Disclaimer: Children not allowed. This features angst, entertaining graphic sexual descriptions of two men in love doing terribly erotic things to each other. If you don’t like that sort of stuff, or know you are too young, please use that handy ‘back’ button. Or the ‘delete’ key; whichever is presently appropriate.
Oh, and I don’t claim to own Jim Ellison or Blair Sandburg, or any of the other recognizable characters; I’m just borrowing them for a little storytelling. They are all owned by UPN and Pet Fly Productions, and they can have them back when I’m done. I do however, own all other named characters, and those who are desperate to know how the angels and demons got in here are respectfully pointed to http://www.sjgames.com/in-nomine/. I promise not to do any permanent damage to the people I don’t own, but everyone else is fair game. I do, however, promise to abuse my overactive sexual imagination. Comments go to author via address above.
He’s doing it again; whirling his sometimes-too-slender body around the empty loft; weaving to the soft strains of some gypsy guitarist by the light of about twenty candles. His body arches, embracing the music with the rhythm of his life that I have come to know so well. He twists, whipping his unbound hair around him like Salome’s veils. Every so often, when the music permits it, he’ll stretch his back, showing my warrior’s mark on his body to the world. I’ve seen him do this before, when he didn’t have that tattoo. I’ve seen this a hundred times.
But this time it’s different.
This time he knows I’m sitting in the truck outside, watching him from my safe and quiet space.
We had a fight today, a terrible one. It’s foolish to think that love solves all problems; it only makes you aware of which ones are really worth fighting for.
He loves me; I know he does. But he’s grieving in secret for a lover that he’s lost, and it’s destroying him. I can’t stand by and watch as that happens. How can he think that I would? He wants me to understand how he feels. But I can see him fading away, too wrapped up in his work to eat except when he’s with me. Drinking too much whenever it’s available. Sleeping too deeply by my side one night; tossing and turning until dawn the next.
I love him. I’ve waited so long to be here for him. But if I can’t reach him, I can’t protect him.
I offered him a vacation once. Maybe that’s what we need. Time alone, to find each other again. Time to grieve openly. Time to tell the truth.
I get out of the car, and make my way through the bitter autumn cold to the door. Time to love.
Blair is sitting on the couch when I finally enter the loft. He is still naked, casually displaying the body that has lost too much weight the last few weeks; from a frame already too thin to begin with. He seems to glow from the inside, and no one but me has noticed that his hair is growing dull and brittle. Still beautiful, but lately the change has been painful to watch. He doesn’t react when I turn away to drop my keys into the basket.
“So, do you want to talk about it?” he says softly. His voice has become impossibly more beautiful, more compelling in the past few weeks. The fight we just had ended with him accusing me of arguing just to hear him speak. That was when I grabbed my keys and left. Now his voice is soft, forgiving, but with the familiar line of steel in it. It’s not so much an offer as a command.
“Yes,” I reply. “But not here.”
He tilts his head to one side, a curious wolf-like motion that sends his curls tumbling over his shoulder. “Where, then?”
“I thought maybe we could go away for the weekend. Up to the mountains or something. Be alone, and together at the same time.” I’m not sure if that came out the way I meant it, but he rewards me with a smile.
“Wow. That sounds great.” His eyes slide away, to the calendar covered with our commitments to people who mean nothing compared to what we have for each other.
In uncontrollable frustration, I rip the calendar from the wall. “No excuses. Just you and me.”
Blair jumps, startled by my violence, and then he settles down and smiles. “Okay.” His smile grows wider, pleased at my reaction.
I realize that he has agreed, and I join him, first in smiling, then on the couch. I pull him close, and close my eyes, focusing my senses on the incredible feel of his hair and his skin, on his intoxicating scent. He wraps his arms around me, and we hug the way only lovers can.
Air from the heating ducts rustles the calendar lying in violent disarray on the floor, and I make a mental note to pick it up before we go upstairs to bed. Blair notices me, tilting my head towards the sound, and laughs because he knows exactly what I am thinking.
He knows me so well, why can’t he understand that I just want to help him? Why can’t I make him see that?