But really, how many times does your boss show up on your doorstep, all smiles and puppy enthusiasm, to ask if you want to come watch the aliens with him?

I’m willing to bet not often, even if my employers tend to be more eccentric than most.  Tim is still the only person I know that could seriously ask that question and not get the door slammed in his face.  I lost my tolerance for people on drugs a long time ago.

But Tim meant it, even without the aid of white powder and pretty pills to convince him.  And I hadn’t been doing anything productive anyway.  As much as I yearn for downtime between scores, I don’t know what to do with it when it comes.  Not these days, when there’s no band to tour with, no wife or girlfriend to dote over, no kids to spoil like a few days of excess will make up for months of neglect.  All I have these days is an empty house, a hundred expensive distractions, and a lot of silence.

So. I made an exception.  My life is made up out of exceptions, ‘just this once’s that turned into addictions or steady jobs or doomed relationships.  Perhaps you could substitute ‘mistake’ for ‘exception’ and it might be a bit more accurate.

Anyway.

That’s why Wednesday night, nearing midnight, found me in the passenger seat of a rental truck speeding out to the middle of nowhere.  I didn’t expect the middle of nowhere to be quite so comforting.  I didn’t realize that the thousand flashing lights and constant noise of LA was starting to rub me raw until we were out of it, into the cold comfort dark of the desert.  It feels a bit like going underwater, deep down silence, waiting for something huge and blind and hungry to loom out of the dark beyond the headlights.   The stars are so bright it almost hurts to look at them, but that doesn’t really stop me from leaning my head against the window and staring up.

Tim doesn’t say anything.  Actually, Tim hasn’t said anything since we left LA.  Before the silence could get too thick to breathe in, he pushed an ancient tape in and let his bizarre musical tastes talk for him.  And they are bizarre.  Tim seems to enjoy the absolute extremes, Tom Jones to Iggy Pop, Slim Whitman to The Cure.  The first strains of Loreena McKennit came on for a brief few seconds before he pushed fast-forward, a tight look on his face I recognize from the days he used to wince at every reminder of Lena.  I don’t ask.  Asking got me two years of silence last time.

One or two of the songs creep up on me when I’m not paying attention, and it takes me a second to realize that they’re mine.  I get the dubious honor of being the only person to be featured more than once, and even that has no pattern.  Spider and Capitalism, opposite ends of the Boingo lifetime.  The sound of my own voice warbling, twenty years younger, still makes me wince.

The hum of tires on asphalt is on the verge of dragging me into thrall by the time we finally stop, five hours out on a trip Tim claimed would “only take a minute, I promise.”  I’d be annoyed, but I’m too familiar with Tim’s fucked up concept of time to have taken him seriously anyway.

The truck shudders, gravel grinding under the tires as he pulls off the road and on to the thankfully generous shoulder.  Another shudder as he puts the truck into park, then turns the engine off.  I’d bitch at him to turn the hazard lights on, but we’re so far out it feels like no one’s ever been here and no one’s coming back.  The overhead light blares on as he opens the driver’s side door, sudden and too-bright.  He turns to me and smiles that faintly unhinged smile, the genius smile that I would probably follow into hell.  Nobody’s ever accused me of being too smart for my own good.

“C’mon,” he says, no trace of hitch or hesitation, then steps out into the dark.  It swallows him whole, and leaves nothing to say that he was ever there in the first place.

Fuck.

I more slide than climb out of the passenger side, stumbling as my feet slip on the gravel.  It’s unexpectedly cold out here.  I knew, intellectually, that temperature drops like a rock out here the second the sun goes down, but knowing is entirely different than feeling the cold bite at every inch of bare skin.  That damned water metaphor comes back to me, this time some nonsense about falling through ice.  The dubious blessing of being raised by two English teachers.

Still, it is appropriate.  It’s cold, and so dark that I have to use the side of the truck to keep my balance because it’s suddenly difficult to tell where the ground stops and the sky starts.  True dark, away from the comfort of constant electric lights.

Tim doesn’t seem to have any problem, the bastard.  I can hear him humming from the back of the truck, something halting and discordant.  By the time I make it back there, the velvet dark is starting to form patterns, faint shapes.  I catch a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye a second before I hear two metallic thumps and Tim offering, ever so helpfully, “Here, Danny.”

There’s something distinctly wrong about a multi-million dollar director perching in the back of a pick-up truck, rental or no, but it can’t hurt his image any more to have his B-movie composer up there with him.  I haul myself up, wincing as the cold metal reaches right through the denim and makes it very clear to me that I should have worn something a touch warmer.

My shoulder jars into his, and I reach out to touch his wrist.  Some part of me has never gotten over the need to check on him, steady him out, no matter how patently clear it becomes that he’s grown out of that stage.  I know I can’t help it, just like I know it doesn’t exactly thrill him to be coddled, so I take my hand back and cover.  “You mind if I smoke?”

“Pff,” he says, and waves a hand.  Good, so I can recognize hands now.

I’m going to interpret that hand gesture as a ‘yes’.  Reaching into my pocket, I draw out a cigarette and a lighter.  It takes three times to get the lighter going, my hands fumbling in the cold.

“Here.”  There’s a rustle of cloth  just before a bundle of shirt is shoved in my lap.  It’s still warm, traces of his heat, and I don’t think I should want to hold it up and breathe him in.  It’s tempting anyway.  The only thing that keeps me from doing it is knowing that he’ll get it back smelling like smoke.  I know better than to hope he’ll think of me.  But it keeps me from burying my face in the shirt anyway, and we both know appearances are all that count.

I rub my fingers back and forth on the sleeve.  It’s thin, soft in that way that only ancient shirts can manage.  Thread-worn.  “You sure?”

“I managed England winters without a coat.  I’m sure.  Besides, you’re just in…”  His hands make a vague gesture, cutting motions around his elbows.  Sadly enough, I can interpret that as ‘T-shirt’.  “You… yeah.”

Right.  Letting the lighter go out for the moment, I put it down on the bed of the truck and pull the shirt on.  The last trace of heat has faded, choked out by the cold.  The shirt, which was loose on him, hangs on me.  I have to roll the sleeves up to avoid setting myself on fire. I shrug and put the cigarette in the corner of my mouth, mumbling around it as I cup the lighter in my hand and bring it up.  “Your pneumonia.”

Tim laughs, that slightly mad laugh, and turns away.  The light from the end of my cigarette paints shadows everywhere, flickering ghosts dancing in the dark.  One brushes back and forth over his mouth, again and again.  He’s not looking; I don’t have to pretend not to stare at him.

There are lines starting on his face, at the corner of his eyes and his mouth.  Gray streaks at his temples, too, but subtle enough that you have to search them out to see them at all.  He’s not a baby anymore.

And that thought process is a damned good way to depress myself.

I lean against the side of the truck bed, metal pressing into my side hard enough to bruise, and take the first drag of smoke.  It sears its way down, biting almost as hard as the cold air, and I hold it in until my lungs ache and I can feel my heartbeat in my temples.  Occasionally it’s nice to have a reminder that it’s still beating.

It was much easier to spit in the face of the Reaper when I wasn’t an atheist coming up on 50, realizing that this may be all I get.  Almost enough to make a guy find religion and healthy living.

Heh.  Right.

The buzz settles in like an ache in my bones, a heat under the skin.  Distracting.  I close my eyes, feeling it, listening to the wind howl its very old song and spit sand against the side of the truck, and…

The truck bed creaks, a split second warning before something brushes against the inside of my arm where the cuff is unbuttoned.  There’s heat an inch away, hovering, touchable.

I take a second to enjoy the dark, the relative simplicity of the moment before I open my eyes.  And yes, there’s Tim an inch away, practically on my lap, and for a split second…

The shadow strokes him, cheekbone to chin, and hides his eyes.  His fingertips settle on my arm, almost gripping, almost steady.  His other hand comes up, touch the place on the cigarette between my fingers and the burning tip, and I let him take it.  He smiles, sudden bright delight, and settles back on his haunches.

I want to ask him when he started smoking, or if he just decided now was a good time to pick up a new addiction, but there’s no place for words.  From somewhere out in the dark I hear the moaning, piercing voice of a coyote, adding counterpart to the wind, the two sounds wrapping together into one song.

Tim shifts, almost sprawling, braced on one hand as he steadies the cigarette with the other.  He could ask for another cigarette.  He could move back a little.  He doesn’t neither, just lingers on the cigarette.  He’s done this before; the smoke goes down without a cough or a hesitation.  His eyelashes ease closed, a smile toying with the edges of his mouth.  It feels like an eternity before he lets the smoke go, slowly, carefully.  He glances up, then hands the cigarette back with a self-conscious grin.

I give him one back and put the cigarette against my lips.  I can almost taste him on the paper.

When I look back up, he still hasn’t moved. His fingers trace patterns on the base of the truck bed, the tips coming away gray with dust. His eyes are heavy on my face, my mouth.  His mouth is set in a faintly amused curve, like he thinks he knows something I don’t know.

My mouth feels dry.  Reaching up, I take the cigarette from between my lips and offer it to him.  Something, the nicotine or the cold or this inexplicable sense of terror, is making my blood run hard in my veins.  I should glance away, focus on the wind or the cold or anything but him.

His expression doesn’t change.  He doesn’t falter.  He just inches forward, knees bumping into mine, and takes the cigarette out of my hand.  It goes over the edge of the truck, into the gravel, and takes the light with it.  There’s a confused moment of fumbling in the dark before cold, thin hands settle on my shoulders and his lips are on mine.

It’s almost… chaste.  Purity, for a moment, the faint brush of mouth on mouth, a question and a hesitation.  And I fold, buckling under him, letting him fumble on to my lap and kiss me harder.

The first touch of tongue and the echo of smoke, traded back and forth between our mouths until it feels like drowning.  His hands tense in my shirt, the pressure of blunt nails, and he moans.  He’s all soft skin over bone, no cushioning, heavy on my thighs.  I wonder if he knows he’s rocking back and forth, unconscious rhythm.

Possibly because my hands are on his hips, pressing in on sharp hipbones hard enough that it has to hurt, guiding, arching against him.  Hungry kisses, graceless, occasionally fierce.  I’d like to pretend I’m not gasping with every press of his hips.  That’s about as useful as pretending that he didn’t give up on subtlety and start searching for a way to get under my shirt.  Bodies do what they will, sometimes, and right now all I really want is to try this without three layers of clothes in the way.

On the edge of a highway.  In the middle of the night.  In freezing temperatures.  With a big sign reading ‘incoming scandal thisaway’.

Fuck you, logic.  I want this.  Mine.  I want the hungry, clawing need, I want the insanity.

Somehow one of us gets a hand wedged between us, fumbling with zippers and getting a few good gropes in for good measure.  Fast forward.  This is insane, this is good, this is so good…

His hands are cold on my stomach.  Little pants against my mouth, shallow breaths in between kisses.  Somewhere in there his hand got knotted in my hair, and I have to fight him to get a word out.  He manages a little annoyed noise, and I lay my hand over his mouth.  My eyes are adjusting the dark, and I recognize rebellion when I see it.  Of course, it’d be hard to rebel when he’s still rocking back and forth on my lap, hips shifting into my touch.  If I were a strictly nice guy, I wouldn’t have my hand on his cock while I’m trying to tell him something.  Feels too good to pull my hand away, though.  I’ve had one too many repressed thoughts about this, and now that I’ve got it I can’t exactly seem to stop.  Damn the luck.

“Tim.”  I had no idea I could still do the sex voice, but there it is, spilling out of my mouth.  The voice that seduced a thousand groupies.  If the fact that he shivers on my lap is any indication, apparently that still works.  Or maybe that’s circling my thumb around the head of his cock.  I’m not picky.  “Lube?  Condom?”

“Ah- pocket.  Left.  Jeans.”  Biting his lip hard enough to draw blood, Tim squirms.  “God.”

True enough, the left pocket yields both condom and lube.  I can’t quite help smirking, until Tim snatches it out of my hand with a muttered, “Other slut.”

He might have said something else, but I lost track about when he slid off my lap and bent his head to my cock.  Oh, fuck.  He’s… he’s about at new at this as he is at smoking.  There’s authority in the way he nudges my thighs apart to get a better angle.  A lingering lick, a teasing nuzzle, and he’s got me.  Must not knot my hands in his hair.  I can’t take my hands off the sides of the truck, because then it’d be too much temptation to just give up on the condom and…

Condom.  Fuck.

I twist away, and he lifts his head.  The expression on his face looks distinctly like sulking.  I can’t look at his mouth. “Danny…”

“Condom.  I’m not-“  I’m not that much more coherent than he is on his best day, apparently.  “I don’t want to risk it.”

Which is a little more telling than I intended, but it gets results.  Tim glares a bit, but sits up and tears the foil packet open.  I think he takes a little too much time carefully nudging it on, not coincidentally stroking every inch the latex covers, settling into a rhythm and pulling back.  By the time it’s on to his liking, I know damned well I can’t handle having him put on the lube.  Not if I want to keep some shred of pride, here.

Tim jumps when I grab his wrists, his expression flashing from guilty to challenging and back fast enough to give a lesser man whiplash.  At least my tugging him forward adds ‘reconsidering future Danny torture’ to the combination.  He gives me a bright, innocent smile, which falters when he gets the look of death in return.  When I tug at the waistband of his jeans, meaning ‘off, right the fuck now’, it fades all the way.

A moment of silence, of gravity.  It bears down with the collective weight of all of our considerable demons, and drags on for a short eternity.  The universe rarely gives moments for last thoughts, enough time to wonder if it’s worth it, and in my experience that moment has always been a warning and the niggling little doubts have always been right.

Julie. Lena. Lisa. Helena.  I won’t even be able to say I didn’t see it coming.

Oh, goddamn it.  Just sex, wrapped in an enormously bad idea. I used to get off on this.  Watching the jeans slide a bit off those narrow hips, baring just what’s strictly necessary for this to work, I’m discovering that years haven’t changed much.  My heart is beating an unsteady staccato in my throat.

A thin strip of marble-pale skin peeks out, mostly covered by the loose shirt. It’s almost chaste.  Tim makes a face and shuffles forward, less than gracefully, until he’s about ready to crawl into me. I can feel him shivering.  I tilt my head, trying to catch his eyes. “You sure you-“

“Yeah.”

“We could drive back-“

“And you could back out, or I could back out, for the hundredth fucking time since-“ Tim cuts off, shakes his head. A sound out in the dark catches his attention briefly, and turning to look bares his throat. A bemused smile turns up the corner of his mouth. “You know, Zen Buddhists cut off fingers, looking for enlightenment.”

“Great. Thanks for comparing me to self-mutilation.” But I know Tim, and I know, if not what he meant, at least what he didn’t. He’s only an ascetic for his movies, and the concept of a pity fuck is beyond him. So I lean forward and bite, gently, at the hollow of his throat. When that makes him grind down on my lap, I do it again, harder. Nobody said I couldn’t be taught. “I’m not going to be some link to a greater understanding of the universe, you know.”

“No. If Lisa wasn’t, nobody will be. No, I’m just. Kinda. Winging it. Yeah?”

Well, it worked for him before. Who am I to say no, please, nubile fucked up beautiful boy, get the hell off my lap and join a monastery? With a shrug, I tear open the lube and slide my hand down between us.  The teeth of the zipper rasp up my arm, but it’s worth any sting to touch him. Therefore, wounded in the name of sex, I feel perfectly justified taking my time.

Tim hisses between his teeth like a scalded cat, tries to squirm down, but I still outweigh him enough to hold him still. He whimpers, gnaws on his lip a little viciously. “Would you-“

I give him my best infuriating prick smile. “Yes?”

Giving up with a huff, he growls. “Fingers?”

“You still have ten of them. Callused. Little bend in one like you broke it. What an odd question.”

“I’m going to hit you.”

“For that, we definitely need to go inside.”  Because I’m such a stand-up guy, I give him a fraction of what he’s looking for. Just a quick little nudge. He jerks like I shot him, breath catching loud in his throat. It’s not all snark when I ask him, “Okay?”

“Ah. Yeah. Yes.” Resting his forehead on my shoulder, he says profoundly, “Um.”

“Rather have a blowjob?”

Tim lifts his head just enough to give me a heavy-eyed look through his lashes. That look alone might be enough to break me. All pupils, just a thin rim of brown around black, and enough heat in them to scald. It’s almost instinct then, pressing a fingertip inside. He makes a small noise, almost choked, then wraps both hands in the fabric of the shirt and drags me forward into a hungry kiss.

Which is about the end of my restraint. Some small voice reminds that this is it, I should make it last as long as I can, because when the drugs or the whim passes the memories are all I’m getting. I should torture him. I should-

I press deeper, demanding, searching, and with a sort of misplaced serendipity find what I was looking for on first try. Tim shudders, making some sort of noise that’s lost in the kiss, grinding down into it hard enough that I belatedly worry about hurting him. When he breaks the kiss to pant “again”, voice rougher than I’ve ever heard it, I stop worrying. As soon as the first reaction dies down, Tim’s hands easing on my shirt, I do it again, barely grazing my fingers across. Nice, easy. Maybe a bit misplaced in the backseat of a rental truck, but oh, well.

Of course, it occurs to me when Tim slams my shoulders back against the edges of the truck bed so hard I know I’m going to have bruises and fucking claims my mouth, snarling between hungry kisses, perhaps Tim doesn’t agree. Okay, then. I’m just the lackey. Not the healthiest way to start anything, building on uneven ground, but nobody says the building blocks aren’t going to tumble the second both of us get off. Or maybe just one.

So I shift him, glad for once that he’s got the weight and curves of a rake, and pull him down not hard but firmly enough to get his hands to ease up a bit. He kneads instead, idly, then swats my hands away and eases himself down with notably less mercy than I was trying to give. But y’know, there’s Tim for you. Even if it hurts him, or anybody around him, he’ll get what he wants.

It’s one of the few things we still have in common, come to think of it. We’re both equally obnoxious to work with and for. Occasionally vicious, occupationally cold. Maybe that’s why it’s so surprising to find out that he burns inside, tight and hot and perfect. Fucker would be a good lay.

Catching his lip between his teeth, he squints his eyes closed for a moment and just waits for a minute. I’ve got equal chances of getting my head torn off, by him or by my conscience, for either touching him or letting him go. Once I think about it, my conscience is probably the greater evil, so I take a moment to pet his back. Nice snarling director. Good boy.

Heh. Boy. Right.

Thankfully, Tim doesn’t shrug off the comfort for once, just takes a deep breath and squirms, settling deeper. Since he doesn’t look pained that time, I can guiltlessly enjoy it. I probably owe him an apology in advance for understating good lay, since even listening to him breathe is too much temptation for the moment. I slide my hand up, tracing his throat with the backs of my knuckles, feeling bone and breath and damnably soft skin.

“Mmm,” he murmurs, sounding oddly like he’s continuing a conversation with the voices in his head, then tips his head down to press his mouth to my knuckles. Pointless sentimentality, another of Tim’s trademarks, but that doesn’t explain why I briefly can’t breathe.

Oh, right, that would be my own idiocy in taking any of this seriously.

Tim glances up through his eyelashes, but before I can gauge his expression something out there in the dark catches his attention. He turns throat, staring out into the dark with a frown and a look he shouldn’t be wearing, clueless sell-out city-boy that he is. He shouldn’t look, briefly, like he belongs out here in the dark and the quiet and the lonely cold, painted pale under the moon, watching for the coyotes and waiting for his aliens. That doesn’t change the fact that at the moment, in worn flannel and tangled hair with no shadows at his eyes or tightness at his mouth, that he couldn’t possibly have come from anywhere else. But, what the hell? It’s not like he’s ever belonged anywhere to begin with, no matter how hard some places tried to lay claim. I can indulge the part of my brain that forgets it isn’t supposed to do poetic anymore.

I touch his face with my fingertips, and he looks back at me. There’s a tinge of madness in his eyes, but it’s right at home here, and it’s not like I can point fingers. “Five minutes,” he pronounces, like that explains everything, then closes his eyes and shifts a little. Too bad a little is enough to lay me low, even if the soft sound he makes wasn’t enough to do that job neatly. Linking his fingers around the rim of the truck, he does it again, hard enough for me to feel his thighs flex. It’s… God. Good. Tempting, to watch his head tip back and wonder what he’d do if he suddenly found himself no longer steering. Drowning, instead of taking his own sweet time getting sips.

Again with the fucking water metaphors. Anything for distraction, maybe. Anything to pretend I’m not already shaking.

“Tim.” I’d like to say that was commanding.

Tim opens one eye, the expression on his face suggesting that I was interrupting something important.

Okay, then. I curl my fingers around his hips and arch an eyebrow. He’s not the only one who can do the haughty bitch look. Hell, I’m fairly sure I taught him that look. Thankfully, he’s never mastered the growl. “Meditate tomorrow.”

Tim just looks at me, then snorts and closes his eye again. “You like it.”

“Sadist.”

One corner of his mouth curves up. “Yeah, you like that, too.”

Oooh. The gauntlet has been thrown. Tightening my grip on his hips, I shift him, carefully the first time, less so when it doesn’t hurt him. That wins me another noise, harsher, louder. His nails drag on the paint. When I ease my grip, he just does it harder, grinding down as a shiver rolls up his spine.  I’d be more smug if I wasn’t shaking just as hard, if he wasn’t perfect, if it wasn’t entirely too good to stop.

And yet, what do I make him do? Stop. Why? Because I’m an idiot. I can’t even call it pride, because I don’t entirely recognize my own voice when I purr, “Who likes it, now?”

Tim gives me a dark, half-lidded look, then decides to move his hands from the truck rim to my shoulders. His nails bite in, hard enough to bruise. “You,” he says, in that tone that usually accompanies the word ‘fired’, “are going to fuck me. Now.”

Again with the gauntlet, this time more than I can resist. Even with everything screaming, lingering at that burn so low and constant it’s almost a throbbing hot ache, for me to just slide in deep and stay, I have to grin at him. It looks mad, in the reflection of those not-so-doelike eyes. “Nah.”

Well. So Tim did pick up the snarl, after all. I even caught words in that, something along the lines of ‘kill you and they’ll never find the body’. Which is true enough, but I know better. He’ll wait until after the sex for the murder. So hey, one more reason to torment him, dangle a good hard fuck out of his reach just to watch him hiss and bat at it. Or, more realistically, swat at my head.

I catch his wrist in one hand, bend to taste the pulse. I want so badly that everything’s tinged with it, that it’s a sort of all consuming roar in the background, and it’s almost calming. But then, I’ve been called psychotic more than once. “What would you do if I stopped, Tim?”

His name sounds odd, out loud. Jarring. Hello, reality. Tim makes a low, wounded noise in his throat when I bite at his palm, fidgeting, a slick sweet little aborted almost thrust that probably just made it worse for him. Poor baby. I guess he might’ve figured out eventually that not everything is going to be handed to him, just on principle.

I let go of his wrist. With the hand that’s free, I slide down between us, curl two fingers around his cock and promptly not move. He makes a noise I can’t exactly define, rocking, maddening little motions that feel both good and torturous.

“You want this?”  Again, my voice sounds odd. Alien, if that word is still acceptable in the situation. Dark.

Tim squirms, getting nowhere and nothing in return. “Yeah.”

“You want me to do this?”

Maybe he catches the emphasis on the middle three words, because his eyes come open all the way. He’s breathing fast, maybe a touch panicky, little catches of air between attempts to get free. “You asked me that.”

“Different question.”

And suddenly, it takes a lot not to look away, as his expression changes from annoyed to intent. His eyes hunt my face, for a second, wild and rational and odd, like he’s lost and yet he’s light years beyond anything we mere mortals can touch. Then, slowly, he nods. “Yeah. I want you to do this.”  Then, just for a little touch of the immature, he adds pointedly, “Can we have sex now?”

So, duly reassured, I let his hip go, and… oh, yes. The dull ache flares up into something nearly unnerving, something consuming, with the first flexing rise of his hips, quicksilver and slick and perfect for all its lack of sanity. Probably because of the lack of sanity. Leaning in close, he winds his fingers into mine, then presses both to the truck rim. I’d mind, maybe, if I had a mind, but he moves almost vicious-fierce, cock hard against my stomach, teeth against my throat when he lets his head drop. His thighs tremble, a little, but then we’re both shivering in cold and in an entirely different sort of heat. Feels good, sliding inside, pulled almost out, dip in again, a good rhythm, Tim’s muffled voice a rising counterpoint against my shoulder, fingers biting into my sides, flexing, heat, and then Tim’s voice breaks off on an obscenity I didn’t know he knew and it hits crescendo hard enough to make the world buckle.

The first thought that occurs to me is something low and satisfied that probably can’t be translated into any language known to man.

The second is, and should probably not be, crescendo? You know, when sex becomes a musical metaphor, I need a fucking vacation.

But, hey. Tim is warm and limp and heavier than physics might imagine, and I can still feel the heat lingering in a pleasant warm afterglow, and that’s probably one up on Maui. Might not beat France, though. Unless I can drag Tim with me, and hey, two good things in one.

Oh. Great. I need a vacation, and I need to be shot.

My hand works its way under Tim’s shirt, to the taut wire muscles of his back. Tim purrs, distractedly, when I rub along his spine. Good a time as any to ask. “Tim?”

“Mgh?”

“Will you shoot me in the head? I had a thought.”

“Danny. ‘M 43. Give me an hour to recover, or I’m not shooting anything.”

I laugh at him, though mostly at the universe, and lift my head. Must’ve hit it fairly hard, as the sky swims with a bluish aura for a moment, before it’s just as quickly gone. Weird. Shaking off the lingering spots, I look down at him to accuse him of something or other, only to find Tim staring past me at the sky. His expression is rather pointedly disgruntled. “Damn,” he mutters, then sighs and sits up.

I blink at him, take my hand back. “What?”

Looking rather sulky, Tim tips his head at the sky. “We just missed it.”

Broken record time. “What?”

With a sigh that makes it rather obvious he’s being patient with me at great pains to himself, he elaborates, “The UFO. We missed it.”

For a second, I’m tempted to point out the flash of blue. But then, that would be flaky, and Danny “my doll collection has juju, fuck you, it does too” Elfman is never flaky. Oh, no, never that. Instead, I tug my shirt down over my stomach, wincing a little at the mess and hoping sincerely that we don’t get pulled over on the drive back. Still, it gives me a convenient distraction to stare at while I comment in my lightest and fluffiest manner, “Ah. Shame. Guess we’ll have to come back.”

Tim is silent long enough to make me nervous and con me into glancing up. He can stare in a really unnerving fashion, turns out. Who knew?

Well. Probably most of his actors and crew from ’94 onwards, but whatever. I’m old and slow.

Finally, though, and with the definite air of a sadist, he tilts his head and says, a little too airily for my taste, “I suppose we could do that.”

Ooh. Bitch. I glare at him as he shimmies off my lap, grimacing a little at the cold, and mutter, “I liked you better when you couldn’t string two syllables together.”

Tim grins. “Liar.”
***
End.