Thanks to all of you who sent feedback on "Wood." I promised this much sooner, but RL threw a curveball. I thought "Wood" was going to be a standalone, but as I was drifting off to sleep after posting it, a line of verse from a beloved novel ran through my head, so, if my muses are kind, there will be six. Once again, this is for my friend, beta, and critic, Little Miss S, who is always demanding more bedtime stories. Hugs to Aithine for catching a few more errors while taking a sneak peek. Triple bonus points to the first person who recognizes the source of the line--it will be revealed later. I didn't start with it in mind, but we take inspiration where we can.
"Wood, bronze..."
NC-17, m/m
Language, sex, more metaphor.
Jim and Blair come home from their camping trip. Blair freaks out, then ponders sculpture. What can I say, its all been done before. This is my version.
The characters aren't mine, but the words are. I'm just taking them off the shelf for a little fun, and promise to put them back neat and clean. Suing me is probably pointless, seeing as I've got a five-digit student loan debt. Once again, send rotten vegetables, offers of marriage, and everything in between to Tiriel -feedback is like a drug for me. I craaaaaaaave it. *g*
Bronze
By Tiriel
I still can't believe I did it, just kind of blurted out my feelings for Jim mere hours after I discovered them, but, man, I am so glad I did. We spent most of that first day in the tent, engaged in serious scientific research. Okay, fine. We were boffing like bunnies. And in between, we talked and cuddled. Your basic first day as lovers. When we ran out of condoms, we even had that whole safe sex, monogamy, and commitment discussion. Everything was going great.
It was the first morning after we went home, when I woke up in his arms in his bed--our bed--for the first time. That's when it all hit me. I woke up in Jim's arms, got up, walked downstairs to the bathroom, and panicked. I had a full-on, world-class moment of doubt. I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but it happened.
I stood there, looking at myself in the mirror, counting my hickeys. Hickeys made by Jim's mouth. In classic Sandburg fashion, I had leaped before looking. I'd jumped into this with both feet, and at that moment it really sank in.
Love. True love. Somehow, saying it to myself that way, I was reminded of "The Princess Bride," and I could almost hear the Impressive Clergyman saying "So tweasuwe your wuv."
I had jumped in with both feet. "I've fallen, and I can't get up. Speaking metaphorically, that is," I said quietly, and chuckled. It was the kind of chuckle that happens when you've said something that was intended as a joke but wasn't really funny when it came out of your mouth. I was fighting to stay calm. "Fuck," I whispered, "fuckity fuck fuck."
True love. Long-term, lifelong commitment. Sure, I'd already been living with Jim long-term, sure I'd already been thinking of the Sentinel thing as a lifelong commitment, but this was just different. What if I couldn't do it? I mean, it's not like I grew up in a home with any kind of example of what a marriage looked like. Kids learn a lot by example. How would I know what to do? And what about kids? Would one or both of us ever want them? And if so, what then?
Have you ever stood looking up into a snowstorm and gotten vertigo from watching the flakes come dizzyingly down? Well, that was the feeling I had right then. I had myself so worked up that I was just about ready to go back upstairs and try to find some way out. I was almost ready to call the whole thing off. Then I leaned in towards the mirror and looked deep into my own eyes.
I don't like being scared. I hate it. And if there's one thing I've learned in my time with Jim, through the things we've survived--dodging bullets, jumping out of airplanes, and dealing with various psychos, just to name a few--it's the best way to deal with fear. The best way to deal with fear is, at the risk of sounding like I've got some kind of corporate endorsement package going here, to just do it. Jump in with both feet, like I already had.
So standing there, staring deep into my own eyes, I thought about Jim and I. I pictured us old and gray--well, me gray, Jim mostly bald. I pictured us together, happy, and still having great sex. Hell, with this kind of start, who knows what decades of practice would do for us? We'd do as lovers what we'd done, sometimes more successfully than others, as friends. We'd pull through all of it--the bullets, the psychos, all the complications of life--as they came, and we'd do it together. And I liked that idea, the idea of growing old together, doing everything together for the rest of our lives. I liked it a lot. It made me feel warm and safe and secure. It felt like home. So I smiled at the mirror, took a few deep breaths, and went back upstairs.
Jim was still asleep. It was early enough that the loft was still fairly cool, but he'd kicked the covers half off, and I paused at the foot of the bed, awed all over again by his body. Don't get me wrong, I'm not just into him for that. I love everything about him. It's just that my noticing his body in that way is a far more recent development. Lying there in the bed that I was just beginning to think of as "ours," he reminded me of a Rodin sculpture. There's that special feeling you get when you look at a Rodin, like you half-expect it to keep moving in whatever way it was when it was captured, frozen in a moment of life. His work is perfect and alive and stunningly beautiful. Just like Jim. The man should be bronzed and put in a museum for the whole world to see. He belongs in the Louvre. But I have, like, no intention of sharing. So I decided right then and there to keep the moments, keep them in my mind, frozen in time like a Rodin, bronzed like those first baby shoes parents keep. Do parents still do that? My own private gallery of moments with Jim. That one right there, that was the first.
I'm not sure how long I stood there, watching him, storing away the moment. Without opening his eyes, he said, "Coming back to bed, Chief?"
"Maybe. What's in it for me?"
He lifted the sheet, simultaneously inviting me in and showing me exactly what was in it for me if I went back to bed. Yeah, the man should be bronzed and put in a museum for everyone to see. Call me selfish.
So I got back into our bed, and you know how bronze kind of looks like it should be warm to the touch and maybe even a little soft, even though it isn't? You touch it and it turns out to be cool and hard. Well, when I touched him, Jim was warm, like bronze should be, but his muscles were hard and so was something else.
"Good morning," I said, as I snuggled in close.
"Morning."
"How long before we have to be at the station?"
"Long enough--hey! Watch where you put those cold hands!"
"Sorry. Wanna help me warm back up?"
I am so glad that Jim would never hurt me, because, man, with those military/cop/all-around man of action reflexes of his, he could do anything he wanted before I could even begin to react. In hardly the time it takes to blink, I had been flipped over onto my back and Jim's mouth was on me.
"I love you so much," I said, my voice cracking in the middle.
He didn't answer, but I felt his smile. Then we were on that symbolic train speeding through the tunnel like you see in the movies. It's all darkness and pistoning and faster faster and then, just when you think it'll never end and you'll be hanging on that edge forever, you break through into daylight and the fireworks explode and I'm mixing metaphors but you get the idea. I felt Jim shudder against me--I love that I can make him come without even touching him, just from him thrusting into the mattress a little while he sucks me off. And once I felt that, I was lost and I was out of the tunnel into daylight and we were holding each other. I was held tight against that body of bronze, my man of steel, and I'd make a Superman joke later because right then I just wanted to lie there in our bed, in the arms of my love, and enjoy the last few moments of afterglow.
THE END