of getting his dick out of his fly for a little one-on-one with his hand is maybe gonna make the whole exercise post-orgasmically pointless. Just the friction from the apparently ever-shrinking denim of his jeans, and the pressure from the (should've worn his 501 button-flies) stupid zipper, and the tugging and the shifting needed to ease the stupid zipper down without inflicting damage -- fuck, he's gonna have to carry his backpack in front of his crotch when he heads home; dammit, he's gonna --

No, whoa; okay. Zipper down, all clear, pinch just a fucking little, just there; the pressure's --

Easing. Yeah. Just a little.

Ah, okay, good. That's good. That's... He stands there for a moment gulping air, just barely cradling his balls in one hand, and waiting it out, letting everything die back down enough so he can walk -- hell, think about walking -- without going over the edge before he even really gets started.

Okay.

Good.

Okay. He takes a step toward his desk chair. And yeah, it's not all that ergonomically sound a chair for jerking off in comfortably, but the two of them have built an informed, if not mutually supportive, relationship over the years, and he knows every trick the swiveling bastard can come up with in moments of sexual stress --

One step toward the chair is as far as he gets. Because, with a shiver (the same shiver a purposeful fingernail tracing slowly up the inside of his thigh always brings with it, God), he's heading somewhere else. And already breathing raggedly again.

Five steps, and he's there. Pressing his back against the wall.

That section of the wall.

And leaning back into it, his legs spread, bent just enough at the knees, to let the wall be in charge of how vertical he stays. Applied geometry (its most important use, if you don't count scoping out the circumference of certain objects).

His hand gets busy automatically even before he's finished settling himself against the wall exactly the way he wants. Automatically, mindlessly busy, and his hips are moving, and he's slippery already -- shit, more slippery; he's been ready for this since Ellison headed off to do some Joe Friday stuff, or maybe to do some primal growling, adjusting to his new self-image.

He's getting little hits of pressure against his lower back now; more of them, more --

And no. No. Not yet. That's faster than he wants this to go, this time. Not yet.

But it's all there, in his head and his hand and his dick: Ellison. Running toward that garbage truck and pulling the guy down between the fucking wheels -- and so not a way he'd really wanted to die or get a case of road rash -- and those furious hands dragging him up by the shoulders of his shirt and the man almost spitting in his face -- and he's real, the real thing -- and second fucking chances, even after 'throwback'; he's gotta work with you now, he's going to, he will, and --

The buzz of charged energy building at the base of his spine is so -- oh yeah, fuck. And his dick is thinking Holy Grail too, at least as hard as his head is, and he's not going to sort out until later whether his dick is thinking 'fucking Sentinel' or is really thinking 'Ellison -- fucking hot'.

His hand is moving faster again, and he makes the circle of his fingers tighter, a little tighter than he usually does. Makes the pull and pump a little rougher than he usually takes it, even when he's in a seriously get-it-done hurry.

And he's not going to think about why until later. Not going to wonder whether it's because he can't get the feel of those strong, long fingers off his shoulders and he can't get the vibrations from that I'll-smile-while-I-gut-you voice out of his 'nads; can't get the pissed-off heat of those so fucking blue eyes out of his --

Ahhh yeah, fuck, yeah --

And pretty much all he is right now is his dick, and the six-elephant-weight tension against the base of his spine that's shooting off thigh-shaking, about-to-blow sparks as it rockets him toward fucking everything, so fucking good, and he doesn't even really know what his dick is fucking anymore; his mind is all in his dick, nothing else left to feel, nothing else --

All in his dick, all in his...

So...fucking good --

God, so --

Fucking good -- fucking --

God --

God.

Yeah... Oh, yeah... That was...

Yeah...

Fuck; he's probably not gonna catch his breath again any time this century. And if the geometry-loving wall abandons the sciences and stops propping him up, he's gonna be down on the floor at key level. In a heap. Just one of the guys.

It takes a handful of minutes to get enough of his muscles and his mind back to manage a semi-controlled slide down the wall into a crouch, time enough to wish he'd brought along the Kleenex box from his desk (and he's so not jerking off in that opinionated and unexciting chair again ever; this wall is now Numero Uno, and Numero Fifty, and Numero Five Thousand and Ninety-Seven, ad infinitum).

And he's not gonna sort any of this out right now. Not yet.

If ever. Because almost any way you look at it, it's wrong, professionally speaking. You don't jack off fantasizing about a research subject; if nothing else, it skews your objectivity.

But hey, maybe it's okay... Maybe this hadn't been about The Sentinel or even about Ellison. Maybe it'd just been about a sentinel. Maybe it'd just been about breaking a bottle of champagne over the bow of the overall sentinel ship. Right? The ship starts on its journey and gets one symbolic, celebratory, basically impersonal splash against its hull; one inaugural ritual bump and grind and splatter. So maybe this hadn't been about The Sentinel, about how just a single thought; a single, clinically couched, three-second thought about a really, fucking really not-mythical tribal guardian with monster senses wrapped up in one here and now and real (and gonna have to let himself be studied) Detective James Ellison, was enough to --

Shit.

Okay, maybe it hadn't been about Ellison himself, at least. Maybe it hadn't been about the totally ripped man of hard-assed (and when had his dick ever gotten off on that before?) attitude and (pretty safe to bet) action, maybe --

Oh, shit.

Maybe he can pretend that this'd really mostly been about the garbage truck? After all, certain death -- okay, almost certain death; he would've run like hell in the other direction if it'd been certain death -- could deal some seriously effective aftermath mojo straight to the limbic system. Kombai arrows being pointed at you, metropolitan garbage trucks being driven over you; the way you felt when you found out you weren't actually gonna -- Oh, yeah; that could take you way the fuck past Go before you even realized you were playing. So maybe he can pretend that this'd been mostly about that.

Yeah. Except he's not gonna be able to use escape from the jaws of death as a rationalization next time, so he's going to need to find another excuse for --

Next time? Shit. He shouldn't do this again.

He shouldn't.

He lets himself slide further down from his crouch until his ass meets the floor, abruptly.

But maybe if he's careful...

Because he's leaning harder than ever against the wall -- this wall -- Numero Uno. Possessively. And yeah, he's going to do this again, even though he shouldn't.

So he just has to be careful; careful enough. With his research, with the man... careful. That's all.

He runs a finger lightly along his still softening, still sensitive dick; he can be careful, yeah. He can be.

He'd better be.

End

Firsthand by T.Verano : t.verano@earthlink.net
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