Author's webpage: http://members.xoom.com/Funkhouse/ozlove.html

Author's disclaimer: Sue me, I dig the attention.

Author's notes: JUST KIDDING ABOUT THE BESTIALITY!!!!

Hoping this cures my RL-related writer's block. No beta - just wanted to get it the hell off my plate, know what I mean?

Inchworm

by rgkinski

When Blair got a craving, it stuck with him until he satisfied it.

Which would explain the ever present forlorn look on his face in repose, but that's another story.

Ever since sampling Serena's handmade chutney, he'd had one thing on his mind: beets. Fresh,organic beets. Boiled al dente, diced, and mixed with any ingredients that could approximate Ms. Chang's culinary invention, but most assuredly oranges, honey, fresh cranberries, and lots of salt and vinegar. He was disappointed at the paltry selection of beets at the farmers market due to the recent frost. But he had to have fresh, and he had to have organic, so he held his breath and counted out nearly three bucks for a lousy handful of the vegetables. He picked some beauties, big, round, smooth-skinned, a rich earthy color like no other in nature. Blair was sure they'd be worth every penny.

He encountered an unexpected guest while rinsing the vegetables in the sink: a tiny inchworm ensconced in the muddy tops of the beet greens. He set the leafy abode and its inhabitant on the counter top, planning a ritualistic relocation ceremony after the beet feast.

Fresh beets were a real treat, which he almost never indulged in. Peeling them reminded him of preparing meals with Naomi when he was little - how she'd encourage him to get the juice all over himself and stamp the walls of whatever temporary palace they were inhabiting with his purple hand prints. Blair wondered what Jim would do if he came home and found the carefully controlled walls of the loft redecorated in shades of beet.

After chopping the beets and adding the other ingredients, Blair reckoned there wasn't enough to share: a pound of beets didn't go very far, when you really loved beets. He was glad his roommate wasn't home - where the fuck was he, anyway? - and then laughed at the thought of Jim Ellison willingly putting in his mouth a melange of beets, oranges and raw cranberries. Maybe if it was all cooked down to a jelly, then canned, sliced, and smeared on a slab of turkey.

Actually, that sounded delicious. Blair checked the fridge for cold cuts - no such luck. He dashed down to Seth's deli around the corner because - well, because once that craving hit....

He got back just in time to find Jim scraping the last of the chutney out of the same bowl in which Blair had prepared it.

"Mmmmm, good," Jim said. "You know, this would be great on a turkey sandwich."

Rendered speechless, Blair held up the paper bag from Seth's. All he could do was hunch his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug and be grateful that Jim wasn't a mindreader.

Jim grabbed the bag out of Blair's hands and pulled out the wax-paper wrapped sandwich. He went to his gym bag on the floor, pulled out a greasy white paper sack and tossed it to Blair.

"Here, brought you something," he said. "I was working out at the station, and a couple of the guys and I went out later for surf and turf."

Blair opened the bag, pulled out a piece of fried breading.

"Shrimp," Jim explained. "Jumbo shrimp."

"Uhhh....", Blair replied, and dropped the soggy morsel back into the bag. "Thanks, Jim."

Jim laughed and shook his head, retrieved a take-out container from beneath his moldering gym clothes and set it on the counter.

"Chief, you're just too easy tonight. Geez, you're not in one of your moods, are you? 'cause if you are I'm gonna go sit in my truck for a few hours." He opened the container and pushed it towards Blair.

"Seafood salad," Jim explained. "With real seafood, not that fake crab crap."

Blair picked up a curly calamari by the tentacles and popped it into his mouth. Chewy and garlicky. Well, it wasn't beets and cranberries, but it was pretty darn good.

"Thanks," Blair said, always taken aback by Jim's mercurial thoughtfulness.

"How 'bout a little white wine?" Jim asked, wrapping his hands around Blair's biceps to move him aside on his way to the fridge. As Jim poured them both a glass of wine, Blair was starting to get that all too rare "tonight, tonight, won't be just any night" tingle in his solar plexus, when he noticed that the beet tops were missing.

"Fuck!" he shouted. Jim looked at the label on the wine bottle.

"Since when did you get so choosy?" he asked.

"The beet tops. Those green things. They were here a minute ago."

"You mean the garbage you didn't bother to throw away along with the dishes you didn't bother to wash?"

"I mean the green leafy things that were on the counter, next to the chutney."

"Right," Jim said. "The garbage. I threw it away."

He helped himself to some of the salad, then finally noticed the look Blair was giving him. "Oh, no, Chief, those weren't the magic beet greens, were they?"

Blair realized he may as well have stamped beety hand prints all over the walls and expected Jim to understand the metaphorical imperative of such an act than try to explain the importance of relocating a lonely inchworm to greener pastures.

He decided to save the explanation for later - there was an inchworm that needed rescuing. He checked the garbage pail under the sink. Empty.

"I took it out," Jim explained.

"Do you always have to be so fucking regimented?" Blair shouted, on his way to the front door.

Jim grabbed him, held him fast. "If this is Blair having a nervous breakdown, tell me now."

"There was a...an inchworm...in the tops. I wanted to put him, it, outside."

Jim shook Blair a little roughly, still gripping his arm.

"If this is Blair on drugs, tell me now."

"There was an inchworm...a caterpillar...in the beets. I was going to put it outside, in the bushes."

Jim let that sink in, then said, "Okay..." and let him go. Blair paused, then went out in pursuit of the inchworm. He ran down the stairs to the light well which formed a common alley between their building and the apartments next door. There were a dozen industrial-sized garbage containers, each one brimming with identical white plastic trash bags. Blair was unknotting one of them when Jim, holding the turkey sandwich from Seth's, finally joined him in the alley.

"Chief. You're kidding about, this, right? It's just a worm."

"I know."

"I'll buy you another one."

"Yeah, funny, Jim, ha-ha. Thanks anyway."

Jim glanced around the garbage cans, used his free hand to pull out one of the plastic bags.

"I think it's this one," he said, handing it to Blair, who opened it carefully, relieved to see the beet greens on top.

Blair found some old newspapers in a recycling bin and lay them out on the pavement, then carefully spread the garbage on top of the papers in a thin layer. Getting down on his hands and knees, he methodically examined the garbage, scrap by scrap.

Jim watched, quietly munching the sandwich. He found Blair's behavior alarming, yet touching and....kind of sweet. Even more disconcerting, as Jim watched Blair bent over the minipiles of vegetable peels, paper towels, and old coffee grinds, was the dawning realization that that was one fine ass his roommate had on him.

Little Jim, unfettered in the baggy sweat pants, nodded in approval.

Blair glanced up, just as Jim, still holding the turkey sandwich, dropped his hands in front of his groin.

"Hey, dude with the X-Ray eyes...a little help?" Blair said.

Jim squatted down beside Blair and focused his vision on the garbage. He made an honest, diligent effort, and could pretty much assure Blair that either the inchworm was not there, or that he was that flat, wet, spongy thing next to the Big Hunk wrapper.

"Just be glad we didn't have spaghetti last night," Jim said. "What's the little feller look like, anyway?"

Blair got up, wiping the crud off his pants. "It's about yea long," he said, holding up his fingers a pinch, "and yea wide. Kind of an off-white, pale creamy green color."

"Antennae?"

"Yes. Well, no. More like eyes. Tiny little black ones. And tiny little legs."

"Worms have legs?"

"Little tiny ones."

"Maybe he crawled out of the beets while you were at the deli," Jim offered by way of encouragement.

Blair's eyes widened and he perked up considerably.

"Yes! " He ran towards the back staircase. Jim bundled up the spilled garbage and replaced it in the trash cans - Blair was right, he was fucking regimented.

He reentered the loft to find Blair on his hands and knees again, this time in the kitchen, a mini flashlight in his mouth. Jim noticed that Blair's cheeks puffed out slightly as his full lips clasped the stem of the flashlight. Little Jim noticed, too. Jim got down on his knees and put his hand on the small of Blair's bent back, for balance.

"Point it over there," Jim said. "Slow down, wait, yeah, that's it. Right there. A little lower. More. Perfect. Nah, that's not it." Jim leaned back on his haunches. Blair took a deep breath, straightened up, and twisted around to face his roommate.

"You must think I'm an idiot," Blair said.

Something about Blair's disappointment gave Jim a little tweak in the gut. He didn't want Blair to give up so easily, now that he'd gotten this far.

"No," Jim said. "I think you're very weird, though." He chucked him under the chin with his fist, resisting the urge to slide the tips of his fingers lightly down the shaft of Blair's throat. "Let's try the logical approach," Jim continued, his voice a little breathier than usual. "Now. What do we know about inchworms?"

Blair drew his legs up, and sat cross-legged, thinking hard.

"Right," Jim said. "Nothing. Okay."

"Wait," Blair said, as a light went on over his head. Jim saw the light, and thought it made Blair look....pretty. "We know they like beets! "

"Right. Beets. Anything else?"

Blair propped his chin in his hand, meditatively. Jim admired the way the younger man's hair spilled over one side of his face as he leaned forward in thought. He tried to think of a way to get the flashlight back into his mouth.

"Hang in there, Chief. There'll be other bugs. And, you know, it's better to have...hey, is that him?" Jim pointed over Blair's shoulder, at the fridge. Blair scrunched down, aimed the flashlight underneath the fridge's splash guard. Jim slipped down beside him. They lay side by side, on their bellies, on the kitchen linoleum, then turned to look at each other, their faces inches apart.

Jim cleared his throat. "It's waaa-ay back there," he said.

"How will we get it out?" Blair asked.

"Vacuum cleaner?" his roommate suggested.

"Or...?"

"You pick up the fridge, and I'll reach under and get it."

"Or...?"

"We put cabbage on the floor, and take turns watching until he comes out and then...we whack him with one of these! " Jim reached up, felt around the counter top, and pulled down a trivet.

Blair got off the floor, headed towards his room.

"I have an idea," he said.

While he was gone, Jim got a spatula from the kitchen drawer and slid it under the inchworm's body, just as Blair returned with an ostrich feather.

"Ta da!" Jim said, delighted with himself.

"Fuckin' far out!" Blair exclaimed.

Jim tapped the spatula against the side of the sink, and flipped on the garbage disposal. He'd never heard a grown man scream so loud, or so high-pitched, or stretch the word "motherfucker" into so many syllables. He quickly showed Blair the tiny inchworm, curled safely in his palm.

Not quick enough.

Blair hit him on the arm with a closed fist. Jim rubbed his upper arm, where the blow had landed, and looked at Blair incredulously.

"That's the meanest fucking thing you've ever done, Jim."

Blair held out his hand.

"Don't you know better than to HIT A COP?"

"Jim."

"Chief?"

"Ellison!"

"Sandburg," Jim said, closing his fist protectively around the little treasure.

"Give him to me!"

"You're in no condition to take charge of this insect, Sandburg. When you calm down, I'll release him into your custody."

Blair grabbed Jim's wrist, tried to pry his fingers open.

"A worm is NOT an insect! " Blair yelled. Jim turned away from Blair and bent over, cradling his fist close to his mid-section. His roommate reached over the bigger man's back, and took hold of his wrist.

Jim twisted around abruptly, got his free arm around Blair's waist, and flipped him over his shoulder, carefully controlling the rate of impact at which the shorter man's body would make contact with the kitchen floor. But Blair used his own working knowledge of martial arts to counterattack Jim's move with one of his own, grasping Jim's middle with both arms as he was hurled upside down on his way to the linoleum. Blair was smaller and had less combat experience, but he had a lower center of gravity and the benefit of surprise, taking advantage of Jim's underestimation of his opponent's ability to defend himself. Jim landed flat on his back. Blair quickly jumped on top of him.

Ellison was in pain, and breathless. Laughing hysterically wasn't helping.

"Christ, Chief, you're heavier than you look. How the fuck much do you weigh, anyway?"

"It's all muscle, asshole. How the fuck much do YOU weigh?"

" I happen to be proportionate to my height, according to the actuarial tables."

"'Actuarial tables'", Blair scoffed. "You're making that up. You better pray the worm survived. "

Jim extended his arm over his head, resting it on the floor, out of Blair's reach. He put his other hand on Blair's knee, and squeezed.

"Why are you being so mean?" Blair asked, no longer laughing.

"Obviously, you've never had a little brother to torture," Jim explained.

"You think I'm taking this too seriously?" Blair asked. He spotted the ostrich feather on the floor near Jim's head, leaned over to retrieve it.

"I don't think you're taking it seriously enough, "Jim protested. He made a half-hearted attempt at bucking Blair from his chest. Blair responded by digging his knees into Jim's ribs, then bounced up and down emphatically, forcing little exclamations of "oof" out of his victim.

He held the feather up, threateningly.

"Please, not the feather. God knows where it's been."

Blair pulled Jim's shirt up, brushed the feather across his belly. Nothing. Not even a giggle.

"Not fair, Ellison, dial it back up."

He didn't want to torment Little Jim any further, so Jim decided to keep his nerve endings operating at minimum output.

"Chief, he's....he's stopped moving!" Jim said, meaning the inchworm.

"That's not funny, Ellison. Think what you're doing to your karma."

Blair leaned over, pressing his upper torso hard against Jim's face, mashing his nose to one side. He grasped Jim's fingers with both hands and tried to unlock them.

Jim fought for air, and finally managed to turn his face to the side.

"Yo, Nature Boy, a little deodorant couldn't hurt," he gasped.

"Oh, so now you're saying I'm fat AND I stink." Blair pulled one arm free from the sleeve of his tee shirt and mercilessly ground an over-heated armpit into Jim's face.

"Nomphh," Jim said, "Not at all. Imphfact, in certain cultures, like mmphhrench, body odor
isgrimphmcharghetamumphredisiac."

Blair laid his palms flat on the floor on either side of Jim's face and straightened his arms. "What?" The carved scarab he was wearing around his neck swung back and forth on its leather thong, tapping Jim on the nose. "That's MY line," Blair laughed. "Wait a minute....you ARE saying I stink!" He started to roll off his prone steed. Jim grasped the scarab in his free hand and coiled the thong around his fingers, pulling Blair close enough that the tips of their noses nearly touched.

"No. I'm just saying that sometimes you're a little strong."

Blair didn't have his glasses on, and even at this close range Jim and his blue eyes looked a little blurry. Nevertheless, he thought he was getting the picture.

"Hey Jim," Blair said, just in case. "Don't start something you can't finish."

"Well, it's Friday," Jim answered. "We've got the whole weekend."

Blair swallowed hard. "I don't getcha."

"What's this worm worth to you, Sandburg?"

"That sucks Jim. That really, really sucks."

Jim placed his free hand on Blair's side, and squeezed lightly.

"I'm gonna get up," he said, "and get something out of my room. And when I come back, I want to find you right here. Right in this very spot, right here." Jim patted the linoleum. "Okay? Don't move. Stay right here. Here." He patted the floor again, then used the hand on Blair's waist to push him gently off. Blair rolled onto his back, his hair spilling all around his head.

Jim pointed at him. "Right there. Don't. Move."

"Hey, what about the inchworm? " Blair asked. Jim made a detour to the counter, plucked something small and pale from the empty fruit bowl, and dropped the inchworm into Blair's open hand.

"How's my karma doing?" he asked, heading towards the stairs.

His shirt still half off, Blair lifted himself from the floor and walked onto the patio, in search of a temporary haven for the caterpillar. Jim found him after a few moments, and shook his head at his guide's contrariness.

He handed him a cylindrical plastic bottle with the word "Wet" on it, then tore the corner from a square package that was a little bigger than Blair had been expecting. What Jim unfurled from the wrapper was familiar, yet bizarrely huge.

"Not that I don't think you're all that and a bag of chips, Jim," Blair said, "but that is the biggest fucking condom I've ever seen."

"It's not for me. It's for you."

"Oh. Uh. Um. Well...okay. Um...Well, I don't mean to disappoint you, but..."

"It goes inside of you."

"Oh. Oh! Oh."

"Turn around, Sandburg."

Blair started to turn away, then turned back to face Jim.

"Inside?"

"Yeah."

"You know what you're doing, right? You've done this before, RIGHT? Wait, I don't want to know. Don't tell me."

"I'm sorry, Chief, I'm allergic to latex. I've been saving this just in case...just in case... Well, just in case. Here, the instructions came in the box." He handed Blair a pamphlet accordion-folded about 20 times. Blair opened it up, turned it around and around, looking for the English version.

"Eywww..." he said.

"I think it'll be fun," Jim reassured him. "Ritualistic. Right up your alley."

"Right up my...Yeah, but....shouldn't I be in stirrups or something?"

"Do you want to be in stirrups, Chief?"

"I wouldn't MIND being in stirrups. Do you WANT me to be in stirrups?"

Jim considered the prospect of kneeling between Blair's splayed thighs, while the guide lay flat on his back, his ankles hooked into some elaborate gynecological contraption. The corners of his mouth twitched, and a full-blown smile erupted on his face. Blair started to shake his head. They both burst into laughter. Jim caught Blair in his arms, held him tight. He did something he'd been aching to do for months; he buried his face in the luxurious golden brown curls of his roommate/guide/best-friend/arch-nemesis/soonto -be-lover, and inhaled deeply, getting his heightenedsenses money's worth of Blairsmell.

The man in question tilted his face to the Sentinel. Jim read the look in his eyes perfectly and pressed his mouth against the younger man's. No need for exploring, yet - all he wanted was the smell of his hair and the taste of those lush lips. And one other thing: he loosened the top few buttons on Blair's button-fly jeans, and slipped both hands down the back of his pants, cupping Blair's cheeks, kneading them, taking Blair's measure and finding it to be a perfect fit.

Blair rose on his toes in reaction to the slow, deep massage being ministered by his mate. His pressed his mouth into the hollow of Jim's throat, and tasted the throb of his steady pulse.

"Naomi used to have speculum parties," Blair said, looking up into Jim's face.

Temporarily ignoring the non sequitur, Jim led Blair back into the living room, pulling the half-off shirt over his head along the way. When they reached the sofa, he helped Blair get his pants down to his ankles. Nudging him into a reclining position, Jim knelt to the task of loosening the laces on Blair's sneaks, and then pulling them and his socks from the small, bony feet. Jim finished undressing him, stopping now and then to lay a tender kiss upon various portions of Blairflesh.

He really didn't want to know, but since Blair was going to tell him anyway, he asked "What's a speculum party, babe?"

"Babe," Blair repeated, momentarily adrift. Jim, naked underneath his sweats, stepped out of his loose Vans and carefully straddled the guide's lap. He rocked slightly, making sure Blair could feel the effect his nakedness had on Little Jim.

"Where's the condom?" Jim whispered in his ear. Blair handed it to him. Together, they examined it carefully, turning it around and around.

"So, anyway, " Blair continued. "A speculum party is where women get together in a supportive environment and examine their own and each other's vulvas. With a speculum and a flashlight. Which end is up, do you think?"

"This bottom ring goes inside of you, it's kind of an anchor....and this ring at the mouth here we sort of...you know, we just, um....let it hang out. Outside. "

Blair nodded. "Outside....?"

"Outside...your...." Jim leaned close, whispered something in Blair's ear which he punctuated by slipping his wet tongue deep into the canal. Blair cringed, ticklish.

"The thing is, babe, we put it in, then we can play. For hours. And when we're ready, IT'S ready. No stopping to put on Jimmy's jimmy. We just go for it. Do you want to try?"

"Do worms have legs?" Blair asked.

Jim stood, took Blair by the ankles and tilted his pelvis up, hitching his feet over his shoulders as he stooped down to his love's open thighs. He pulled Blair's legs a little more up his shoulders until his rear was elevated high enough to insert the condom into the tight pucker of his asshole. Blair bit his bottom lip, not because it hurt, but from the intensity of the situation itself. Looking down between his splayed thighs, the top of Jim's close-cropped head indicating the rapt focus he was bestowing on Blair's ass - Jim's ass, now - a recurring masturbation fantasy was now a reality. Blair hoped it wouldn't kill him.

Jim found the bottle of Wet, and poured some of the lubricant into his palm. He screwed the top back on, then smeared the lube thickly over the rounded top of the cap. He inserted this tentatively into Blair's rectum, using the bottle to push the condom deeper inside of him. He was very tender, and stopped every quarter of an inch to kiss the inside of Blair's thighs, relaxing, loosening, spreading him wider. Blair's stiffened cock rose towards his belly. Jim captured it in his mouth, and gave the head a good hard suck, while simultaneously forcing the bottle an inch deeper into Blair's rectum. The sudden jab forced a sharp gasp from between Blair's gritted teeth, which soon became a soft moan as Jim sucked in the rest of the younger man's cock. Jim's head bobbed up and down, the inside of his mouth wetly caressing the shaft between his tongue and soft palate. He was so enraptured by the rhythmic, slurping sound of the blowjob he was giving Blair, that he didn't immediately pick up on the background noise of his lover's plaintive mutterings: "I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die..."

Jim pulled his mouth from his lover's shaft, and abandoned the bottle's venture into his tight canal. "What's wrong, baby? You're not gonna die."

"I'm having a heart attack, I can't breathe."

Jim pulled himself up, gently dropping Blair's feet back onto the floor.

"Let's slow down." Jim kissed his lips, his tongue insistent against the playful resistance of Blair's gritted teeth.

"Taste it," Jim pleaded, and crushed his open mouth against Blair's, holding his chin with one hand and the back of his head with the other. Blair was laughing; Jim shut him up with his tongue. Then he was moaning. Jim could feel the trapped echoes of Blair's ecstasy all the way down to his toes. He pulled away for air. "Let's finish putting it in."

He arranged Blair on the sofa, draping one of his legs over the sofa back. No good. He turned Blair onto his belly, bending him in half so that his rear pointed straight up to the ceiling. Much better.

Jim knew from past experience that the best way of inserting a female condom all the way into the rectum was by using an erect penis to guide it as far into the passage as that particular penis needed it to go. But he didn't want penetration yet - he wanted ritual and ceremony and courtship - hours of it - and then he wanted to fuck Blair's brains out. Still, the sight of Blair's furry cleft and dimpled cheeks were tempting enough to bypass foreplay and dive right in, despite the several inches of saran wrap hanging out of his obscured pucker.

Lost in blissful strategizing, Jim didn't immediately comprehend Blair's question.

"What, love?" he asked.

"Did you like the beets?" Blair repeated.

"Oh, yes," Jim said, slipping a stiff finger into a part of Blair's body he would soon come to know better than the back of his own hand. "Oh, yes, love, yes..."