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Not in the ScriptPositive feedback and / or constructive criticism always welcome. I never thought about how learning to be human means striving for mastery just like anything else. Means work, and thought, and a strange logic that describes only the illogic of emotions, psyches, souls. All the kinds of things that are Sandburg's department, not mine. Have to give the man credit for being so good with people. I should have thought about it. Just goes to show what a dumb prick I am. Life is beautiful sometimes. I say this, and I've seen a lot of ugliness. I've seen no ugliness at all in the man I hold in my arms right now, and I know now that whatever he wants, for whatever obscure reasons he wants it, I'll give him. I never did get too enthusiastic about membership in the human race - but for Blair... I never wanted to repeat the disaster of my marriage to Carolyn, but for Blair... My God, I just proposed. At first I feared he'd cry - then that he'd asphyxiate me rather than loosen his grip. "I love you," I whispered into his lips. I couldn't stop saying it, even with his mouth under mine. "Let's go home," he whispered back. Reluctantly, I let go. It was made no easier by his hands lingering on me as much as mine on him. I unlocked and opened his office door while he fetched his backpack. Then I grabbed him again, saying, "Get back here." He leaned back to look up at me, his hair falling back softly, his hips grinding into mine. "Hi." "Don't make me let go of you for that long," I said, and kissed him thoroughly. No way am I coming up for oxygen this time. Ah, you can squeeze me forever, love, I need you more than air. "Whoa! Guess you're not in the mood for the circus, huh, Blair?" We broke the clinch to see a young woman laughing in the hallway. Blair said, "Uh, could - " "Never mind. I can take someone else. You two have fun." She winked and moved on. He laughed. With my hand firmly around his waist I dragged him to my truck, opened the passenger side door, and lifted him in. "Hurry! " he grunted, one hand around my wrist in a death grip. While I climbed over him to get to the driver's seat, he managed to brush his palms across my chest, hips, thighs, ass. Which made it mutual. |
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He never let go of my wrist as I drove. Except once. As I pried him off, his heartbeat quickened and he glanced around, panicked. "What are we doing here?" "Stay in the car, Sandburg," I said, hopping out. He managed to lean over and grab my nearer hand. "'Stay in the car?' Mr. Don't-make-me-let-go-of-you-for-that-long wants me to *stay* in the *car*?" I kissed him sweetly. "There's something I have to get." It took me about five minutes to get into and out of the grocery. While in line, I flashed back to the moment when I had cried, "I love you - marry me!" Worried, because I'd noticed something: He had never answered. Of course, (I grinned stupidly) what with all that kissing, I hadn't given him a chance to say anything. "What'd you get?" he demanded, making "gimme, gimme!" motions. "Never mind." I set the paper bag on the floorboard. He tried to reach for it but I found something else for his hands to do. After several long, delicious seconds, he said, "Ummm... Baby?" "Yeah?" I traced a finger down the inside of his thigh. "Ohh... Maybe you'd better drive. Before we... oh... It would be better in the loft. B'fore we get ticketed... or you could just keep doing that..." "Drive. Right." I got out a cloth and wiped the steam off the windows, started the engine again and got us home in record time. It was all I could do not to strip him naked in the hallway. When the front door closed behind us, his left hand invaded my back pocket and his right hand found my cock; our tongues set up house and were picking china patterns together. I unwound his arms, pressed him into a chair at the dining table, and held him there while I thought about cold showers, house chores, Joel Taggart in gold lame... He cupped my face in his hands, asking, "What is it?" I made myself let go of him. "Stay here. Enchanting as you are, lover, there's something I have to do first." Disappointed pout. "Okay." Upstairs, I rifled through my drawers as fast as I could. Ah, here. Little blue velvet box. The ring inside was diamond-on-silver, tarnished; a modest but pretty engagement ring. Grandmother's. I'd inherited it last year. Completely inappropriate for a man, but good enough simply to have such a symbolic item now - I hadn't forgotten that line in his script about families. I ran back downstairs, threw myself on my knees at his feet. "Let's do this properly, Chief." Holding out the box to him. "Will you do me the honor of accepting my hand in marriage?" He brimmed over. I could fly. I don't need a cape - just a happy Blair Sandburg. He put his hands around mine. "Properly?" His voice cracked. Then his tears did fall, one out of each eye. He didn't wipe them away. "Oh, Baby, I can't say yes yet." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ "...Jim, come back to me, follow my voice - " "I'm not zoned, Chief," I whispered. I had been perfectly aware of the moment he slid off the chair, put a hand on my shoulder, and started talking to me in his "Guide" voice. Just as I had been aware, dammit, of the moment before that when I had frozen, folding up inside. "Are you all right?" Still the "Guide" voice. "No." I seized his arms. "I thought that was what you wanted. I thought you loved me - " "I do - I did - Baby, listen to me, I wasn't saying no - I was saying, don't ask yet." Our foreheads bumped. "Don't ask yet. This is too soon, too sudden." My grip loosened. Three years isn't long enough to wait? I whispered, "Why, Sandburg?" He winced. "Jim, we - Do you - I've loved you for *three years* and you never knew. Unless I miss my guess, you've loved me for a while now and *I* never knew. Do you see how badly we've been messing this up so far?" Point. "We can work it out, Chief." "I think so, too. Let's just not skip steps, okay?" "What comes next, then, in your plan?" "I don't know. It's not in the script. None of this was ever in the script." "Then we'll just have to improvise." How can I make you say yes? Maybe what we needed was seduction. Seduction. I could do seduction. I shot to my feet. He looked worried. "What is it?" "I left it in the truck." "Left *what* in the truck?" he said, but I was already half way down the hall. Fortunately, it hadn't been sitting out there for too long, and the day a cold one. Blair was reseated at the dining table, his head propped in his hands, by the time I returned with the grocery bag. "What did you get, anyway?" he said with an evil, anticipatory grin. I fetched a spoon, sat next to him, and pulled out the carton. "Ice cream?? You left me all horny and alone in the parking lot for *three centuries* thinking you were getting condoms, and you got *ice cream*?" "It's double fudge," I explained. He still looked at me like I was nuts. I pried the lid off, scooped up a spoonful, and offered the first bite to him. "You *like* double fudge. So do I." He opened his mouth compliantly. I watched the ice cream disappear between those lips; then the tongue came out and slid across them, slowly. God give me patience to do this right. I took a bite, with a show of lips and tongue that appeared to interfere with his breathing somehow. I offered it to him again. *Seduction*, I reminded myself. He smiled. "I love you." Hell with this. I dropped the spoon, pulled him to me, and tasted the ice cream in his mouth. The gallon carton got knocked over by somebody's elbow, but his hands were in my pockets again and I didn't care. "Up," I growled, having lost my ability to manage an unwieldy sentence such as, "Let's go upstairs." Who needs scripts? ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ |
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I set him down on the bed, but couldn't make myself let go of him to take my clothes off. His hands found the hem of my shirt, and then under it, hot palms on my waist, one sliding up over my stomach to my breastbone while the other caressed the small of my back. I unbuttoned his shirt, brushed over his nipples with my thumbs. He moaned into my mouth. Let's make angels weep in envy of us, beloved. His hand on my back dipped past the waistband, just touched the sensitive crack of my ass. His chuckle blew across my cheek. "What happened to your boxers? Did you leave them in my office?" I guess so. I nibbled his earlobe, tongued the rings there. He kissed the base of my neck where it joined the shoulder, worked his way down my collarbone, then across and down the other side. Yes, lover. You know I want this, but do you know I want *you*? Do you know I want you forever? Can I show you? Can I make this perfect? The hand on my chest was wickedly knowing; the one on my ass was innocent and gentle. It hurt to push his arms away, but I couldn't see any other way to get his shirt off. As we faced each other kneeling on the mattress, his lips parted and spread, dazzlingly, so that at first all I could see were those sensuous pink curves, and then I came back from the edge of a zone and saw that it was his smile, mingled delight and wonder, the one that said, "Share the world with me - where you are, there is home." He'd smiled at me that way a hundred times already; why hadn't I seen it? My God. I could lose you. I could lose this, because I'm blind and rude and inarticulate. "What's wrong, Baby?" He reached for me. I held him against my chest. Stay with me. Whatever you do, stay with me. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ "I love you, James Joseph Ellison," he whispered afterward. Then for a long time, nothing. The words didn't feel as good as I thought they would. I thought about that while the silence stretched, and finally pinned it down. "Blair?" "Hm?" "How come you never say anything after we make love?" Why are the mornings after so bad? "I do too!" He clutched me. "I say something every time. And just now I said I love you." "Usually you tell me it was wonderful, but then you clam up." "What do you want me to say?" I rubbed his shoulder. "...I don't know." "You don't know." His hair was in my face; it got in my mouth when I smiled. "Well, I used to have this fantasy where you said, 'I love you, James Joseph Ellis - '" |
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He laughed and hugged me. "Really? I fulfilled your fantasy? I feel better." "Why?" He stroked my side, rested his hand on my hip. "You mean, why did I need to hear that?" "Yeah." "I get worried, Baby. That I'm not - that I'm not enough for you." "Not enough? What on Earth are you talking about?" "I mean... oh, hell... Jim, why do we do this? When we started I thought it was just about fun, but - do I please you?" "Of course you do. I love you." "I meant sexually." Dear God, how could he doubt himself? I took his face between my hands and made him look me in the eye. "Blair Sandburg, you are the best lover I have ever had." The breath stopped in his throat. "Then why don't you ever, I don't know, make noise when you come?" Oh, my little love. I'm sorry. I squeezed him close. "Blair, my silence is the highest compliment I can give. The more intense the experience, the more quiet and inarticulate I get. You're the only one who ever completely shut me up." Softly: "Oh." He kissed my chest, rubbed our bodies together. "But, um, you don't even say anything after you ask me upstairs. You didn't talk at all back there in my office." "I didn't? I don't?" I replayed the past two hours. "I never realized... You know, *your* silence bothers me. Afterward, I mean. It's as if you... regret. You never stay the night with me." "I didn't know you wanted me to. I don't regret us. Never." I sighed. "You can't tell me you're not upset afterwards. I can *feel* it." "Well, yeah. Post-coital depression, Jim. I get it the worst with you, because I'm never sure if I've pleased you, and I always wanted you to love me and I was sure you didn't." "I love you. I should have told you." I kissed the top of his head. "And I should have told you. I was waiting for a sign." "So was I." Then he laughed. "What?" I asked. "Aren't we a couple of fools? Like, we're best friends, we work together well, we have the best sex of our lives, and there we were, waiting for a sign." I laughed. My eyes burned. Then I grew solemn. "I... There's something else." "What?" "All those women you chase." "'Chased,' past tense, Jim. I don't need them anymore. Only you. If you'll do the same." "Of course." A line came to me, from a book of all things. "'Thou art beautiful, and I love thee.'" I ran my fingers through his hair. "But why did you make a special point of getting into bed with a woman right after you'd been with me? I thought it was homosexual panic, but with that wedding fantasy of yours - you obviously want everyone to know about us." "Hair of the dog." "What?" "Hair of the dog. It was the quickest way to get over being depressed about you not loving me." I sighed. It was still a prick-ish thing to have done, but at least I knew he really *didn't* need those women anymore. "We *can* work this out, Chief." "No argument here." |
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I sat up, bringing a pliant Blair with me. Set him on my lap, tangled our legs, wrapped my arms firmly around him. "Will you marry me?" He looked at the ceiling. "Do you have to ask me that now?" "We know we can make it work," I persisted, "what else is there to wait for?" In perfect mimicry, like a tape recorder, he reeled off, "'Marriage is a crock, anyway, Chief, I can tell you - I've been there.'" Oh, God. "It's what you want - I want to make you happy - " "I know." Small voice. "I can't tell you how much that means to me. But I don't want it unless you're into it - for your own sake, not just for mine." Finally he met my gaze, with a grim determination that sank me like a rock. "So the answer is no." I would have argued, I would have proposed again, I would have said *something*. But it was pretty clear: I hadn't met his conditions for saying yes - and (know thyself, Jim) maybe I never would. Welcome to humanity, Jimbo. In love, it's possible to get trapped in a situation where a win-lose solution is unacceptable, and a win-win solution is impossible. I never thought about that at all. So we hand out booby prizes all around; but I know now. Life's beautiful sometimes. And sometimes, beauty's a heartbreaker. ~Finis~ The Script series: |
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The Wedding Script
Not in the Script
Improv