It wasn't like grant money just fell out of the sky. Which is why begging was a major component of the academic's life. Not that they told you this on the graduate application. No, there they just told you about the fabulous opportunities Ranier University could offer for research, networking, and education.
Once they had you in their clutches, then they told you about the bureaucracy, groveling, and begging.
So when Blair's most recent paper from behind the blue wall of the police department, appropriately couched in the proper trappings of urgency and humility, earned him both professional attention and professional funding, Jim declared a celebration to be in order. After all, the Sentinel stuff was all well and good, but it didn't exactly rake in the dough.
It wasn't a huge or even particularly well organized party. Just a spur-of-the-moment dinner at the Bromwell Inn, with the guest list including Simon and all the guys from Major Crimes Jim could round up on short notice. Party plans kinda had to be kept spur of the moment around Blair. Not that he was the sort to demand excess. It was just that the words "party"and "Blair" in the same sentence tended to draw hordes of admirers.
But the gathering remained contained, the platters of food were consumed with gusto, and the beer flowed freely. Particularly into Blair who, as the guest of honor, could hardly be expected to be the designated driver, too. Even if Jim were to experience a minor mental lapse and let him get behind the wheel of the Ranger in a non-crisis setting.
So the ride home saw well-established roles assumed with a comfortable awareness, as Jim groused at the traffic lights and Blair commandeered the radio. It wasn't all that unexpected when the end of the evening found the two partners standing in the kitchen of their loft, one unusually tipsy and both typically horny, arguing over how best to resolve the latter condition.
Evidently, Blair only begged in an academic context. Gone was his usual conciliatory facade, and he addressed his recalcitrant lover with an intimidating mix of drunken single-mindedness and extensive experience in getting what he wanted out of life. And out of his Sentinel. Not that Jim was about to be intimidated.
At least, not without a fight.
Jim's lips teetered just this side of macho from a pout. "Come on, Chief. Can't I suck you? Upstairs, in bed? A nice, soft bed?"
"Nope," Blair announced cheerfully. "I got the grant, I got the dinner, and now I get your dick. Here. Now." His shirt had come to rest on the floor, and Jim automatically crouched to retrieve it. It was a move which demonstrated a shameful lack of strategic planning, since Blair had now managed to open his fly, and was discarding jeans and underwear with a shimmy that made his swelling cock bob a scant eight inches from Jim's nose.
Now Jim wasn't the one with the copious notes on Sentinel senses, but he was pretty damn sure there was a hot, hard cock within range of his impressive talents of sight and smell. He closed his eyes. Oh, yeah, definitely within the range of smell. The creak of metal dragged open his eyes, and he stood with Blair's shirt wrinkling in his clenched fist.
Blair was sitting on the table. Well, not sitting, per se. He could hardly be described as sitting when he was also leaning back on his elbows, thighs spread and left foot planted on the glass surface in an unabashed display of his heavy cock and balls. Jim sighed, deciding the other man couldn't legitimately be branded a cocktease when he fully intended to deliver. Just as soon as he finished tormenting his poor Sentinel.
"What, Jim. You want me to get dressed again? Just say the word, man. I got stuff to do, if you don't wanna do me."
God. A wheedling Blair he could stonewall. An impulsive Blair he could scold. But a wanton Blair spread out like a feast of muscles and curls and cock... Jim Ellison was a firm believer in a man knowing his limitations, and at that moment they were lounging naked on the kitchen table.
Blair managed not to laugh at the expression of poleaxed dismay on Jim's face, and settled for a flat-out grin instead. "C'mon, Jim," he said, with a husky depth that came from a cocktail of beer and lust. "Take it like a man."
A ten-second reconnaissance into the bathroom yielded condom and lube, and another ten seconds saw a naked Jim doing a fairly good impression of the spoils of war as he rolled the latex onto his dick under Blair's watchful gaze. Pushing an interfering chair aside, he tugged Blair's hips towards him, then rubbed the slick pad of a finger over his asshole. Curls tossed back, the younger man's lips parted with a sigh.
Recognizing an engraved invitation when he saw one, Jim leaned over for a fierce open-mouthed kiss. Just as he began to lose himself in the tastes of beer and oregano and mint, he felt the clenched muscle under his finger relax, and he slid the digit into Blair's ass. The kiss was momentarily broken in favor of breathing, but Blair, figuring oxygen wasn't going to relieve his beer-and-sex-induced dizziness, arched up to worry at Jim's lower lip with his teeth.
The kissing continued for several drawn-out minutes, with brief pauses as Jim added more lube and more fingers, until Blair's hissed urgings for a cock in him, a cock in him now became continuous. His Sentinel dutifully complied with a slow entry, and series of short, easy thrusts. Whatever this position sacrificed in depth it more than compensated for with deliciously tight pressure around Jim's dick. And, of course, there was the not to be underestimated attraction of Blair's lips on his own.
Although an all-night fuck sounded marvelous in theory, the alcohol in Blair's blood was dragging out his response, tethering him on this side of release. Eventually, it became apparent that every one of Blair's soft groans was having the precise opposite effect on Jim.
"Chief, I can't... ah... we have to..."
Considering his present loose grasp of tedious concepts like balance and equilibrium, letting go of the table wasn't perhaps the smartest thing for Blair to do. Even given that his intellect was being rather nicely shoved up his ass, Blair still managed to latch onto Jim's shoulders without falling onto the floor. Rallying that famous Sandburg stubbornness, he actually convinced his brain to locate his tongue and twist it around intelligible words.
"James Ellison, if you come without me, so help me, you'll wish you were in a permanent zoneout, buddy." He dug his heels into Jim's butt for a little nonverbal emphasis.
"Oh, God," Jim groaned, burying his lips in the tangle of hair that began at the base of Blair's throat. He knew that tone, that damned tone of command that would put any boot camp drill sergeant to shame. And if he didn't comply, there was one flower child currently squirming on his dick who'd kick his ass all the way to the Amazon basin.
Protect the tribe? Serve and protect the public? Right. He'd finally figured out the real reason Sandburg kept putting him through his rat-maze of tests: so he could focus every damn last one of his senses on giving the man absolutely inhuman orgasms. Like he could concentrate with velvet steel clutching around his cock. Damned selfish Guide.
Damned selfish, beautiful, loving Guide.
It took an image of his own long-ago and best forgotten drill sergeant to give Jim the willpower to pull out of Blair's slick ass. The younger man's grunt of protest faded as Jim tugged him to his feet, turned him around, and bent him over the table until his thighs were pressed into the metal edge and his hands clawed for a grip on the glass surface. A hard cockhead was again stretching his asshole, and then two strong hands were fisted around his length, with a thumb and forefinger seeking out every last nerve on the purpled head.
"Yeah, Jim. C'mon, man, more." The table skidded forward a couple of inches, and the hands on Blair's cock built to a punishing rhythm so damn perfect that Blair knew Jim had be deciphering his groans, even if he couldn't himself.
Oh, God, there it was. That lovely warm burning in his belly that felt a little like alcohol going down, but this was so much better and it wasn't going to stop, not now.
"Fuck, Jim. Fuck me, fuck... shit, yeah..." Words disintegrated into a wail, and then when his air gave out, into shuddering, silent gasps. Consciousness was reduced to a single burning line of fire running straight through his gut from his asshole to the head of his dick, with the rest of his body hanging on for dear life. His come shot across the tabletop, marbleizing its grey color with milky swirls, then subsided to a trickle over Jim's knuckles.
The younger man gave one final shudder, then planted his feet firmly on the floor a few more inches apart. Jim slicked more lube onto his cock, and angled Blair's hips until his dick was again deep inside and being rubbed just... so. With the smell of Blair-come swirling around his head, and his Guide's voice still murmuring words of sex and love in his ears, he watched the muscles play under his lover's skin until he came with a wordless groan.
Jim took a deep, steadying breath and raised his forehead from where it had come to rest on the broad back. He finally released his white-knuckled grip on Blair's hip and ran a soothing hand over the sweat-slickened skin in front of him. The caressing movement ended with Jim tugging on an wayward curl while the other hand gripped the base of the condom on his softening cock. Flexing the sore muscles in his thighs one final time, he withdrew from his partner.
Overstressed quads finally gave out, and Jim stumbled back to sprawl bonelessly on the chair. Figuring if the table hadn't collapsed by now it would stand for another ten minutes, Blair twisted to sit his butt on the cool glass, and pulled Jim's head to his chest.
A long minute later, a growl that bore a resemblance to "Sandburg" drifted up from vicinity of his belly. Might as well humor the man. "Yes, Jim?"
Blue eyes that could have been icy if they weren't so smugly satisfied glared up at him. Love was wonderful, but propriety had to be reasserted. "You're rubbing your ass all over the table. And you just came on it." Blair blinked lazily at this statement of the obvious. "We eat on that table, Sandburg."
Even Blair had trouble mustering up wide-eyed and innocent when he was blissed-out and sleepy as hell. "Hey, Jim, guess that means we'll hafta eat on the couch now."
The next growl sounded suspiciously like a snicker.