Cold Feet
by Resonant
"Jim. You asleep?"
"No."
When Blair didn't say anything else, Jim turned over. "You need to get some sleep, Sandburg." He burrowed his hand under Blair's disordered hair to his neck, rubbing a thumb over the unyielding muscles, and stopped pretending he didn't know anything was wrong. "What?"
It took a long time for him to answer. "Jim," he said finally. "This doesn't freak you out at all?"
Jim thought about it for a moment, a little surprised to find that it didn't. "Do I sound freaked out?"
"It freaks me out," Blair said right over him. "It freaks me the fuck out, Jim. I mean, am I wrong or did you just agree to an exclusive relationship with me?"
"I did."
"You did," Blair agreed. "Yesterday morning you woke up straight, am I right? And this morning you woke up naked in bed with me, and you're telling me it isn't messing with your head even a little bit, man, because it's sure as hell messing with mine."
He thought about that. He could feel Blair breathing. Under the hand that Blair hadn't succeeded in dislodging from the back of his neck. Blair's skin was warm and slightly sweaty.
"I can feel your body heat through the floor, did you know that?" Jim said at last. He almost laughed as Blair struggled between irritation and curiosity. "I have to concentrate," he went on, "but the air feels different. I can hear you -- your heart, your breathing, your eyes moving when you dream. Your hair -- your hair is damned noisy, Sandburg." He pushed his hand up into it and listened.
"For a couple months now I've been able to hear whether you're awake or asleep," he said. "It was almost a year ago I noticed I could feel changes in your skin temperature."
Blair's foot touched Jim's, moved away. Jim followed it, hooked his foot around it, hauled it back.
"I can read all kinds of things in your smell," he said. "When you're scared, tired. Turned on." He was some of all three now. "That's been there almost from that first day."
"Yeah, all right, you're telling me, what, that you --"
"I'm telling you," Jim said, almost smiling, "that I've been in a state of barely controlled freak-out since the day I met you."
He brought his hand around to touch Blair's face. "Go to sleep, Sandburg," he said. "You get used to it."
-end-
Feedback me at resonant8@sbcglobal.net.
Read the rest of the "Six Weeks" snippets:
"Clean"
"Declarations"
"Talking"
"Revelations"
"Listening"