Rumi and Shams II:  This Curling Energy
by Merri-Todd Webster
(15 April 1999)

There is a light seed grain inside.
You fill it with yourself, or it dies.

I'm caught in this curling energy!  Your hair!
Whoever's calm and sensible is insane!
   --Rumi

***

Jim came home in the late afternoon, after a gruelling day in court,
to find his lover asleep in their shared bed.

Standing at the foot of the broad bed, Jim gazed on the younger man
as he undressed.  Blair was half on his stomach, half on his side,
his left leg drawn up, his arms above his head on the pillow.  Jim
tossed his tie away with his right hand.  The covers had slipped
down below Blair's hips, and his olive green tank shirt had ridden
up his back, showing a patch of dark fuzz covering the hollow at the
base of his spine.  Jim dropped his suit jacket carelessly on the
nearest chair.  Blair was snoring lightly, his ass rising and
falling with his breathing.  Jim dropped his pants and stepped out
of them and left them lying.

Unable to stay away any longer, Jim sat down on the bed.  If Blair
had approached him in this way, he would, of course, have awakened
at once, but Blair was not a Sentinel with hyperacute senses; he was
an exhausted ordinary man tenyears closer to childhood's bodily
freedom than his lover.  He was sprawled in the bed in a deep,
much-needed sleep, and he did not stir as Jim's significant weight
dipped the mattress.

Peeling off his sweaty socks, Jim turned his attention to Blair's
vital signs.  The sluggish rhythms of heart and respiration
confirmed his eyes' suspicion that Blair was, indeed, deeply asleep,
probably in the deepest part of the sleep cycle.  Jim unbuttoned the
cuffs of his starched white shirt and then rolled over onto the bed,
coming onto his side to face his sleeping lover.

He could see only half of the familiar mobile face.  At the moment
it was not a sight to inspire eros or amor; Blair's expressive eyes
were closed, and his mouth was slack, giving forth snores and drool.
 Jim smiled with that fondness we feel for the weaknesses of those
we truly love and smoothed back Blair's curly hair to uncover more
of his face.

Blair's hair... almost from the moment they met, Jim had been
fascinated with the younger man's hair.  It was not envy for Blair's
abundance of what Jim increasingly lacked; no, it was the feeling
that Blair's hair was a thing unto itself, an entity with a mind of
its own, something that could never be completely controlled.  Sort
of like a man's cock, really; you couldn't make your cock stand up
or lie down just by saying so, and Blair's curling mane was just
that wild and unpredictable.  Every time he saw it pulled back, Jim
longed to pull out the band or the clasp and spread that hair out
free over the younger man's shoulders.  That hair was a thing that
should never be caged.

Jim stroked his hand over Blair's hair again and then, cautiously,
through it, mindful of possible tangles.  It was soft and loose and
his fingers did not get caught anywhere.  Inching closer to his
snoring beloved, Jim caressed Blair's hair again and again, slow,
not quite rhythmic strokes, feeling his arousal build like a
thunderstorm gathering far out to sea.

He was not surprised, of course, when Blair rolled over, smiling,
onto his back.  Even as he lost himself in the feel of that
magnificent hair, he had been tracking the gradual shift of Blair's
heartbeat and breathing, the rise toward waking rhythms.  Smiling in
return, he bent and kissed the moist mouth.  Blair's hand curled
around the back of his neck, fingers touching the fringe of Jim's
own thin, cropped hair.

"I love this thing you have for my hair," Blair murmured.  Jim
pulled up the tank top and kissed his lover's flat, hairy stomach,
just above his navel.

"I love you."

Blair sat up, scratching at his scalp and his balls, yawned, and
reached out to Jim's thigh, ran his hand up under the plain dark
boxers to brush the swollen organ they covered.  Jim scented rather
than saw his lover's shift toward arousal, raised his hips to allow
Blair to peel down the confining shorts.  His brain whirled like a
dervish in its cup of skull as Blair rubbed his stubbly cheek and
then the side of his head against Jim's stiff cock, rubbing the
sensitive nerves with his hair.

Rough silk curls, and firm moist lips, and slick hot tongue, and
deep welcoming throat, so sweet, but Jim didn't protest when at last
Blair withdrew his mouth after having sucked the full length into
his throat, because Blair bowed his head, smiling, and let the
spurts of thick white come fly into his hair, into those thick, wild
brown curls.  

Jim lay panting, unable to speak or even think.  Blair pulled down
his own shorts and rubbed himself, hard and fast, against his
lover's thigh, until he also came. 

"I love you," Blair said.

***