Gracias to Deb, for beta

Jim looked down at Blair, drowsing on a sunny rock. He tapped Blair's shin with his foot. "Chief. Lizardboy. Wake up."

Blair slitted his eyes open. "I am awake. Which you would know if you bothered to use your ears."

Jim smirked at him. "Yeah, well, you're getting sunburned. Come on. We still have five miles to go."

"Five more miles of mosquito-infested trail. If you open up that bullet wound, I am not carrying your ass." Blair rolled to his feet.

Jim flicked a pebble at him. "My leg's fine. Now get a move on. Game's in less than three hours."

Blair threw the pebble back and retrieved his pack from its place against a tree. "Well? Are we moving?"

"We're moving, Chief."

Blair took the lead on the next section of trail, which gave Jim plenty of opportunity to watch the way Blair's t-shirt rubbed against the strap of his pack.

"Jim. Jim. Earth to Jim." Blair was snapping fingers in his face. "You zoned, man. You haven't zoned in ages. What's up?"

Jim shook his head. "Nothing. Just concentrating too hard."

"On what?"

"Your ass, Sandburg. Get moving. Time's a-wasting."

"My ass? Seriously?"

"No."

"Damn. And here I thought I finally had a chance with you."

For lack of a pebble, Jim threw a granola bar at him. "You want a chance, Chief, you gotta make a move." Blair frowned, then started towards him. Jim held up a blocking hand. "Sometime when we don't have to get back to the trailhead before you lose the ability to see."

"Jerk," Blair said, and shifted his pack. "See if I make a move on you now. And pick up that granola bar. Carry in, carry out, man."

Jim pasted his meekest look on his face and picked up the bar, then gestured for Blair to precede him up the trail.

"Uh-uh. Not with you zoning behind me. Forward ho."

They hiked the rest of the way back to the truck in silence. Jim amused himself by cataloguing the differences in sun intensity on various parts of his skin, and he figured that if he really concentrated, he'd be able to feel freckles forming on his nose.

Of course, if he zoned on that, Blair would probably laugh hysterically at him and then kick his ass, so he resisted the temptation to try it.

They slung their packs into the bed of the truck and hopped into the cab. Jim started the truck and looked over at Blair, who was staring at him. "What are you staring at?"

"Nothing."

"That's not a nothing look, Sandburg."

"Ah."

"Ah? Ah what?"

"Just wondering what you'd do if I actually did make a move."

Jim rolled his eyes. "Try it and see. It's your funeral. Wonderburger?"

"Great, Jim. Undo all the fine work we did on the hike with lard patties." He frowned and checked his watch. "On the other hand, the game starts in an hour and a half, and we're out of beer."

"So that's a yes."

Blair snorted. "Yes."

They arrived back at the loft, Wonderburger and beer in hand, with five minutes to spare. Jim took off his boots and lined them up next to his cross-trainers at the door. Blair, meanwhile, kicked his boots off and left them in the middle of the floor.

Jim considered throwing one at Blair's head, but Blair had the beer. He settled for moving the boots to just in front of the door to Blair's room, creating a tripping hazard.

"I saw that," Blair said, and put the food and beer down on the coffee table. "Just for that, I'm stealing your fries."

"Didn't get fries," Jim said, and hopped over the back of the couch, remote in one hand, churchkey in the other. "Game time, Chief."

"What kind of person doesn't get fries?" said Blair, fishing three burgers and one order of fries out of the Wonderburger bag.

"The kind of person who eats two burgers, Chief." Jim opened a beer and passed it over in exchange for his burgers.

Blair slurped foam out of the neck of his beer, and Jim watched him out of the corner of his eye. "Chief?"

"What?"

"Are you or aren't you?"

"Are I or aren't I what?" He gestured at the television. "Is it me, or are the Jags sucking this season?" He took a bite of his burger and glared at the screen.

Jim rapped on Blair's forehead with his knuckle, feeling Blair's warm skin shift at the impact. "Going to make a move. Asshole."

"Fuck off," Blair said, around a mouthful of fries. "I'm enjoying the sexual tension."

"I hate you," Jim said, and leaned back, propped his food on his stomach, and settled in to watch the game. Or - might as well admit it - to watch Blair watching the game.

He started by looking at the texture where Blair had missed a few hairs, shaving, and moved on to the peculiar smoothness of a chicken-pox scar just beyond Blair's hairline, decorated with a sheen of dirt and pollen from the hike.

He sniffed unobtrusively, wondering if he could smell the pollen over beer and burger and sweat.

Apparently not unobtrusively enough, however, since Blair looked sideways at him and then beaned him in the head with a french fry. "Eyes front."

"Thought you were enjoying the sexual tension."

"Shut up. And stop smelling me."

"I wasn't." Jim attempted to look innocent, but if Blair's expression was anything to go by, he was failing miserably. "Much."

"You are such a liar. Open me another beer, will you?"

Jim did so, but when Blair reached for it, he grabbed his hand. "Are you doing this so that if you make a move and I take you up on it you can later claim you were drunk?"

"No," said Blair. "I'm trying to watch basketball. I like beer with my basketball."

"Because if you are," Jim said, "I'm going to say yes, so you don't have to be nervous, and also, I swear to God I'm not going to freak out in the morning."

Blair rolled his eyes. "OK. Fine. After the game. Can I have my beer now?"

Jim released both Blair and the beer. "I really do hate you," he said.

"All right! Fuck! God, you're annoying!" said Blair, slamming his beer down on the table. He reached over, grabbed Jim's head, and kissed him.

Jim grabbed him right back, wrestled him down and off the couch onto the floor between the couch and coffee table. "Ow," Blair said, and bit Jim's lip, but didn't stop kissing him.

In response, Jim unsnapped Blair's jeans and pushed them down, out of the way. This close, he could smell pollen and mold caught in the fibers, laundry detergent, soap, sweat, musk. He broke off the kiss and moved down, licked the tip of Blair's dick where it poked out of his boxers. "Fuck," Blair said, and then "We're missing the fucking game, you jerk."

"Sandburg, you talk too much," Jim said, and slid his mouth over Blair's dick.

Blair shut up, or at least stopped forming coherent words. It would do.

His dick was heavy and warm in Jim's mouth, and tasted of skin and salt and that weird nostril-tingling musk taste. His hips, muscle over bone, pressed up into Jim's hands; the denim and metal of his jeans cut into Jim's lower jaw.

Jim closed his eyes and focused on taste and touch - smooth skin, veins, circumcision scar, the soft sponge of the head, the rubbery feel of the slit on top.

The carpet scratching his elbows. The jeans against his jaw, the thin boxers and rough hair against his chin and nose when Blair's dick was all the way inside his mouth.

He reached down and fumbled his own jeans open, thrust into the familiar warmth of his own palm.

Blair's breathing shuddered the air in the room; the fine trembling of Blair's body warned him. He pulled away, replaced his mouth with his hand, in the instant before Blair came.

He leaned into Blair's shoulder, inhaled the sharp scent of semen, and Blair's hand slid down his body and joined his own - warm and solid and new on his dick. He bit Blair's collarbone and came on both of them.

"Sorry, Chief" he said, and kissed him quickly, hard. "Didn't mean to bite."

Blair opened one eye. "Um," he said, which Jim took to mean "that's OK."

"Jags are winning," he said, half-sitting up and looking at the television over the table.

"Shut up," Blair said, and yanked him down for another kiss.

End Exsuscitatus