Author's webpage: http://adult.dencity.com/terma/aristide/aristide.htm

Disclaimers and notes can be found in part one.

The Dragon - Part two
By Mairead Triste and Aristide
May, 1999

The world didn't really come back for a long, long time. Not while he made his shaky and precarious way down from the roof (totally unfazed by the height now-- after all, he'd seen scarier things, right?), not while he ran for his car, not while he drove blindly and without direction, not until he ended up at a Super 8 motel on the outskirts of town and realized that, yes; he was still really alive, yes, he was going to spend the night here, and finally yes, in the safe light of morning he would do... something.

It was, perhaps, the worst moment of all, to realize that he wasn't going to run. It made him feel like his blood was curdling in his veins.

For the first time ever he made use of the credit card he'd gotten from Naomi on his birthday (just for emergencies, honey)-- well, if this didn't constitute an emergency, he didn't know what did. His hands shook as he signed the slip.

The room they gave him was simple but functional-- he'd had to take a double because there were no singles left, but that turned out to be a blessing because he was able to pile two sets of bedding onto one of the beds. He curled up under the heap with all the lights in the room on and the heater going full blast, wincing every time an ice-shard of terrible memory lanced through his mind.

The thing.

That thing.

That thing had Jim-- had him somehow, had him hauled in and locked up tight, and if somebody didn't do something then someday very soon they would all be standing over Jim's bed and shaking their heads sadly-- but by then the thing would have slipped quietly away, leaving behind only the part it couldn't use. The dead part.

And that was what finally broke the grip the horror had on him-- no way was that thing going to get away with it, no way was Blair ever going to be part of that sad and solemn circle around Jim's bed. The thought was tinged with such passionate fire that he took his first full breath in what felt like forever, and his hands closed into strong fists as terror faded into certainty.

He no longer felt like he was risking imminent heart failure, but despite that he didn't seem to feel any calmer about the whole thing, because underneath the fear there was only deep, utter shock-- whatever happened, even if he managed somehow to get Jim out of that thing's clutches, nothing would ever be the same again.

Jim's face, pained and haunted, flashed across his mind, and he pushed the picture away resolutely before it could lead to other images.

Nothing would ever be the same again. A bone-deep truth.

Moving as slowly as if underwater, Blair pulled the blankets all the way up to his chin and turned towards the light of the bedside lamp. He felt Jim with him-- very present and yet very far away; that which had been known all crumbled to dust, that which was unknown loose inside him, finding room in the interior space of his awareness.

Jim-- a comfort and a threat. Too close and too far. The need to connect and the need to be distant, the need to protect and the need to run-- Blair couldn't pick and choose, not when all his nerve endings were still sizzling, stunned with new knowledge and a low, dismayed feeling that maybe, just maybe, he should have somehow seen this coming.

Blair sighed and huddled deeper under the covers, ducking questions as he tossed restlessly.

He closed his eyes on a mystery. Trouble followed him down into darkness.

"Do you see?" The voice was not quite right but it was close, and it was easy enough for him to ignore the smaller differences as soft tones came at him from slow shadows moving, coalescing like a negative aura. It was always somehow both better and worse when he couldn't see its face.

"Yes." His chest hurt terribly, as if someone had reached inside and tugged ferociously at his heart.

Subtle whispers as it leaned forward, shining conviction from borrowed eyes. "Do you despair?"

Looking into those blank pits, so similar in everything except diamond-hard where they should be soft, there was no question. "Yes." He choked on the word, and the truth that came out with a deep shudder afterwards. " I despair. I want..."

Dark curse of a kiss, hot and wet and rough with a tight, mindnumbing edge to it-- wondering how many teeth there were in there. And then whispering, whispering; endearments rotted away with endless hunger, lips against his ear with the right shape but the wrong touch, burning him with strains of discordant melody. "Happiness is a warm gun."

He stopped breathing for a moment. Stopped altogether. He thought about it, saw it all the time now.

The ritual of care, the focus of attention and reverence required-- his mind was pretty much quiet in those moments; smoothly, blankly silent and free from everything except mellow appreciation of how well everything fit together, how silky the alloy was under his fingertips, how it gleamed in the light. Time passed around him unnoticed; hours drained away and funneled down into a nine-millimeter hole.

Occasionally, he thought of Sandburg. Independent and discrete and entirely disconnected from any of this-- which was as it should be, since it had nothing at all to do with him. Better that he was gone.

He hoped Blair was looking out for himself.

"Yes." Raw in his throat. Raw everywhere, now.

Then a feeding hush, rippling out into the empty air; only muteness, and quiet, and dark.

Incubus. Succubus.

The words sounded more tinged with romance than really seemed appropriate-- fantasy-fodder for some, apparently; but Blair would have bet that those people had never gotten a really good look at one of those goddamn wormy things in action.

He found that his natural abilities blessed him in two ways-- first of all, it got Ms. Lettinger to allow him into the University library significantly before the official opening time (the warmest Sandburg smile and a liberal use of her first name did that); and secondly, his long-established pattern of requesting bizarre reference materials spared him any strange or inquisitive looks-- just the usual amused smile and a complaisant 'don't you lead an interesting life!'

Yeah-- right now maybe just a bit too interesting. Blair sighed heavily as he settled into a chair at his normal corner table with a stack of books about two feet high.

And immediately proceeded to get frustrated-- this wasn't science, after all, it was myth; and myth was all fine and good and fascinating enough in its own way when you were talking about tribal mythology, but not when you were looking for answers to a problem that could probably open some weird door into hell and then shove you right through if you didn't play your cards right.

He'd felt hope at first-- succubus, incubus-- a sexual vampire that didn't drink blood, that drained 'life-force' instead of blood-- just naming the thing felt like some kind of accomplishment. Succubus females, incubus males-- the thing he was dealing with seemed to be both, but apparently that wasn't such a rarity on the 'cubus side of the question. An old-world excuse behind unexplained pregnancies, behind good boys being led astray from their doting sweethearts-- a spiced-up and slightly nastier version of the Siren myth.

He found stirring tales and chilling tales, tales of woe and heartbreak and obsession, tales that would have made very good reading around the fire on a tenth-grade campout-- but facts? Even pieces of facts? Anything he could base even the flimsiest theory on? Nope.

If it hadn't been Jim's life and maybe his own life on the line, he would have had a fine time. As it was, after three hours of increasingly hurried paging he was ready to scream.

The victims, the 'thralls', those held spellbound by nighttime orgiastic visits; died. They just wasted away, or sometimes took their own lives.

He read the words, and he considered it... and then his whole body twitched spasmodically as his mind showed him an all-too-vivid picture of Jim's tight, stern face-- Jim and his gun, cleaning, grimly cleaning-- wiping and polishing for hours without seeming to be aware at all of the world around him...

He'd accidentally jerked the book off the table when he'd twitched. He scooped it up off the floor quickly, almost guiltily, and paged through until he found his place again. If he wanted to help Jim, he needed to do this. He bent over the text with renewed resolution.

The thralls died, or killed themselves. True, they often reappeared later as lost, wailing apparitions; but somehow the idea of seeing a ghostly Jim fluttering vaporishly above his bed failed to pacify him. He finished another book without learning anything remarkably useful, and started on the next.

He'd requested 'everything pertinent', and that's what had been given to him. Currently he was whipping through an oversized, dusty tome written in Spanish, complete with terrible charcoal drawings of large-bosomed women in filmy dishabille being threatened by amorphous and extremely phallic shadows. His diligent fingers leafed through page after page; his eyes caught and translated the occasional word, but the sense he got of it was that it was just more of the same, except maybe rated 'NC-17' instead of 'R'. It occurred to him that if he'd found this particular book back when he first started college, he might have kept on with his Spanish classes.

All at once, a dark scribble under his blurring eyes snagged at him. His breath caught, but he'd already flipped ahead several pages and so he had to turn back, scanning faster and faster until he found the picture.

A chapter heading, done in the same heraldic and ornate script as the others. Under that another dreadful drawing-- but this one looked almost like a woman being crucified until he confirmed what his first glance had suggested-- that her outstretched arms were actually transfixed against a backdrop of wings. Black wings-- her own wings. Partly feathery and partly leathery and mostly vague except for the clear and cruelly drawn claws that sprouted from the ends. Her face was a cipher, blank and unemotional except for the suggestion of skull-like greed in the inky vacancies of her eyes. Blair felt a dull throb of pressure low in his stomach, and his mouth suddenly seemed as dry as the paper under his fingertips.

The chapter title was 'La Dragna'. The Dragon.

He started to read, but it was slow going-- the language seemed to be more formal and archaic than he was used to, and there were several words he couldn't translate at all. Despite the difficulty there was a hot, burning, itching sensation behind his eyes-- standard response to being close on the heels of some piece of information he needed, knowing that it was out there, the fiery tangibility of an answer.

But of course, he was dealing with a myth-- seemingly a very old one. He didn't get the illuminating solution he'd been hoping for, but for the first time there was a whisper, a suggestion of other things. A break in the pattern.

"The Dragon is subject to the laws of the physical shape she inhabits. A nobleman who had been in thrall to the Dragon, and had become sick unto death, was saved when a servant-girl trapped the Dragon with a ring of salt, and cut its head off right as it entered his bedchamber. For this good service the nobleman married her, thus she enriched the honor of her family and rid the land of a perilous scourge at the same time."

Subject to the laws of the physical shape it inhabits... Trapped it with a ring of salt? Cut its head off? He blinked, and in the instant of darkness he saw himself stalking... well, himself, maybe with that machete he'd never gotten to use on his last expedition...

Cut its head off. Oh right. Blair could see himself trying to explain that to Simon. He wiped a trace of sweat from his forehead, and kept reading.

"The Dragon thrives on darkness. What draws her to her victims is the food and drink she finds within the darkened soul. Without the necessary melancholy and anguish, she is unsatisfied. For this reason, she does not prey on the innocent."

Jim? A darkened soul? Blair wouldn't really have thought so, but then, apparently there were lots of things he didn't know about Jim. The thought of it shamed him as much as it embarrassed him. It pressed at his heart like an unwelcome touch.

There was little more of value, just a brief story about how the thing bushwhacked a man of God who had fallen from his faith. Not really a Jim kind of dynamic; at least, not so far as Blair knew.

And that was the end of the chapter. A quick review of the last three books yielded nothing more than what he already had. So-- the final result: just tidbits, scraps of information. A starting point. The problem was, where this would normally be the first step in a long, long process of researching, winnowing and tracking down the knowledge he wanted, he had a sneaking suspicion that if he went through the customary steps it would be way too late for Jim by the time he'd gotten all the pieces together. Like, say, three months too late.

So-- what was he supposed to do now? Go buy a jumbo bag of salt? Go home to Jim, tell him to sit tight, and then grab the biggest knife he could find and wait for eleven o'clock to roll around? He bit his lower lip in frustration-- he needed to know, he needed something to hang a plan of action on besides vague theories and information gleaned from a book of fairy tales. If he went into this without sufficient preparation, it was very likely that both he and Jim would have to pay the price.

Blair sighed deeply, closed the book, and put his burning head down on its smooth leather cover. There had to be something else. Time. Time and information-- the two things he needed, the two things that were in short supply. The time factor he couldn't really do anything about. The information part of it...

And then it hit him, with that strange, flipping sense of reversal that came whenever he managed to see a problem from a whole new angle-- he might not have much information about the thing, but he did have a fair amount stored up about Jim.

At first, he dismissed it out of hand-- the events of the past day had proven to him beyond the shadow of a doubt that he didn't have much information about Jim; in fact, from all appearances, he'd been missing some chunks of Ellison lore that were pretty goddamn huge.

But... that wasn't really true. He knew it-- his face flushed hot under the burden of that awareness. He had some new information about Jim, yes; but he hadn't been... he hadn't yet... he hadn't really contemplated that new knowledge, had he? He hadn't considered what use could be made of it.

No, he hadn't. In fact, he'd kind of tried to ignore it, at least, everything except the basic fact, which he'd accepted, but hadn't thought about. Not really.

His face felt like it was on fire. He'd seen Jim being... taken by... he'd seen something he never expected to see. Never. Jim-- that way. Oh god...

Even his recent research hadn't quite brought it home to him-- the hook, the snare, the appeal of the incubus lies in its ability to take on the appearance of your heart's desire, the one person the thrall can't turn away from. Pretty much everything he'd read had mentioned it, but somehow his mind had managed to sort of gloss right over that without a second thought.

Until just now.

Jim's heart's desire. Imagine that. His own heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in the frozen tips of his fingers.

Blair shook his head a little, let his hair fall down around his blazing face, and closed his eyes tight; trying to shut it away, trying to hide.

And it occurred to him, with the solidity of an impossible yet unavoidable conviction, that if he hid himself away from this, Jim would die. His stomach folded in on itself.

He didn't want Jim to die.

He wasn't going to let Jim die. No way. He pulled himself upright, stared into the warm, streaky sunshine slanting in through the tall library windows, and tried to stop himself from shaking. He was not going to let Jim die. End of story. And that meant... that meant...

That meant, when he left this place, that he'd better be ready to do more than just buy a bag of goddamn salt.

Salt. Tears in his eyes. Fear in his belly. And conviction.

To give Jim... the one thing he couldn't turn away from.

The sunshine prismed, kaleidoscoped, became a washing shift of brilliance, easily diffuse, at once terrible and beautiful. Light. Naomi had always told him he was 'a light soul'. A light soul.

And an old lesson; perhaps the first he'd ever really learned-- he didn't need to keep it all to himself, did he? Good things were meant to be shared freely.

Friends share.

It took the last of his cash to get the ten-pound bag of salt, but, as of last night, 'better safe than sorry' had taken on a whole new meaning. He bought the salt, and dug through his pockets for pennies at the checkout stand.

Even with his new conviction, he couldn't help but feel the lack of certainty-- was he doing the right thing, here? There was no way to know. Just the thought of it created what felt like electric current running under his skin-- unavoidable and comprehensive, jittering through him like an incessant alarm. He felt... too much. Much too much.

It occurred to him as he walked to his car that probably, knowing Jim, he'd have an uphill battle all the way. A struggle he didn't want to have, and a hoped-for result that he couldn't count on. He'd have to push, and probably push hard, and still he didn't have the faintest clue whether it would work or not...

But, as much as he didn't want to admit it, it felt right. It felt right in his bones, regardless of how it felt in his mind. His mouth was dry as dust, and his heart pounded in his throat, and he had to keep swallowing, but messages were coming in from lower centers in his body, the places of instinct; telling him that he needed Jim with him, with him and freed from whatever hold that thing had gotten on him. And that he could do something about that.

When he reached the loft and saw Jim's car parked in its usual spot, his stomach unknotted itself a little even while his heart sped up-- he'd been afraid that Jim might be gone, but of course the fact that he wasn't meant that there was nothing else to do but... go ahead.

Go ahead. Just those two words alone, without even contemplating what he was about to go ahead with, were enough to make his breath catch in his throat.

And still, part of him felt like he should have known. Surprise wasn't really a factor. The scientist part of him was fascinated, even as the friend part of him wished desperately that this particular fact about Jim had never come to light. Truths and lies, secrets and revelations. Low, fluttering fear in the pit of his stomach.

Truths and lies... he was ready to take on both; to face Jim with the truth of what he knew, and to (please god) lie convincingly enough that this would be easy, that they could just get it over with and then both of them could be on the same side again, could work together on some way to put an end to this terrible situation.

He was ready to do whatever he had to in order to get Jim through this. He was ready for this whole mess to be over.

He was... at the door.

Which was unlocked-- another unheard-of Ellison deviation. He let it go, and walked in.

And, for the first time in days, met Jim's eyes. Surprised eyes, wide with astonishment even though they were more deep-set and hollowed than he'd ever seen them. The sight of it twisted something deep in his chest, seeming somehow much more important than the fact that Jim was sitting on the couch cleaning his gun (again), and was stark naked.

He tried a smile. A gentle smile, nonthreatening. "So, Jim-- is this generally what you do when I'm not around? Weapon comparison?"

Blair saw the shutters beginning to slide into place, saw that Jim was about to go AWOL on him again-- reaching hurriedly for the blanket across the back of the couch, his gun still clenched tight in one hand. "Jim-- stop. Stop right there."

Not a request or a game, but a demand. Jim did stop, but even from the other side of the room Blair could see fine tremors in his musculature, and a deep flush that stained his skin all the way down to his chest. Blair empathized. Deeply. He put the bag of salt down on the counter, and then looked as calmly as he could into Jim's haunted, panicked eyes.

"Just put the gun down, Jim." He watched as Jim obeyed him, never looking away as he leaned forward gradually and placed the gun on the coffee table. Blair nodded and started walking forward slowly, shedding his jacket as he went. "You don't need the gun. I know, man; I know what you're thinking about doing with it, and it's just not gonna happen--"

"Sandburg--" Jim's voice was strained, and even so it was almost too low to hear. Blair shushed him absently.

"Don't even bother." He had no idea where any of this was coming from, really; but he had his eyes fixed on Jim and was running on instinct from moment to moment; animal response. "I know everything, Jim; and this is where it ends--"

"Chief, stop it." Blair had started on his shirt now, stripping off as calmly and casually as if he wasn't shaking himself to pieces inside. He ignored Jim's words, and just kept moving closer. "You don't... you don't know what you're doing..."

"No," Blair agreed, keeping his voice down to keep the tremors out of it as much as possible. "But you can help me with that." He dropped his shirt on the floor and opened his belt, directly in front of Jim now; his heart pounding fiercely when he saw the terrified and hungry way Jim was staring at his hands.

A sight he'd never thought to see-- Jim actually afraid of him, shrinking back into the couch cushions as if he was trying to disappear into them. That gave him the strength to go on, somehow; that old dynamic between them that insisted that one of them be strong whenever the other couldn't be.

Blair let his pants drop to the floor, and kicked them aside. He'd been fully, almost painfully erect since the instant he started removing his shirt, and with only his boxers on and Jim's eyes glued to his groin, there was pretty much no guesswork left to do. It was an odd, terribly strange moment of confrontation-- the look of longing on Jim's face meant triumph, and while that was good, that was a good thing; it still made him sting and itch with sweat, every inch of him prickling with awareness of what he'd walked into, here.

"Jim." That, at least, was still easy-- the soft, caring tone he used to soothe, to comfort. He reached out and took Jim's hand, surprised and moved at how much that simple touch meant to him, how much reason it gave him for what he was doing right now. He pressed the hand to his naked chest, and only barely refrained from a hiss of surprise at how hot it was. "This is me-- the real me. Really me, man. I'm right here."

"Really you..." Jim echoed softly, and Blair knew (without knowing how he knew), that somehow he'd managed to slip right under Jim's radar; that instinct had led him true, and he'd found the right words, the right manner, the right way to sneak past all those ferocious guardians that Jim usually kept in such vigilant watch around himself. For the first time ever Jim was utterly, totally open to him-- and the weight and awareness of how priceless that was, how incredibly extraordinary it was to see Jim Ellison without his defenses keeping him carefully shut away-- that pulled at him, tugged him right past the place where fear would have made him hesitate, drew him right down onto the couch and around Jim like there was nothing easier in the world.

He covered Jim's body with his own, put his arms around him and rested gently in the hollow of his neck, hugging; pressing close. "Really me," he repeated softly, feeling Jim's shivers even more keenly than his own; "really me and you, Jim. Right here."

"Blair..." Jim said it softly, wonderingly, like a man held suspended in awe, gazing at some great mystery revealed. Blair felt a soft, hesitant stroke against the back of his head. "Are you sure?"

And then Blair was glad of their closeness, glad that he had someplace to hide his flushed, burning face as he clung to Jim with all the fervor that friendship and love could muster, the most earnest truth he could bring to his voice as he answered, "Yes."

Throughout the course of his adult life and his manifold, headlong laps through the dating pool, Blair had (upon rare occasions) found himself in a situation at the end of a date, where for whatever reason his own interest in gratification had waned significantly, but his companion's hadn't.

Standard protocol for these infrequent episodes was that he'd go through with it anyway-- it was simpler, after all, than having to explain why he didn't want to. He would perform as thoroughly and enthusiastically as if his heart had really been in it (easy enough to do; mind-over-matter and all that), make sure that his partner had a good time, and then say his final goodbye with a light heart and the mellow satisfaction of a job well done. He didn't think of it as lying. It was for a good cause, after all, and a way to turn a possibly unpleasant situation into something where everybody got to go away happy-- just like magic.

And he had intended, with a few minor changes, to work that same magic on Jim. There was absolutely no question about the fact that he loved Jim. There was no question that Jim was dearer to him than anybody else on the planet, with the possible exception of Naomi. And Blair had thought, with a little of that mind-over-matter magic and a continual recollection that he loved this guy, that he'd be able to take this last step without coming apart at the seams.

His intention, however; for all that it was important, shattered like a windshield under a hail of bullets the very first time that Jim placed tender, gentle hands on either side of his face and drew him into a kiss that brutalized his mouth with an unbelievable intensity of need. It hit him like an enormous weight dropping solidly onto his chest that this was not somebody who he could just say good-night to afterwards and then forget; this was his best friend and partner, somebody who didn't need Blair Sandburg's patented let-me-show-you-a-good-time bullshit, but needed Blair Sandburg.

Jim moaned softly against his tongue. Blair just held on, stripped of everything except his conviction that, no matter what, he loved Jim.

His eyes burned at that. How could he have thought that he'd get away with this? Good god, the Martyrdom of Blair Sandburg-- never mind the thing they had yet to face, he'd be damn lucky if Jim didn't kill him afterwards.

He kept his eyes closed as Jim eased out from under him, as Jim's hands guided him gently onto his back. Those hands were his touchstone, his connection with the real world as his heart speeded to a frantic pace and his own rushed breathing made him dizzy. He got even dizzier when his boxers slid away under the influence of those hands. Strong hands-- he needed that. He would touch them with his own, encourage them-- in a moment...

Wet, scorching heat enveloped his erection (that perfectly serviceable erection that he'd summoned into existence), and his whole body twitched convulsively. He gasped, and before he could stop himself he let go of a low cry of surprise and then Jim groaned, a deep vibration of mouth and throat while the heat around him sank lower and took more and then-- and then-- oh...

Then, he had a problem. Blair went from trembling to frantic shivering to uncontrollable shuddering and he couldn't stop the sounds coming out of his mouth because this sure was a 'voyage of discovery', all right, and one of the things he was currently discovering was that Jim was very good at this-- whether it was years of practice or just natural aptitude he didn't know, but he'd have to put his money on practice because this went beyond aptitude and straight into genius, oh god... Jim was wet and welcoming and way down on him, and stroking him in a way he'd never felt before-- he would have remembered... he would have remembered this... he would have remembered this... because this was unforgettable.

And he needed something to do with his hands besides try to tear apart the couch cushions so he rested them on Jim's head-- not pushing; there was no need to push because Jim had all the up-and-down details covered, well, well covered; and Blair was losing himself, losing everything, losing awareness of every fucking thing in the universe that didn't have to do with Jim's stunning, incredible, beautiful mouth. He heard himself sobbing, from very far away. He sincerely hoped that Jim knew that meant he was having a nice time.

Those hands, the hands that had kept him anchored only minutes before, he'd thought he'd known the strength in Jim's capable hands but here was another bit of discovery for him-- Jim's hands were warm and firm and cupping his ass now, lifting him up to get more of him, pulling him deeper and deeper, rougher and rougher into that wicked, blinding pleasure-- which was very considerate of Jim, because Blair sure as hell couldn't move a single muscle on his own.

He had never, in all of his life, felt anything like this before, and that was extremely distressing because in about four seconds he was going to come, and given what the buildup had been like, he thought coming in Jim's mouth just might kill him. Not that he was going to let that stop him. Oh no. Oh yes. Oh yes. Oh yes oh-oh-oh...

He didn't die from it, but he got about as close as he cared to get until he was about, say, ninety or so. He did scream loudly enough to hurt his own ears-- Jim's name, the only prayer he knew in that moment, over and over as Jim drank him down and he kept coming, spurting hot blissful wet release deep into that welcoming place, into Jim, straight down Jim's throat until he was so goddamn empty and he felt so fucking good that he hurt.

He opened his eyes and found that it made no difference, either way everything was just one blazing, shifting whirl of color. He couldn't get enough air. He hurt ecstatically, his body had given up on solid form and had melted into liquid that was going to be absorbed into the couch any moment now, and he still had a problem.

The problem was, he managed to think with the part of his brain that hadn't evaporated yet; that just a short while ago he'd been ashamed of himself for being a martyr. But most martyrdoms don't consist of suffering through having your best friend give you the blowjob of a lifetime, right? The beneficiary of that particular happenstance wouldn't exactly be called a 'martyr', would he? You couldn't really call him a 'martyr'. You'd have to call him something like...

He sighed. Petted Jim's head. Felt his bones melt a little more.

Fucked. Irretrievably and irrevocably fucked. Or, possibly, the luckiest bastard on the face of the earth.

He sighed again. Gave up on petting altogether and just pulled Jim's head as close as he could get it.

One of those two. He wasn't sure which. He didn't really want to think about it right now.

But, whichever it was, either way, he was pretty sure he had a problem.

Jim was gasping-- no, that wasn't gasping, that wasn't what gasping sounded like. Jim was whooping.

At first, that seemed perfectly understandable. After all, Jim had just done his level best to throttle himself on the biggest, hardest eight inches Blair had ever managed to produce.

But it went on for a while.

"Jim?" he asked softly, wondering if he'd done something... or if Jim had somehow managed to really hurt himself. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Jim's arms snaked in out of nowhere and circled his waist, and he touched Jim's face where it pressed hard against his sternum and there was wetness there, and mild fear became alarm in that split second and so he just held Jim close, as close as he could.

"You taste..." Jim murmured into his chest, very low, "and smell... like you. It's right. It's you-- you smell like you."

Perhaps not the most erudite explanation, but he pretty much got the gist. He had to swallow around the lump in his throat. "Oh. Yeah."

And after that, he didn't really know what to say. 'Thanks' seemed... well, insufficient. 'Your turn now?' seemed wrong too, and anyway-- how could he possibly measure up, even if in this particular moment the very idea of it wasn't exactly distasteful?

So he just let the quiet be for a few moments, soaked it in while he pondered the fact that now, not only would he never see Jim the same way again (like, understatement of the century), but actually nothing seemed to be the same. A life seen through a lens of change-- a subtle, but global difference. Pretty amazing. If he wasn't so busy tripping out on afterglow, he'd probably be taking notes.

Words floated through his mind, and he realized with sleepy surprise that they were the right words, that these were the words he'd been looking for. "Jim?" He could barely hear his own voice, but he knew that Jim would hear him. "Jim... I'd like to touch you."

A chuckle drifted up to him, and he absorbed it like water into hot sand-- how long had it been, anyway, since he'd heard Jim laugh at all? "Well, Chief, okay; but I've got to tell you-- if you're looking to reciprocate, you're going to be flogging a dead horse. So to speak."

Hmm. Interesting. A dozen questions immediately occurred to him, but he didn't think he could ask any of them without blushing or possibly even stammering, so he just held onto them. They led, however, to the one question he really needed to have the answer to. "You're not... I need to know... you're all done with thinking about... that whole... gun thing, right?"

Just saying it out loud brought it truly home to him, how one day very soon he might have come home to find Jim with his gun in his hand and his brains spattered everywhere. His hands tightened reflexively, pulling Jim's solid weight hard against him. (Alive. Jim's alive, right now.)

"We'll talk about all that," Jim said slowly, not sounding anywhere near as sure as Blair needed him to be. "First I'm going to take a shower-- I'm pretty much a mess, here."

Blair was pleased to find that his days of backing off from Jim's reticence were over. "Oh no you don't," he said calmly as Jim tried to pull away, yanking the other man back to him fiercely. "Just tell me that we're together on this-- just that much, man; you can tell me that." He wondered vaguely if he was going to make a new career out of pushing Jim around. He seemed to have a natural aptitude for it.

"On this--" It sounded almost as if Jim begrudged the words. "Yeah, Chief, we're together on it. Can I have my shoulders back now?"

"Asshole." He meant it affectionately. Jim chuckled again. Blair let go.

"Sweet-talker. Always thought you'd be a romantic bastard." The words and the fact that Jim was standing over him naked and streaked with sweat and various other fluids made his mind jump tracks once more, and he felt himself blushing. What the hell was he supposed to do now?

But apparently Jim could take a hint, just from a blush. "We'll talk. Don't sweat it, Sandburg. See you in a few."

And then he was gone. Blair surprised himself yet again by managing to sit up, just so he could watch Jim walk away. Well, a certain part of Jim, anyway. When he realized what he was doing his whole body blossomed with renewed heat, and he ducked his face down into his chest and wrapped his arms around his knees. The sexual obsession problems were mounting up, here-- as if he didn't already have enough of those on his hands...

The sunlight coming in through the windows suddenly seemed too hot on his skin, and it was abruptly just too weird to be naked and sticky on the couch while Jim was... after Jim had... Blair got up; wobbling a little on legs that still hadn't quite remembered the concept of vertical movement, and gathered up his scattered clothing on the way to his room to get a bathrobe.

Jim had done what Jim had done. Blair hadn't exactly found it to be an ordeal. He would figure out the rest later.

Blair pushed his empty plate away, shifted restlessly, and wondered why he'd never found the kitchen chairs uncomfortable before. He then promptly ordered himself not to answer that question.

Damn. He thought he'd be relieved by this, by the fact that finally, they were going to talk about it.

And he was, a little.

He'd been relieved when he came back into the living room after his turn in the shower, and found Jim scarfing down some leftover Chinese-- Jim looked much better than he had before; almost like his old self. There were still shadows under his eyes, but overall he looked no worse than he did after, say, a twenty-four hour shift during which the coffee machine had been on the fritz.

And Jim had saved some leftovers for him, and Jim was ready to talk, and all of that was good, but the problem was that they had lots of things that needed to be discussed, and the whole mess couldn't really be separated out into component parts so that maybe they could leave the uncomfortable bits for later. It was pretty much all or nothing.

And Blair had had his fill of nothing, thank you very much.

"So," he began, watching as Jim used his fork to draw idle patterns in a stray pool of soy sauce; "you want a beer?"

Jim looked at him. Not quite his old self. That haunted look had resurfaced, although it wasn't as bad as it had been before. "Yeah. That'd be good. Thanks."

He got two. While he was standing in front of the counter and wrestling with one of the caps that would not come along quietly, Jim spoke again.

"It actually started that first time we talked to her, I think."

Blair broke out in goosebumps. It wasn't the words themselves so much as the fact that they'd been spoken-- that this was it, the two of them, finally talking about this together. He hadn't even had to drag Jim to the point-- which made him wonder, with sudden dismay, whether he was really ready to hear all this. "Yeah?" He handed Jim one of the bottles and sat down.

Jim took it without looking at him. "Yeah." He sighed; the sigh of a man about to shoulder a heavy burden. "Everything was fine, but then, when I looked in her eyes, all of a sudden it was like she was talking to me, just to me, inside my head. And I didn't know what she was talking about but I knew it was something I wanted, something important."

Blair nodded, unwilling to interrupt, but Jim never looked up from his contemplation of his empty plate. "And then you were shaking me," he continued quietly, "and then I was out of it but I felt like I wasn't, if you know what I mean. I felt... embarrassed, and kind of like I'd missed something, but I never connected it with her at all-- I thought I'd just zoned out a little, like you said."

Jim shrugged. "The next day, when I saw her, I had nothing on my mind except to ask her if she'd seen anyone around with long reddish-blond hair. She asked me in, and I said no--"

Jim looked at him then, and Blair felt the weight, the caution in his gaze. "I'm sure I said no, Chief; but then it occurred to me that I needed to talk to her, that we'd had some kind of conversation that wasn't finished." Blair nodded again. His fingers were tingling against the icy bottle he held.

A small, sad smile from Jim. "It's funny, but-- I think, if it hadn't been for the weird shit I've been through with my senses, I would have been a lot more suspicious. I mean-- I know I lost time that day, but I just put it down to a glitch in my senses, and left it at that. Now, I can remember just a little..." The smile vanished all at once, and Blair saw a shadow, just a hint of that deep terror that had scared him so badly before. His stomach turned over uneasily. Jim looked away.

"I thought I was hallucinating." His voice had deepened but lost almost all volume; Blair had to lean forward to hear him. "I remember that I thought I must be hallucinating, because something was crawling over me; crawling all over and prying, picking, digging inside me..."

Jim shivered, his knuckles white where they wrapped around the neck of his beer. Blair's mouth was suddenly sour with horror.

"But after, after it was over, I didn't remember any of it. I didn't want to remember." Jim looked at him again, and Blair suddenly understood that at least part of what had driven Jim towards thoughts of suicide was that violation, that terrible and unstoppable rape of what was inside him. Given who Jim was, it seemed almost inevitable. "And that night I couldn't sleep-- I kept feeling like someone was watching me."

Blair opened his mouth to speak, but Jim shook his head. "Let me get this out, I... I just need to get it out of me." Blair subsided and watched Jim sip his beer. He put his hands in his lap so that Jim wouldn't see the way they were shaking.

"The next day, I kept feeling like... like I'd forgotten something, but I didn't know what it was. I went to Letier's apartment, and when I came out she was there, and then..." Jim rubbed his eyes briefly. "She started talking to me, and it was just like before-- like there was something she had to say that was important for me to hear. Then she suggested dinner, and that was totally not what I had in mind but I just... I don't know, I kept waiting for it, for what I was there for, you know? And then I called you, and I remember being annoyed with you about something but by the time I hung up I didn't remember what it was anymore. And then she said that she'd make dinner, and I didn't want to go into her apartment but I told myself I was being stupid and I just went--"

Blair saw Jim's throat work convulsively, and he wondered if he maybe should get a bowl or a trashcan or something, but he stayed put. His head was swimming.

Jim had scrunched his eyes shut tight, and he was holding onto his temples as if he was afraid he might fly apart. His voice was a raw murmur. "I just went in. She told me she had something to show me and then I knew that was it, that was the thing I'd been waiting for; and I followed her into her bedroom and she told me to close the door and I did, and by the time I turned around she was naked, but she wasn't her anymore, she was... she looked like you."

Jim buried his face in his hands. Blair understood. Easier maybe, for right now, if they didn't look at each other. "And the hell of it was that I was right, I had been waiting for it-- God, it felt like I'd been waiting my whole fucking life, to see you like that and to have you put your arms around me-- that first moment I felt... I felt like I would have killed for it, just to have you there like that, wanting--"

The flow of words were interrupted by a sharp gasp for air, and Blair jumped. His stomach was a mess of dismay and pity and terrible, terrible grief; and he hoped Jim was almost done because, really, he didn't know how much more of this he could take.

"So, when she... he... it started to change on me, started... hurting me, I had nothing left, you know? I mean, there was nothing, nothing in me that could stand against... whatever it wanted."

Jim surfaced, eyes red-rimmed and bleary, and Blair found that after all this time of trying hard to keep himself quiet and let Jim go through it, he'd reached an awful moment where he didn't know what to say.

But as it turned out, Jim wasn't finished yet. "And that's why, the next morning when I saw you, when you came into the station, I didn't-- I couldn't look at you. I couldn't look at you when just an hour before I'd been... with... someone who looked just like you."

Jim sighed, and put his head down on the table, and Blair saw tension seeping out of him-- his shoulders lowered perceptibly from their previously hunched, knotted mass. The first of it (and maybe, if they were lucky, the worst of it), had been said.

So why did he still feel so scared?

Even as he asked himself, he knew it for the stupid question it was. He was scared because the next part, the next step, was up to him.

He got up out of his chair quietly, went to Jim, and held him. He had to make himself do it-- Jim's story had terrified him, the idea of what Jim had been through with that thing, but the admission, the need Jim had for him, terrified him more. He couldn't remember anyone ever needing him that badly. Ever.

Jim allowed himself to be held easily enough, but standing above him Blair could see lines of unease marring his face. The words in the book he'd read about a 'darkened soul' came back to him, and for the first time it wasn't so very difficult to connect them with Jim.

"It's okay," he began softly, feeling like any words he had to offer were lame and futile against that kind of darkness. "It's okay, Jim. I'm here. I'm here for you, man." Jim was warm and heavy in his arms, a welcome weight against his stomach; and Blair sighed a little as he realized that no matter what, no matter what happened between them now or in the future, it would always feel good to hold Jim like this.

"Yeah," Jim mumbled, words muffled since his face was pressed tight against Blair's t-shirt, "I know. I know you are."

Blair couldn't think of anything else to say, so he just held Jim a little tighter. Between the new relief and the new increase in his own tension he felt terribly conflicted-- afraid of Jim, afraid of himself; and all along he'd felt so sure that if he could just get this problem out into the open between them everything would fall into place. All he could do was feel Jim's giving presence in his arms; Jim relaxing into him, resting on him, trusting him...

And then, in a moment of clarity very similar to the one he'd had earlier in the library, a moment where everything suddenly seemed to stand forth before him in a perfectly simple and elegant path, he knew what came next. He stood up straighter, smoothed his hands in a gentle slope down to strong, muscular shoulders. "Jim, I want you to come with me." The words were heavy, falling from his mouth. His ears were full of the low, hissing thud of his own heartbeat.

Jim's dark soul. Jim's need. Jim had been carved open, had had a dark thing from outside mesh with his darkness within-- Blair saw the hook in his mind, rusted and barbed and bloody, buried deep, almost impossible to extract.

But not entirely impossible. His hands were shaking again.

"Go with you?" Jim had tensed up again under his touch, just a little. "We can't... I don't think running away is going to work, Chief--"

"Do you trust me?" He didn't know he was going to ask the question. It had come straight from that gut-deep place of instinct-- he had hooks of his own, after all.

Jim's arms came around his waist, an immediate answer. "What kind of asshole question is that?" Whispered soft against his t-shirt.

Blair smiled. He couldn't help it. He felt the connection between them at moments like this-- always tinged with surprise, that he would do this, that he had somehow managed to find this in his life. He'd always known that it meant something, but he'd never known what. Now he knew. "The kind of asshole question I'd ask before taking you to bed."

He'd been afraid that Jim might balk on him, but the arms around him only tightened a little, and he felt a soft kiss against his sternum. It made his stomach flutter madly. "Well jeez, Casanova-- as hard as it is not to get swept off my feet by your charm, there; it seems to me that maybe there's a little problem we should take care of first--"

Despite the ease of the words he felt Jim's fear, heard it in a soft whisper of tension behind the casual response. His hands moved automatically, worked at unwilling muscles, tilted the other man's head back until their eyes met. Jim's eyes were... deep. So very deep. "That's just it, Jim;" he said softly, hoping desperately that his own fear didn't show on his face. "I believe... I think... this is it-- this is the way to take care of it. The first step. I think we need to do this--"

"Look, Sandburg;" and just as fast as that Jim had shuttered himself away again-- still meeting his eyes but so distant, so careful, so reasonable that Blair felt icy tendrils of dread slither through his chest and leach out the warmth that had been there. "I don't know what kind of point you're trying to prove here--"

"Oh, you don't?" The sense of cold apprehension vaporized immediately under a wave of righteous heat. As quickly as Jim had shifted, now Blair felt himself slipping with the same terrifying speed, skidding headlong into the anger that was born of fear whenever Jim shut him out like this-- that anger he'd been carrying for what seemed like years. He clamped his jaw shut tight for a moment before he spoke, almost relishing the warmth of it. "You don't know? Well, then I'll have to clarify a little, man."

He let go, pulled free of Jim's arms and whirled, strode purposefully to the coffee table and snatched up Jim's gun. It felt cold and oily and deadly in his hands, and he hated touching it-- it made his mouth flood immediately with the sharp flavor of panic.

He swallowed, wincing, and brought the weapon back to the kitchen table.

Placed it resolutely in front of Jim, and stepped away.

"Look at it, Jim," he insisted, feeling all the fierceness of his own frustrated pain; "take a good look at that fucking thing and then tell me whether or not it still has a hold on you-- tell me the truth about it-- is it calling you? Do you want it? Do you want to touch it and hold it and just fall right into that goddamn trance you go into every time you pick it up?" He was out of breath, panting, shaking; watching Jim stare at the gun as if it were some kind of venomous snake.

A moment of silence, in which he listened hard for the sound of Jim's answer.

No answer.

"Do you?" He almost didn't recognize his own voice, he sounded so furious.

And then Jim breaking, shaking visibly, covering his face with his hands again, shutting out everything. "Yes." Coughed out soft and sorry. Very sadly sorry. It sent a lance of fear straight through him.

"Right. Over my dead body, Jim. Like hell." It amazed him, how easy it was to fight when the enemy was a known quantity. How clear and simple it all was. And on the heels of that an echo of his earlier faith; a bright flame of conviction deep in his chest that said this was right.

He reached out, touched Jim's shoulder. Jim leaned away from him, twisted away, but he held on.

He held on.

"Come with me."

The first sign he had that maybe he wasn't quite as in control as he thought he was came five minutes later, when he peeled Jim's shirt slowly away from broad, muscular shoulders and realized abruptly that his own dick was as hard as a rock.

No command performance, either-- just pure body-memory, a memory that felt like it was threatening to overwhelm him. Jim did this to him-- his mind might be unconvinced, but as far as his body was concerned, the loveliest long-stemmed co-ed had nothing on Jim Ellison.

He pushed that thought down; pushed it down hard. This was about Jim, for Jim, not himself. He'd deal with his own mess later. Much later. Some time later when he didn't have to worry about all these different varieties of fear.

Jim didn't make it any easier; but, Blair had to admit, he didn't make it as difficult as he could have if he'd really put his mind to it. Jim was mute and shaky and not ostensibly unwilling; he followed Blair's lead easily enough-- something that had the flavor of a bad joke, or would have had if it weren't so goddamn scary and sad. In Jim's tightly controlled breath, in his clenched hands, in the way he shuddered every time he was touched, Blair sensed Jim's need of him-- like some big animal inside Jim that was leashed but straining, howling crazy and ravenous and held at bay by only the slenderest margin.

And actually, that didn't scare him quite as much as maybe it should have-- after all, if Jim snapped, if Jim bore down on him with all the urgency bred of what was chewing him to pieces inside... well, that would take matters nicely out of Blair's hands, wouldn't it?

That would make things much simpler.

But Jim, in his naturally infuriating way, didn't snap. In the meantime, Blair felt the current responsibility on his shoulders as an nebulous but cumbersome burden, a burden he largely tried to ignore as he moved forward with solemn, insistent precision. It wasn't easy. He kept getting distracted by the scholarly part of his brain, which was utterly fascinated by the way his body got turned on and stayed turned on, even while his mind was blurring between frustration and dire apprehension, both of which were light-years away from anything he thought of as arousing.

He sincerely hoped that his external performance betrayed none of this. He worked hard to maintain the appearance of deliberate, affectionate calm-- he got both Jim and himself gradually out of their clothes, made sure to touch Jim and tell him how beautiful he was (not a stretch-- Jim was, after all, beautiful); and kissed Jim deeply, deeply-- with all the passion that his heart and body could come up with, for all that his mind was otherwise engaged.

And Jim took it, took him, silently; accommodated his tongue and breath and touches with none of that frantic desperation that had made it so easy last time. Trembling and inert he began, and trembling and inert he remained as Blair took one methodical step after another.

Blair's mind, when it wasn't busy hovering on the edge of panic or taking notes on some of the more interesting ramifications of what he was doing, was busy recalling in acute detail a conversation he'd had two years ago with a T.A. who had only stayed at Rainier for one summer session. Kyle Anderson had been bright, possessed of a wicked sense of humor that made him very easy to get along with, and openly gay. One sultry night under the dual influences of knowledge of Kyle's impending departure and overindulgence in cinnamon Schnapps, Blair had asked and Kyle had answered; questions that began generally enough but eventually circled down to specifics as Blair went about his usual system of information gathering, and confirmed Kyle's hooted conviction that he was 'a nosy little fuck'.

One conversation. One very silly, very drunken conversation, that had happened over two years ago. The sum total of his data. He hoped to God that Kyle had known what he was talking about.

So of course, when Jim gasped out "Blair, wait;" Blair immediately stopped what he was doing, even though he was at that very moment mentally congratulating himself on having finally geared himself up to what he thought of as 'the sticking point'.

"What is it, Jim?" he asked quietly in response, holding his newly sheathed erection in one hand as if it might fly away from him if he let go of it. He wasn't afraid at all of losing his hard-on, however; just his nerve.

Jim looked at him, stared up at him from flat on his back, laid out and vulnerable, his body shaking, his voice shaking. "I don't think I can do this."

'Oh good, me either' was what Blair meant to say, just back off from this idea and try something else, something sane, but what came out of his mouth was, "You can do this, Jim. I want... I want you with me. Be with me."

And Jim's face gentled just a little, melted a little at the words he apparently needed to hear, and his hands came up, up, slowly up; and cupped Blair's face; and Blair's heart lurched at the tenderness of that, at the reverence in it, at the trust.

And he felt Jim's tremors fade away even as his own began, and Jim's voice didn't shake at all as he answered. "Yeah, okay."

Yeah, okay-- there was this fact, right? Just a fact of life. In fact, the fact of life, when he stopped to think about it-- discovered sometime in his eleventh summer, and pretty much his constant companion ever since: if your dick gets hard and you put it someplace and move it around, it feels good; and if you keep going then it feels really good, and then you're done and then you get to change the sheets before your mom finds out.

Just a fact of life. Of course, a new wrinkle or two had shown up since then-- like adding other people into the equation, which led to the discovery of several new and wonderful places to put a hard dick-- but the basic principle remained the same.

And yes, as an adult he'd come to think of himself as fairly sexually sophisticated, as someone who clearly understood that there were forces at work during sex beyond the dick/place to put it dynamic. The spiritual side of sex (linked forever in his mind, though he didn't know it, with the 'grown-up' side of sex); the mystical-human-connection sort of stuff. Yeah. Okay. Basic principle with some human connection thrown in for good measure. Got it.

But--

But, for all that he'd fucked around with Tantric sex and kundalini yoga sex and the Kama Sutra and the Joy of Sex and the wonders of hard dicks and all the miraculous places you could put them, he'd somehow managed to entirely miss out on the fact that part of him, given the right set of circumstances, had the capacity to be a totally out-of-control, fucking ravenous sexual beast.

It was, needless to say, quite a surprise. A surprise immediately overwhelmed by the even bigger surprise that, apparently, the 'right set of circumstances' involved being in Jim's ass. What he'd expected was nowhere to be found-- he'd expected that he'd put his dick someplace that would feel good, and then he'd try to make Jim feel good, and then it would be over. As simple as that; he'd been prepared for that. Nervous, but prepared.

He was not prepared to go from thinking 'I don't believe I'm doing this' to 'hey, I think I can do this' to 'I never, ever ever want to stop doing this' in the space of about thirty seconds. Which is what happened.

The first time that his head rolled back and he lost it, lost control of the rough, urgent groan that had been suffocating him, the first time his hips snapped hard and he thrust deep into that place he was suddenly so desperate to be, Jim came under him. Jim came, in fact, all over him; something that he might have amused him or annoyed him or even repulsed him at some other time, but which right now just made him fucking crazy.

"Oh--" was pretty much all he managed at that moment, too busy watching Jim, watching Jim give him this lifesaving thing he'd never known he wanted. Jim gave, offered, so beautifully, moaning his name, and that stirred something deep within him, something powerful, and he suddenly understood exactly what Jim meant when he'd said that he felt like he would have killed for this.

His hands slid of their own accord, found Jim's shoulders and pinned him there.

He didn't even try to find a pace-- he didn't have to; the pace found him. Jim's heartbeat, his own heartbeat, his throbbing, aching cock which absolutely couldn't get enough-- it was all his rhythm, their rhythm; something he made to beat down any barrier between them while he ploughed into Jim's body, rocked himself as deep as he could go. Every time Jim arched up into him it made him gasp, made him push a little harder, a little faster. When he couldn't stand it anymore he leaned down and devoured Jim's mouth, tonguefucked him hard until the lips under his were slick and swollen, conquered.

"I'm not-- done with you-- yet." He said it because it was the closest approximation to 'Hey, Jim, don't make me stop, okay?' which is what he would have said if he hadn't been out of his fucking mind. Jim only heaved under him and groaned in response, which was good enough for him.

A deep and unsuspected vein of delight ran through him-- his whole body, his whole being had pulled together seamlessly in the service of redefining pleasure, redefining power. Jim's skin thrilled him-- to touch, to taste; Jim's strength and solidity provided a bulwark against which he loosed the frenzy of everything he'd ever held in check-- Jim was strong, Jim could take it, Jim was loving it, loving everything Blair did to him. Give and take, contract and release-- Jim was with him through all of it, right with him all the way-- delight. Oh yes.

He let go of Jim's shoulders and then worked backwards, slowly and carefully until he was kneeling, until he had the hot and muscular weight of Jim's lower body solidly in his lap-- a weight he felt like he could support forever. He was greedy for touch, and the moist slide of Jim's thighs, hips, chest-- anywhere and everywhere he could reach; anything he could lay hands on and mold in his palms and claim-- he absorbed it, soothed himself with it, let it feed the pulse in him.

Jim's cock-- Blair stopped thrusting, ignored Jim's deprived gasp and just focused in on it, touching and stroking softly, feeling a shudder run from his own body into Jim's and back again. Growing, lengthening, hardening in his hands-- smooth and oddly, infinitely desirable, it fit to his hand like perfection and made him break out in a sweat as he watched Jim get taken by it, giving again; giving and moaning and lost as Blair slowly stroked him.

"I want you to come again." His own voice was dark with surety. Jim reached for him like a drowning man, and Blair captured one of those groping hands and fisted it tight around the hot, slick satin of Jim's shaft. He needed his own hands now, needed them to spread Jim open wide around him, needed them for leverage as he fastened onto the muscles of Jim's hips and started pounding into him.

And that animal in him was loose again, the groan and strain and sweet coppery tang of triumph-- of going deeper, harder; taking what he needed while he watched Jim's wanton response through a damp, swinging curtain of unruly hair. Jim bucked in his hands, slippery with sweat; but Blair just tightened his grip and kept pushing. The hunger in him, the desire to take Jim over was the only thing that stopped him from giving in to the demand in his own body to just surrender and come already-- every thrust into snug, luscious heat seduced him towards that edge, made him growl and pant and squeeze his fingers tighter into the flexing muscles that tempted him so dangerously.

Despite his savage pleasure in it he might have lost the struggle, might have just let it finish him, if whatever limbic signals he was using for instinct hadn't told him that Jim was close, very close. Jim's strokes on his own shaft were slow, but there was a tense, helpless edge to his continual moans that told a different story.

"Blair," Jim was suddenly heavier, somehow; utterly rigid across his thighs, locked open and shuddering. "You feel... I'm..."

The rest was lost in a low, almost agonized groan. Blair tossed his hair back impatiently and gasped at the force he brought to bear, the short, fierce plunges of his hips and the strength that burned in his muscles and his own desperation to make Jim let go. "That's it--" he gritted through his teeth; and then everything in him flashed to incandescence as Jim did let go, arching up and spilling out and coming for him-- because of him. So beautiful.

He watched Jim hungrily through all of it, soaked up every twist and shiver, breathed deep of the raw, sensual smell of sweat and come. He sacrificed his grip to reach for Jim's now-lax hand and pulled it to his own mouth, taking what was there into himself; the pungent, musky salt of it exploded on his tongue and made his mouth water.

And when Jim's fingers slipped free from his lips and slid moistly over his cheek and around, pulling, pressing against the back of his head, he went where they guided him. He lowered down on Jim with the last snapping threads of his self control, and then his face was buried in the hollow of a warm, damp throat and one deep breath brought it crashing home to him that this was Jim; that right here there was infinite strength and devotion and he was about to come in the arms of his best friend, the man that he loved.

His ferocity dissolved, the need for mastery diffused all in a moment into melting, aching tenderness that was so powerful he had to squeeze his eyes shut.

"God-- Jim-- oh jesus..." he gasped the words and they sounded incoherent to his own ears, but whether Jim heard him or not Jim gave him what needed; held him tight, held him close, kept him safe and sheltered while he cried out softly over and over, rocking gently into sweetest perfection. Jim was whispering 'yes' somewhere close to his ear, and everywhere things were spilling over; merging into liquid, endless bliss that he was happy to drown in. Slow and potent and unstoppable, ecstasy held him in a steadfast grip for a long, long time-- Jim held him, Jim's strong arms and warm body welcomed him in, and there was nothing he needed to do except let himself melt away.

Concluded in part three.