Can't Say What I Mean by Silk
Can't Say What I Mean - Silk

He was mesmerized.

And he couldn't fucking believe it.

Jim Ellison, ex-military, hardcore member of Cascade's Finest, was standing in the middle of a crowded bar frequented by crooks and cops alike, acting for all intents and purposes as if he were hypnotized.

By the rhythmic twitch of a pair of hips.

What was wrong with him? Were his senses screwed up? Was he about to zone? He had seen a pelvis or two wiggle in his time. He had never been affected this way. Not by a...

"Drink?"

His head whipped around with almost painful speed. "Excuse me?"

"Wow. Penny for your thoughts." That voice. He knew that voice. That voice belonged to his partner, Blair Sandburg. No policeman, Blair was a dedicated anthropologist who acted as a consultant to the Cascade Police Department.

He also happened to own the pair of hips that had completely captured Jim's imagination.

"I was...um..."

Blair chuckled. Something he did a lot. Yet that throaty chuckle had never vibrated its way down Jim's spine before. "You ready for bed already?"

Jim's eyes widened. "What?"

Blair shook his head, sending his long brown hair tumbling this way and that. Jim was unable to move. Or speak. He had to get a grip. This was ridiculous. There had to be an explanation for the weird-ass detour his brain just took. He was seriously contemplating what Blair would look like. In bed. His bed. Gyrating those...hips.

"You. Look. Tired," Blair enunciated slowly.

"Tired," Jim agreed, not trusting himself to say anything more.

"So," Blair reiterated with a flip of his long hair over his right shoulder, "Wanna hit the sack?"

"S-sorry?"

Blair sighed and grasped Jim's hand.

His fingers felt so warm. Softly calloused. He liked the way Sandburg's hand felt. Jesus. How many times had he innocently touched him? Or vice versa? But this didn't feel anything like that. It felt...

"Right?"

"Right," Jim nodded. It did feel right. When the hell did Sandburg start to make so much sense to him?

"You didn't hear a word I said, did you?" Blair questioned, but his lips were curved gently upwards, as if he were amused by something.

"Nope."

"You want me to take over?" Blair asked helpfully.

"Oh, yeah," Jim whispered. That sounded good for a change.

"Jeesh, I gotta do everything or it just doesn't get done, does it?" Blair queried rhetorically.

"Um..."

"Never mind. I got my own ideas, y'know."

"God," Jim said, his voice barely audible to the younger man.

Sandburg rolled his eyes and pulled the older man behind him, muttering under his breath all the way to the truck. Jim felt a smile start to spread across his face with an ease he had never known. He was so going to hell, as Sandburg would say, Jim mused, but the journey had some mighty interesting scenery.

*****

"Ahem, are those new jeans, Chief?"

"He speaks!" Blair intoned, interrupting his search for a cold beer in the refrigerator to beam at Jim.

Jim belatedly wished that he hadn't said that out loud, and not just because Sandburg might guess at his sudden interest. Before Jim spoke, Sandburg had been crouching down on his haunches in front of the fridge, drawing the dark blue denim even more tightly across his buttocks. But Jim's question caused Sandburg to stand up. Although...

...the way the cloth pulled at the front of Sandburg's jeans was not unappealing.

Jim blinked as if somehow that could clear his head of these...thoughts. Which of course led to him missing the beginning of the younger man's sentence.

"...Get it up!"

"Pardon?"

"This is not a test! What the hell is wrong with you, Ellison?"

"I'mmmm...drunk?" Jim offered, suddenly realizing that maybe all those rumors about not being able to have your cake and eat it too were wrong.

"You? Drunk?" Sandburg had the nerve to laugh at him. Here Jim was, in a state he couldn't possibly explain rationally, and Sandburg was laughing.

"Stop that!" Jim shouted, momentarily disconcerted when Sandburg did just that. Sandburg cocked his head at him, a puzzled frown slowly dissolving into...hurt?

"Aw, c'mon, Chief, I didn't mean--" He reached out one hand to brush Sandburg's hair out of his face, but the way the younger man flinched at his approach stopped him.

"Sorry," Blair mumbled. That gorgeous face that held all the light in the world sometimes went dark.

And Jim's mood went with it. "No, I'm the one who's sorry, Chief. I shouldn't have shouted at you. Wasn't your fault."

All at once Blair brightened. "It was a little funny."

"It was a lot funny," Jim corrected. "Especially--" Jim cut himself off before he said too much, but Sandburg was nothing if not famously perceptive.

"You're not drunk, are you, Jim?"

"That's stating the obvious, isn't it?"

"No, that's answering a question with another question. Something you've gotten way too good at lately," Blair said, confirming what Jim dreaded.

That Sandburg knew something before Jim did was a given.

That Sandburg knew this particular something was vaguely horrifying.

"You know, don't you?"

Sandburg shook his head slowly, and Jim struggled against the urge to grab whole handfuls of the younger man's tousled curls. "Oh, no, you don't get off that easy, man."

"You think you're so smart--"

"I think I'm so lucky, but if you want it your way--"

This time Jim acted on his feelings, plunging his hands through Blair's hair at the same moment he took his mouth. It was a surprise. Sandburg was a surprise. He didn't feel rough or hard under his mouth at all. He felt pliant, as if Jim merely had to will it, and Blair would be exactly that way.

And yet for all Sandburg's supposed softness, it wasn't weakness. It was warm and radiant and it spilled out of him like heat came from the sun.

When Jim could finally bring himself to pull away from that mouth, he found he wasn't quite speechless after all. "Love you, Chief," he whispered.

"Love you back," Blair said simply, as if his entire life had prepared him for this moment and no other.

Maybe their being together was inevitable. But it still came down to love.

It always did.

The end

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Acknowledgments: Thanks to Patt for giving me the encouragement to rediscover what I've loved for so long. And thanks to Christina Aguilera and Cher for a memorable soundtrack to a forgettable movie, Burlesque.