Push and Pull

by Francesca

In hindsight, Detective James Ellison could pinpoint just where everything had started to go wrong.

In hindsight, it had started on the Richards drug bust. Ellison had leapt out of his truck when the shooting started, telling his partner, Blair Sandburg, to stay put. But as the shooting continued, Sandburg hadn't stayed put — hadn't been able to stay put. Instead, Sandburg had run down the block, toward where the SWAT team were positioned, to where the firefight was raging. He had ducked down, and crawled closer, ever closer, to the line of fire, weaving through the rows of parked cars, darting his head up occasionally to scan for Ellison, to see if Ellison were there, if he were hurt, if he had zoned.

And when the shooting finally stopped, and Ellison found his partner crouched behind a tan Buick a mere fifteen feet from the crackhouse — and not in the truck a block and a half away where he had left him — he went, well, ballistic.

Absolutely fucking grade-A ballistic.

He had grabbed Sandburg by the collar of his leather jacket and dragged him back to the truck. And then he threw him, hard, against the driver's side door and held him there with a muscular forearm. And yelled into his face. For a good ten minutes.

And Sandburg shrank back, and would have raised his hands to his ears to defend himself against Ellison's raised voice, except he couldn't, because his hands were pinned to his sides.

And that, really, was the beginning of the end.

Because Sandburg, Jim realized in hindsight, had gotten really mad.

And he hadn't ever realized how much of their partnership depended on Sandburg's not getting mad. Or at least on Sandburg's not staying mad. Ellison knew that he himself existed on a very short fuse — he angered easily, tended to snap. And therefore he had come to depend on Sandburg's relentless good humor, on Sandburg's inability to hold a grudge for very long. On Sandburg's philosophy of forgive and forget.

But that all went away after the Richards bust.

After the Richards bust, it seemed that Sandburg went out of his way to provoke him.

In small ways, at first.

Drinking the last of the coffee.

Fine.

Using the last of the hot water.

Okay. It happens.

Spilling a full sack of sugar in the kitchen.

An accident. Bad luck.

Forgetting to give him messages at the station.

Once, a mistake.

Twice? What was twice?

Three times and Ellison was infuriated.

So he yelled. He yelled about irresponsibility and carelessness and thoughtlessness, right in the middle of the bullpen.

Sandburg just crossed his arms and smirked, muttering something about not being his secretary. Or his slave.

And Ellison suddenly realized that it had all been intentional. That all the recent irritations, large and small, had been intentional. Revenge. Pure fucking spite.

And that made everything impossible.

After that, their relationship quickly unraveled as irritation gave way to suppressed hostility, which eventually gave way to open warfare. And the only thing that stopped Ellison from killing Sandburg was the vague suspicion that that was exactly what Sandburg wanted.

He knew that Sandburg was deliberately provoking him. And sometimes he caught...well, the strangest looks from his partner. Strange, sideways, assessing glances when he thought Ellison wasn't looking.

Dammit, Sandburg wanted him to explode. Sandburg wanted him to react violently.

To prove he was right, thought Ellison bitterly. To prove I'm a prehistoric throwback. He'll probably get a chapter out of it. And a few articles. And maybe a lecture tour.

No way. No fucking way!

And so Ellison clenched his fists, and took deep breaths, and kept cool.

He wouldn't give Sandburg the satisfaction.

But that only made matters worse. Because Sandburg kept at him, kept escalating. Trying to puncture his calm. Handing things to him and putting them...just out of his reach.

Bringing him a cup of coffee and placing it mere inches — three inches! — beyond where he could reach it before settling himself comfortably on the sofa to peruse his latest academic tome.

And then there was the pen-clicking as he read. Click, click! click, click! click, click! until it drowned out every other sound in the universe, and Jim would try to blot it out but his dials kept squirming out of his control — click, click! click, click! good god!

But Jim refused to get mad, to let it out — he *wouldn't* be mad, he would not be mad, he would not lose his temper, he would not give Sandburg a chapter and a spot on Charlie Rose, no way! Click, click! Click, click!

"Blair, do you think you could maybe stop clicking that pen?" Jim would ask finally, sweetly, gritting his teeth and resolutely not acting like a primitive throwback.

And Sandburg would look up at him with wide eyes, and then look down at the pen in his hand as if it were some strange futuristic object whose use he didn't understand and say, "Oh. Sorry, Jim," and then put it down on the coffee table...

...before starting with the zipper of his sweatshirt.

Zip zip. Zip zip. Zip zip.

Up and down, the little metal teeth clicking, a nervous, fidgeting habit —

— except it wasn't. Except that Sandburg had never compulsively pen-clicked or zipped like this in the three years that Jim had known him. And Jim of all people would have noticed if he had.

And okay, maybe Sandburg did chew ice sometimes, but recently he'd turned into a veritable ice machine, and besides it was cold and damn if Blair Sandburg wasn't chewing ice to annoy him at considerable personal cost to himself.

But still Jim kept calm, kept polite, kept smiling and generally behaving in his most gentlemanly fashion.

Except that his jaw began to hurt from gritting his teeth.

And, in the end, of course, he lost it — as he should have known he would lose it. All the suppressed resentment and rage washed over him as he flew up off the sofa and into Sandburg's room by the end of the first blaring snarled-sung phrase —

(I am the antiCHRIST!)

— and he suddenly felt foolish for having ever tried to fight it at all —

(I am an anarCHIST!)

— because, fuck it, maybe he was some sort of primitive throwback after all, because was certainly ready to throw Sandburg, the stereo, the Sex Pistols, and very possibly the desk out the friggin' window —

(Don't know what I want — But I know where to GET IT!)

— and as he grabbed Sandburg's arm and yanked him out of his chair and slammed him hard against the back wall of his room —

(I wanna DEstroy the PAS-SER-BY!)

— he was vaguely aware that Johnny Rotten was loudly extolling the virtues of anarchy, which seemed appropriate, really, and as he moved swiftly to pin Sandburg against the wall he made the fatal mistake of catching his eye, and Sandburg's eyes were blazing, glittering —

Glittering.

Hell.

And wham! he got it, and reality bent suddenly at a 45 degree angle, and everything shimmered and disappeared and then re-solidified, and it all looked the same except it was all different, and he got it now, though some part of him didn't want to admit that he got it, but that didn't stop him from reaching out slowly and seizing Sandburg's wrist tightly, putting pressure on the bone, hurting but not hurting, knowing what would happen.

That Sandburg would wince, that his knees would buckle, that he would slide, almost in slow motion, to the floor, bending, bowing, in front of him —

(Glittering)

— on his knees in front of him, face dangerously close, swaying dangerously close...

And then Sandburg did sway forward, bend forward, and his face gently brushed Jim's groin

(didn't want to admit)

and Jim felt Sandburg's warm breath caress his erection

(erection?)

for long moments, long tense moments of breathing, before Jim could bring himself to tear his eyes away from the opposite wall, that suddenly fascinating wall, to look down at his partner. Sandburg nuzzled at his crotch, and as he watched he saw Sandburg began to mouth his cock through the soft fabric of his pants, exploring his contours, tracing his shape, and god, he was so hard, he was hard to bursting, he couldn't remember ever being this hard, and the cloth of his pants was beginning to darken, getting wet from Sandburg's mouth, from his own leaking cock, and he groaned and tightened his grip on Sandburg's wrist.

And Sandburg leaned in and began to mouth him more intently, earnestly, and Jim couldn't help but press forward with his hips, stroking his trapped cock once, twice against Sandburg's face, and it was good, so good, and he dropped Sandburg's wrist and grabbed two tight fistfuls of hair (hurting but not hurting) and pulled Sandburg closer to him, hard against him.

And Sandburg opened his mouth and began sucking him through the cloth, and it was very wet now and Jim couldn't help but thrust and it was too much, much too much, and he was pulling Sandburg's hair roughly and Sandburg suddenly started scrabbling at Jim's fly with trembling fingers and Jim thought he would pass out or fall over and then there was no cloth between them and the head of his cock slid against Sandburg's face, against Sandburg's lips, and into the warmth of his mouth and Jim let out a long, tortured groan and felt Sandburg shudder beneath him.

And he couldn't look, he couldn't look, he couldn't not look down, because sight was too much, sight was everything, sight was everything he never knew he wanted, and Sandburg was on his knees before him, sucking him, loving his cock, tracing patterns on the soft smooth head with his tongue, swirling round the tip, holding him steady with a fist curled around the base of him, and nothing had ever been this good, no one had ever loved his cock like this, loved him like this. Worshipfully. Helplessly.

And Jim was stabbed with sudden guilt as he realized anew that this was Sandburg, because there was something

(he didn't want to admit)

frighteningly honest about this, about who they were and how their relationship worked, was working, had been working — and if he had been asked he would have denied it, and he would have been lying, because he had effectively hijacked Blair Sandburg, he had needed Blair Sandburg and so he had taken Blair Sandburg and he had bent Sandburg's life to fit into his life, to meet his needs, to serve his interests, and he had bent Sandburg to his will and now he bent Sandburg to his knees and he was in his mouth and there was something frighteningly honest about the way he pulled at Sandburg's hair, honest about the way that Sandburg acquiesced, serviced him, pleasured him. He would have denied it, denied it all, denied this truth.

But there was no denying this, there was no denying how much he wanted this and how much Sandburg wanted this and he had finally gotten it now, and god help them this was honestly the way it was, this push and pull between them, and he pulled hard on Sandburg's head and pushed into his mouth and wanted to fuck his face, wanted everything from him, wanted this from him, too, and it was enough, it was enough, he needed to come, he wanted to come in him, use him for this, too, oh god! and Sandburg let his hand fall away from Jim's cock and opened his throat and let him in and Jim fucked him, held his head still and fucked him, and god god god —

Coming was so good, arching backwards, pounding, honest, oh, fuck, yeah —

And there was the white of the ceiling, burning his eyes, and his legs were jelly and he tightened his fists in Blair's hair and meant love by it and spurted into his mouth and down his throat —

He was shaking and dizzy and thought he would fall over, and he pulled himself out of Blair's mouth roughly, and stepped back and sat down hard on the bed, face contorted, chest heaving —

— and he looked at Blair and Blair was not looking back; he had turned his face away, twisted his head away. He had closed his eyes, and he looked pained. Embarrassed. Vulnerable. And Jim saw that he had come in his pants.

"Blair," he said gently, and Blair twitched and turned further away, and squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

Jim eased down on to the floor carefully, gracefully, and reached out toward him, and Blair tightened up and pulled back, pulled away from him. And Jim wanted to comfort him, wanted to say that it was all okay, that there was nothing to be embarrassed about, that if anything he should be embarrassed, that the sudden crystal-clear fact of his domination was at least as embarrassing as the fact of Blair's submission — but he didn't know how to reach Blair through this shocking, sudden gulf created by old arguments and recent honesty.

But then he did know, really. He just didn't want to admit it.

"Sandburg!" he said sharply, and Blair jerked and his face tightened, but he turned. He did turn, he couldn't help but turn. "Sandburg," said Jim, and Blair turned, and his eyes were lost, huge, glittering helplessly —

"Come here," commanded Jim softly, and Blair leaned forward toward him, and Jim took Blair's face in his hands and whispered, "Open your mouth," and Blair obeyed as Jim knew he would obey and opened his mouth slowly, and so their first kiss happened that way, and Jim thought the kiss was strange but sweet, and was surprised by how natural it was, how inevitable it felt. He was surprised by his lack of surprise.

The bigger surprise had drowned out the smaller one; the tangled complexity of their relationship — Blair's devotion to him, Blair's power over him, Blair's subjugation to him — had suddenly rendered the actual existence of their relationship a moot point. Of course Blair was his. It had always been so. And that was unsurprising — Blair was his, he had always known that Blair was his.

But what was surprising was the extent to which Blair knew he was his. What was surprising was that Blair had willingly turned over control to him. What was surprising was discovering that control, admitting that control, finally feeling it. What was surprising was how good that control felt, and the ease with which he assumed it.

Jim raked his tongue against the roof of Blair's mouth before pulling away, pulling out, pulling back, and Blair had closed his eyes again. He regarded his partner curiously for a moment.

"You love me," Jim said finally, with finality.

Blair opened his eyes. "Yes," he said, and then Jim leaned forward and covered Blair's mouth lightly with his own, just holding there, breathing him in, sharing his breath.

And he knew that Blair had pushed him to this revelation, pushed him to realize who he was, who they were, what they were to each other, and then he pushed Blair to the floor and laid him on his back and pulled his thighs apart, and it was pointless to wonder who was really controlling who, because there was no man behind the curtain, no conspiracy, no answers, just the endless push and pull of them, endless provocation, endless passion, and endless pleasure.  

The End