By Binz

If Jim and near-death experiences are to be believed, his spirit guide is a wolf. (Blair does his best to hold on to the memory of four feet and powerful lungs and the crushing sweet smell of green humidity and blinding blurred flowers, but it gets tangled up with the metallic grit of old water and hospital antiseptic, and the same fearful blue eyes calling for him from two very different faces.) As such, he would have thought that if, out of the two of them, someone were to respond to the moon, it would have been him.

But, when he looks at it, white-bright against a sky that never goes truly black over the water and city lights, he thinks that its pretty, and remembers nursery rhymes and the scent of sage deep in the weave of Naomi's sweater, and words like apogee and gibbous, but there's nothing in his blood or brain that demands something more.

Jim is heavy in his arms, a comfortable weight that shifts against his chest and stomach, and lets whisper-soft half-words fall from parted lips onto Blair's skin, and the moon casts light that accents darkness over Jim's back and down the length of an arm, to the fingers stretching partly extended over the bed sheets. (Creation.)

There are shadow-dust bruises along the stretched cord of Jim's neck, and Blair's throb in response, nestled along his throat and down his chest and on the inside of his thighs. In the morning, he'll find purple fingerprints imbedded in his biceps, and cupping his shoulders, and Jim will hiss quietly when he gets out of bed. He will lean over to kiss Blair, again, (gently, gently, his breath warm against Blair's mouth), and stand in the shower for twenty minutes before emerging steam-red and encased. (Before he leaves, his eyes are underbelly-soft and exposed, and there's nothing Blair will dare to touch, except to rub a stubble-rough cheek over another, and breathe in the memory of rain and loam.)

He can never think about it at the time, too caught up in the fleeting, burning, there-then-gone bite of Jim's mouth and his nails and his frantic, frantic slide down and up and over Blair's body. The fever is fast-paced and desperate, with bites along his collarbone, and a tongue trailing down his belly and teeth fastening behind his knee before his lips are bruised again, and Jim's wail hangs in the confines of Blair's mouth.

Then, the wet clasp, shocking cold on his penis, and Jim's thighs clenching strangle-fast to his hips and the soft sides of his stomach beneath his ribs, and the desperate tight-heat grip and grasp as Jim rises over him and draws down again, steady and paced, fast and crashing against him while Blair gasps desperate breaths that rasp in his lungs and taste like salt.

After, when Blair's heart has slowed down, and Jim has relaxed muscle-deep against him, Blair remembers myths and legends, and the duality of Incan and Mayan beliefs, and that Sentinels were responsible for the tribe and wouldn't be bound only to the sun and the men, and of the black-furred beast that his lover sees in his dreams.

Jim's chest rises and falls against his, and it's present and concrete, like the memory of his tongue scraping between Blair's fingers and licking him clean, so Blair thinks of tides. He thinks of the plasma of Jim's blood, and the sacks around his heart and lungs and brain, and the fluid in every cell of Jim's body rising and swelling with the moon. (Blair thinks of the harbour, and of tectonic plates, and of the whole world shifting with each wave and every six hours.)

Blair thinks of twenty-eight days, and the churn in his stomach that's part expectation and part apprehension, and holds Jim closer and tighter and presses his lips against the soft, closely shorn head. Blair looks up at space through the skylight, and stares at the moon.

Fin

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