Candlelight burnishes each ring stuck through Blair's flesh -- count them, one, two, three -- and turns it from silver to gold; sends shadows and streaks of dark and light across Blair's bare chest and blank, blind, blissful face.

Jim stares down through the railings, sullen, resentful, caged (because you're a distraction, Jim. No, I won't make you leave -- Jim, don't you dare go! -- just… go upstairs. Please? ).The angle is awkward, but a score of memories complete the picture, so that he can see the clear, strong lines of Blair's back if he closes his eyes, can see the wealth of hair loose, not bound back by a strip of unbleached cotton (it's a fucking ribbon, Sandburg. Just admit -- I'm going, okay? Upstairs. See? Walking).

Eyes open, he can see the marks his clutching hands left on Blair's arms the night before. Blair's breathless, exultant gasp as he climaxed echoes in Jim's ear, even as his plundered, possessed ass twitches reminiscently, pleasurably. Blair had been wild, sweat-dappled, insatiable, his.

Now the candlelight has him.

Jim sighs, rolls over to his back and waits for Blair to come back to him.

It takes too long.

He matches his breathing to Blair's automatically, and opens his senses up to the smoky air, the off-key hum vibrating Blair's throat, the complexity of melting wax cooling and reforming with faint crackles and hisses.

He sleeps eventually and doesn't let Blair call it meditating when he wakes to find Blair beside him. He's fairly sure he snored and the pillow tells him he drooled.

Blair smiles and palms Jim's chest with a hand that's steady now, not shaking with tiredness, and Jim tries not to wish that he'd been the one Blair had turned to for comfort after a long, fucked-up day.

The candles have guttered and the loft is dark and filled with peace.

Blair curls around him and fits their bodies together like jigsaw pieces.

"You feel better now, don't you?" Blair whispers hopefully.

Jim rolls his eyes, finally getting it. Blair never takes 'no way am I meditating, Sandburg, no fucking way' for an answer, does he?

"Jim? It helped, right?"

Yeah, he does feel better. Relaxed. But it's because Blair's back where he belongs, that's all.

He strokes Blair's hair and frees it from the tie so that it falls, cool and soft, across his wrist..

"You always help, babe," he says, and watches Blair's face light up like the sun, like the moon, like a thousand candles.


Return to Home

Click here if you'd like to send feedback