Oh, hell.
Blair wiped a forearm-wide swath through the condensation on the mirror and tugged a comb through his shower-wet hair. Yup, there it was. Right there, right above the temples. He knew it had always been a little on the thin side, just at that spot, but he swore it was getting worse.
Especially on the left.
His left, which would make it his mirror-twin's right. Not that it mattered which side it was on. Or which side it wasn't on, since it was a deficiency that had brought him to this impromptu contemplation of his head under an entirely too bright row of 60-watt bulbs. A hair deficiency, which was pretty much new territory for him. Fuzzy wuzzy was a Blair, and, up to this point, he'd always been well-stocked in the fuzz department. He stepped back from the mirror and gave his naked reflection a judicious once-over. Anti-Blair returned the favor, and concurred that it was apparently a localized phenomenon.
Localized right on his forehead.
Residual steam fogged up the glass again, effectively blurring his self-analysis. Blair sighed, opened the door to let a little fresh spring air in, and returned to combing out tangles. It was hard to say which was more depressing: losing his hair, or losing his objectivity over it. Not that he'd ever give into the blandishments this week's pharmaceutical hair growth commercials. He might concede to having a healthy share of vanity, but he also had standards. Principles. So unless anti-Blair decided to walk his squeaky-clean butt through the looking glass so they could shake hands and decorporealize into a burst of pure energy, his options were limited to denial.
Or having his hair short enough for the curls to lay right over those two spots...
"I'm cutting it off," he called out to the kitchen.
The scrape of metal whisk on metal bowl stopped, and a voice bounced back down the hallway. "This would be your hair we're talking about, right?"
Oh, that was clever. Definitely worth dragging himself out of bed for. "No, Jim, I'm talking my dick. Devastated that you only came three times last night, I've decided to cut it off in an act of penance and bleed all over the bathroom."
"Uh huh. Do me a favor and stand in the tub. It'll be a hell of a lot easier to clean up."
He really should know better than to talk to Jim before noon. Or at least before getting some sugar to his brain. He was still half-asleep, and the love of his life had already showered, balanced the checkbook, mixed up Sunday's traditional pancakes, and probably written the first two movements of a fucking concerto. "Go ahead, man, mock me all you want. We'll see who's laughing when I walk through the door one day with hair shorter than yours."
"You're not going to cut your hair." A statement, punctuated by the sizzle of batter poured onto a hot skillet.
Wonderful. Blair had always wanted a personal stylist who would make this sort of decision for him. "What, you don't believe me?"
"Nope," returned the calm voice.
Blair waved his comb at the mirror; anti-Blair gamely waved back. "See, this is perfect. Proves my theory. You, Jim Ellison, only love me for my hair."
"That's not true."
"No?"
"No. I only fucked you because of your hair. I love you because you can make me come three times in one night."
"Oh, that's beautiful, man. Beautiful. Just so our relationship isn't based on some sort of meaningless aesthetic judgment."
"Sandburg, shut up."
Score one even without a sugar infusion. Blair grinned, wrapped a towel around his hips, and headed down the hallway in search of syrup and something to drench with it. "Is that the beloved sound of my heart's true desire? Calling me thither with voice sweet as nightingale song?" He entered the kitchen where Jim was simultaneously cursing public television for corrupting his partner and the old spatula for foiling a perfect pancake flip. Which was perfectly typical Jim-like behavior.
But he could have been talking about Etruscan funerary artwork for all Blair knew, because he was paying rather more attention to the atypical aspects of Jim's behavior. This included, just as an example, the fact that he was cooking breakfast while wearing an apron.
And nothing else.
At least it looked like nothing else from where Blair stood, at an admittedly poor angle which placed Jim in profile and limited his visual survey to the waist and territories north. So Blair took a step forward. It was slightly shaky, but a generally successful effort. He tried it again, nearly landing on his face before he remembered it was customary to alternate feet when trying to get anywhere.
When he finally made it to a position behind Jim, Blair was fairly certain his original "wearing nothing else" hypothesis had been valid. Just a clean white apron, with the requisite ties caught up in a neat bow at the small of Jim's back. Long white tails trailed over the rise of his buttocks, with one end rucked up and caught between his cheeks.
Blair reached out and plucked it free. Any lingering contact between his knuckles and Jim's ass was purely accidental.
Even the way his hands came to rest on Jim's hips could possibly be excused. Maybe as an effort to smooth away some minuscule wrinkle that dared to mar the crisp lines of the cotton.
The soft kiss he laid between the man's shoulder blades, however, was unmistakably intended to lead somewhere.
"Jim?" he murmured, feeling his own warm breath deflected off equally warm flesh.
The other man didn't break from his intent examination of the slowly browning batter in front of him. "What is it?"
"Nothing. Just... curious," he said, lips diligently making up for their prior, shameful neglect of those particular underappreciated inches. "In a mild, abstract, scholarly kind of way."
"About what, Chief?"
"About why you're wearing an apron," Blair clarified, the picture of patience. His fingers tugged lightly on the ties of the article in question, but he didn't making any earnest move to undo the neat bow.
"In case something... splattered," came Jim's logical response.
"That's very prudent. You just never know when a pancake might turn bad and come looking for revenge." He peered around Jim's shoulder, eyebrows bobbing. "This, uh, would be the pancakes we're talking about, right?"
"Get your own lines, Groucho, and stop stealing mine." His spatula darted out, catching Blair's hand across the knuckles as it crept across the counter, weaving between syrup bottle and tub butter on its way to a bowl of neatly quartered strawberries. "And get your hands outta there. Those go on top of the pancakes."
"Well, they're gonna end up in my stomach eventually," Blair grumbled.
Sighing, Jim lifted a piece of fruit from the bowl and held it up, level with his shoulder.
Blair snagged the strawberry with his teeth. "Thank you." Since reinforcing good behavior never hurt, he added a more tangible reward by sliding his hands under Jim's apron, just above the tie, and wrapping his arms around the broad torso. He returned, albeit with somewhat stickier lips, to his atonement kisses. "But I'm still hungry."
"I'll bet."
"Yeah, you'll bet your ass," Blair said, reacquainting his towel-draped hips with said body part.
Jim exhaled sharply. "If you faint with hunger, do I get to finish this in peace?"
Blair smiled, but didn't bother to answer. Having sufficiently mollified the skin between Jim's shoulders, he worked his way up to the nape of Jim's neck, skipping over the neckband and rising to his toes to seek out the fine, spiky hairs that tickled his lips. When Blair began to foster the pleasant ache between his legs with light forward thrusts, Jim abruptly brought his bowl of batter to the counter with a gratifyingly loud rattle.
"Sandburg. I'm trying to cook."
"So cook. I'm not stopping you." And he wasn't, not really. He hadn't laid a hand on either of Jim's. He wasn't messing with the pan, or fiddling with the burners or anything. He was just... tasting. It just so happened that Jim's ear was right by his lips, and he really was hungry. Soap. It tasted like soap right here, right behind Jim's ear. Good boys were always so careful to wash behind their ears.
They were also careful to tie their aprons nice and tight, so bad boys couldn't slide their hands down and touch them in all those nice, bad-boy ways.
But flexibility was his watchword this morning, so Blair shifted his off-the-beaten-path explorations upwards. His fingers moved lightly over ribs, opting to forego the obvious draw of Jim's nipples for the skin on the inside and under his arms. He tilted his head down and let his mouth echo his movements from behind.
Jim's next batch of pancakes ended up uneven oblongs, as Blair's tongue located and wholeheartedly exploited a patch of skin with a tendency to quiver when licked. "Sandburg..."
"'Syour fault for not wearing any clothes," he murmured.
Blair didn't receive an intelligible response, so he pressed forward with his questioning. It was habit, maybe. Not a dealing-with-Jim habit, although it worked for that, too, but really just a student-scholar habit. Just nice to hear answers, even the known ones, confirmed out loud. "Are you going tell me why you're not wearing any?"
"No."
Blair set his teeth to Jim's sun-freckled shoulder.
Jim shivered, and grudgingly offered an alternate response. "You're the smartass. You figure it out."
Blair's lips stilled and he pulled away, considering, watching Jim transfer the last of the batter to the skillet during his reprieve. To solve a problem, it was essential to approach it from the proper angle. Hadn't he just learned that? With the hiss of wet meeting hot still lingering in the air, Blair swiftly dropped to his knees and kissed the back of Jim's thigh.
Jim rocked back on his heels, sending Blair's hands up to grip his hips in an offering of support. He tasted sweetness, as if Jim -- organized, deliberate Jim -- had carelessly spilled flour and his skin was still coated with a faint dusting. As Blair's mouth searched for more, Jim steadied his stance, legs shifting, parting, and opening up all sorts of possibilities.
Blair immediately set about taking advantage of each one. Like the tender, pale skin right over there that promised to turn pink if he paid it enough attention. Or the rich darkness hiding just over here that, whe touched, made Jim push back against Blair's face. Or the significant heat enticing his fingers to creep around front. And he'd be thrilled to let them go, just as soon as he got rid of those damned annoying apron ties. They dangled directly in his face, novelty long worn off.
Besides, it smelled like the pancakes were quickly moving past golden brown and into the realm of well-done. Apparently, his favorite human smoke alarm had blown a fuse.
Blair slowly drew back. "Jim? You about done with your cooking?"
"My cooking?" Jim appeared momentarily puzzled about the exact function of the skillet in front of him. "Shit," he muttered, shoving the pan towards a cool burner and fumbling with the dial. As Blair stood, he covered Jim's hand with one of his own and gently redirected the other man's futile twisting in the opposite, and incidentally correct, direction. The burner clicked off.
"There you go. I mean, this is great timing. Absolutely perfect." Blair worked his towel loose, hissing first as nubby cotton swept over his hardness, and again as he made unimpeded contact with Jim's firm ass. "It's why we work so well together, man. 'Cause we're synchronized like this. Like clockwork," he elaborated, rocking forward in time with Jim's sympathetic movement. Blair reached for those swaying hips and pulled Jim towards the counter at their left, undoing the apron ties in the process. "Since you're done at the stove, I guess you won't be needing this thing anymore."
"Splatters," Jim muttered, his gesture implicating his newly-bared erection as the most probable source.
"It's a kitchen, Jim. Everything wipes off. They sort of design them that way." The rejected apron joined the towel on the floor. "Don't move. I'll go find some lube..."
Blair regretfully fluttered his fingers over Jim's ass, then started to move towards the bathroom. But before he could completely pull away, Jim caught his wrist. "Wait," he said in a tone far closer to begging than ordering, and tugged the captive hand to the counter. "Use that."
"Use what?" Boyscout indoctrination aside, even Jim hadn't thought to bring out lube with the rest of the condiments; Blair figured he would have noticed that sitting amongst the syrup and berries and butter...
Oh. Use that. Well. Blair vetoed higher judgment in favor of the of heat flaring in his groin, and the results were fairly predictable. He plunged his fingers into creamy cool slickness, then lavishly spread it over his cock.
Perversely, he felt like a kid playing in a mud puddle, messy and silly and quite possibly having the time of his life. Even better, he had his best friend here. Waiting to get dirty, too. Waiting to see what messier, sillier games Blair had learned since he'd grown up.
He'd figured he'd learned one or two.
After a quick return to the tub of butter, he was rubbing slippery fingers down Jim's cleft, anointing the shadowed entrance, gliding inward, upward. Jim voiced his appreciation in the back of his throat, bowing low over the countertop until his flushed cheek rested against its cold surface. Blair let his fingers slip free, hefting his own hardness instead. He leaned over the expectant form, meeting Jim's heavy-lidded gaze.
"I think I figured it out," he murmured, and slid his cock home.
Jim responded with a faint moan and an eloquent backthrust of his hips. Blair shifted his weight, splaying his hands across Jim's back and leaning heavily, unabashedly into the other man, driving deep his last few inches. Blissfully, he began to rock.
He was exactly where he wanted to be, all urgency stripped away by clinging wet muscle. He could definitely stay here awhile. Hell, he could stay here forever. Jim certainly knew how to ask if there was something he needed; for now, Blair was utterly free to slip into a fugue of endless dark warmth. He willingly let himself go.
Unwatched minutes later, a cool April breeze swirled through the room and over his back, up under his hair where it was still damp. Blair felt his hackles tingle and rise, like some threat had just ridden in on the wind. But since they were all alone in the loft, just Jim and him and a stack of pancakes, and since he'd never felt intimidated by breakfast foods before, and Jim seemed pretty busy trying to claw through the countertop, that left him as the threat, him as the threatener.
He could deal with that.
A particularly emphatic, arrhythmic thrust wrenched a thick groan from Jim, and Blair encouraged more of the same by reaching around to grasp Jim's cock. He stepped up the pace of his movements, the strokes of his hand echoing the strokes of his cock. Jim responded with fierce lunges of his own, heels skidding on the kitchen floor.
"Easy, Jim," Blair muttered, then completely ignored his own advice by thrusting in a jarring arc. It didn't really matter, as the other man wasn't listening, either. Jim's trapped body twisted, then froze as he cried out his pleasure, coming over Blair's hand, coming over the counter in warm, wet pulses.
The flesh clenching around Blair's cock, the body shuddering under his own triggered a deep, answering spike of unadulterated smug satisfaction. Blair bit his lip to keep from laughing over his triumph, from howling out his victory. This was good, this was perfect, this couldn't possibly last. Couldn't, couldn't, not even for one more second more...
He came hard into Jim's body, Jim's precious heat, and Jim's whispers of nonsense and love.
*
The dimming afterglow revealed cries of protest from his legs, so Blair sat on the kitchen floor, peering up at Jim. The other man's expression was pained as he looked over the sticky mess on the counter. "We have to throw out the rest of that butter," he finally said, sliding down to join Blair.
"'We?' 'We' do not have a dairy fetish, Jim. That was completely your idea. In fact, I'm fairly sure this entire thing was your idea." He sniffed, and would have tried for an indignant head-toss if the cabinets they leaned against hadn't been in the way. "I just showed up for the food."
"Right. Okay, Mr. Innocent Bystander, tell me this: do you usually eat breakfast with margarine all over your dick?"
Blair grinned. "No, but I guess I could make a habit of it. Strictly as a favor to you, of course." Realization dawned, and he slapped the nearest target, which happened to be Jim's chest. "Wait a minute. I never even got my breakfast."
"That part was definitely your fault."
"Allegedly my fault, Detective." His grin returned.
"Whatever. Just stay away from me with the can of Pam."
Blair's eyes lit with wicked glee, and, unable to call back his words, Jim could only groan and hide his face amongst buttery curls.