Blazing Addles

It was just as well that he had sleep disorders, Alan thought as he plopped three ice cubes in his coffee and downed the cup in one continuous gulp, or it would be hard to get ahead of Denny in the morning. Not that he was certain to be ahead of him any other time, but at least this way he wasn't starting off the day already behind. He did take it as a good sign that Denny was already back in his habitual routines.

Alan had weathered one pang of guilt, but dismissed it more as a projection of his own patterns and poor decisions. Denny Crane was not wont to regret—assuming he remembered—anything he did. Especially if it involved a dose of robust sex.

But he had been in the bathroom a long time. It wasn't the wound; that was healing rapidly. Alan set the cup (Pam Grier with an automatic weapon—her clothes disappeared when filled with hot liquid, but the machine gun did not.) down and went to check.

"Are we all right in there?" Alan tapped at the door of the master bath.

The door flew open. "You gave me a hickey!" Denny stood there naked, pointing to his neck.

Alan thumbed the bruise in contemplation. "Apologies. It seems that in the heat of passion, my lips took on a mind of their own. Usually it's my penis. Perhaps you'll decide you did get the better bargain."

"You have to do something; I'm going into work tomorrow."

"I don't think that there's a cure for hickeys," said Alan. "Although I did once try to convince Tabitha Porter that swallowing semen would fade them faster."

"Does it work?" Denny pricked up his ears.

"After exhaustive experimentation, I must conclude, 'no.'"

Denny's face fell. "You did this to me; you have to fix it." He jabbed Alan in the chest.

"We can always tell them it's a powder burn from a wayward shot."

Denny's eyes narrowed. "Are you going to tell them?"

"Tell them what?"

"That we're having not-sex together."

"No need."

"Right." Denny nodded in decision.

"I already did." Alan smirked.

"What?"

"Yesterday."

"We weren't having not-sex yesterday!"

"Which is quite possibly why they didn't believe me. What can I say? I tried. My sacred duty to truth and candor has been fulfilled." Alan turned to go, but as he did, he spied Denny's pajamas on the floor. Bundling them up, he reached for the laundry hamper, but stopped before he lifted the lid.

They were still warm, possibly from the shower steam, but—as Alan preferred to think—perhaps from the heat of Denny's body. Alan lifted the bottoms to his face—crotch first—and drew in a breath.

"You're kidding." Denny gaped at him.

"One of the core comforts of an intimate relationship is the freedom to be who one is without fear of reproof. To date, you have not disappointed me on that score. Alan inhaled again and sighed.

"It's not reproof; it's confusion. I live in a damn big comfort zone; I'm not used to finding myself outside of it."

"Somehow I suspect that you're big enough for a comfort zone to form around you via gravitational pull."

"When I was your age, being a weirdo meant being able to understand all the words to disco songs. These days—" Denny shook his head.

Alan gave the flannel a last caress and chucked it into the laundry bin. He creased his brow and reached for words. "It's said that smell is the strongest trigger of emotional memories, but I suspect it's something more visceral than that. With smell, you inhale and absorb tiny molecules of the subject. They cross the alveolar membranes of your lungs and actually enter your blood and your own cells. Everything we have ever smelled becomes part of us. It's about the most erotic concept there can be."

"Smelling pussy turns me on." Denny nodded.

Like holes in the ozone layer, comfort zones weren't formed in a day.

"Okay, we'll run with that that for now." Alan dropped to his knees and leaned his cheek against Denny's thigh. He breathed in through the curls and out against the damp skin of the genital set. He watched as the penis began to fill and lift, and he smiled to himself at the sharp little hiss that Denny made.

Denny's hand went to the base to coax himself along.

Nuzzling the hand, Alan salted little kisses along the shaft. Denny groaned and rubbed his penis against Alan's other cheek. Rasping now, Alan exhaled over the base and balls as Denny strained to guide his semi-erection up to the parting of Alan's lips.

He made it. Alan kissed the tip once. Denny gasped and tried to push it in.

Alan stood up, leaving Denny holding...his bag.

"That's it?" Denny blinked.

He did look adorable standing naked and holding his...junior member.

"I'm afraid we don't have time." Alan straightened his collar and tie.

"It won't take me long." Denny gave himself an enthusiastic tug.

"That's what I'm afraid of. The finer things in life should be savored." Alan brushed nothing in particular off of his trousers. A prominent erection stood outlined when his arms jostled his jacket hem.

"You like it." Denny's eyes rested on Alan's front. "Living on the edge."

"I do." Alan's skin was warm, and his heart thumped in his ears. It was aroused that he felt most alive.

"I don't. Never saw the point to going wanting when a man can have anything he wants." Denny turned back towards the sink. He poured a splash of mouthwash into a cup and swished it around.

Alan watched him in the mirror. "I was thinking: I could come home for...lunch."

Denny eyeballed him in the glass. "Lunch?" The word came out a gurgle.

"Lunch. I know you'd planned to stay out another day, but I have a motion before Judge Brown this afternoon—a motion with no arguable legal merits whatsoever, yet one I desperately need to win, a situation which immediately makes me think of you. Besides, I think he likes you. Something about the way he says your name. I could swing by for lunch and pick you up. If you were willing."

"If you tell me to meet you at the door wearing something sexy, I'm going to shoot you, say I thought you were a burglar, argue it myself and get myself off."

"As far as I'm concerned, you needn't wear anything at all. Judge Brown, however, may hold a different opinion. Or he may not. But you'll have plenty of time to consider it. We appear at 3:00. I'll be here by 12:00."

"That's a long lunch."

"In some things, size matters."

"In that case, I'll take a pill."

"If you like. In that case, it's rather irrelevant."

"Not to me it isn't."

"I suppose not." Alan traced the hickey with his finger. "I think a point collar will cover it if you must, but I rather like that color on you." He kissed his own fingertip, then pressed it to the mark on Denny's neck.

Denny did a double-take. With a strained smile, Alan nodded his good-byes and left.


***


Lunch was forgotten in the tangle of sheets. They lay naked, Denny on his side, sticky and depleted, while Alan spooned with him from behind, visibly undepleted, and played fingers through the mess of pubic curls.

"All this time you spent to get me into bed, and you don't even want your orgasm?" Denny spoke with eyes closed, chin hung down to his chest. "If you're going to have sicko gay sex, you ought to at least get an orgasm out of it."

"I'll take that up with the sicko gay sex committee." Alan chuckled gently against his back.

"It's some kind of self punishment, isn't it?"

"Perhaps."

"You don't think you deserve Denny Crane. Well, you're right. But so what? No one does; Denny Crane's a gift."

"He is that. But I live with myself twenty-four-seven. I know better than anyone exactly what I do and do not deserve. I've done terrible things in the so called name of justice, Denny. If there is any fairness at all in justice, I must concede my pound--or fifty-- of flesh."

Denny grunted. "You have to do unfair things for justice. You'd be derelict not to. Someone has to. That's the beauty of the American way. And the beauty of an orgasm is that it's one perfect moment that anyone can have, regardless of worth, merit, money, power. You don't have to earn it or deserve it—it's just right there whenever you want it. It's the first and last truly equal opportunity."

"Perhaps that's why the deprivation the most elemental level of human pleasures seems most fitting for someone who has violated some of humanities most elemental codes."

Denny snorted. "Your sex therapist owes you a big refund."

"You wouldn't say that if you'd seen my starting point."

Denny shook his head. Alan cuddled in closer against his back.

"There's also an inherent vulnerability with after orgasm—an emotional refractory period that coincides with the genital—during which a man's shields are down and he cannot raise them, no matter how imminent the danger, and any thing—any one—can work its way in. Vulnerability is one of the only things I truly fear."

"You think I'm a danger?"

"I think I have no defenses against you."

The sheets crinkled as Denny shifted his weight. "Alan, I'm seventy-four years old. I just did something I thought I never would." He grabbed Alan hands and pressed them against his heart. "If you can't lower your shields with your best friend, just what the hell's the point?"

Slowly, Alan began to move against Denny's leg.

"It doesn't hurt any more," Denny said. He stuck his bottom out and jiggled it against Alan's hip. "It's more kind of...an itch."

Alan pressed the length of his torso along Denny's backside, and he moved faster now. Alan lowered his face to the curve of Denny's neck and pressed nose and mouth flat, forcing himself to struggle for every partial bit of a breath. His head went light and he was flying, but it had been too long.

He had forgotten how to let go when it had to be emotionally and physically at once.

He placed his length along the crack of Denny's ass. He thought, despite Denny's words, it must hurt at least a little, but Denny didn't flinch, and he wanted this for himself too badly now. He arched his belly and strained to keep from chafing against the bandage as he rocked, and the increased muscle tension drove him closer, yet still not close enough.
His thrusts were wild now, and his length fell out of the crack. Too close to stop, he rubbed madly against the skin of Denny's rump, but his climax only edged further away. He smashed his face hard, resolved to take in no air, and he grew faint and heady, but his erection and potential climax had all but drifted away.

A cry of frustration escaped. Denny had rolled to face him, and suddenly his airway was free. . Alan's lungs gasped in reflexive to suck in a huge breath, and Alan flushed with the flood of fresh oxygen to his brain.

Denny took his dick in hand, and the shock was too much. Alan spilled in great spurts over Denny's fist.

"Hold me," Alan managed with the first words he could form.

Denny did.

"Harder. Harder. Harder." Alan choked out with his face pressed to Denny's chest. His breathing came in deeper and deeper sobs until Denny let loose his crushing embrace.

Alan looked up, his face eerily calm and dry. He tried to remember the last time he had lain like this with no desire to climax, only to feel.

It was half of his adult lifetime ago. What a catastrophic void that was. He generally stuck to the rule that the only people who were allowed to touch him were people who could never really touch him. Not for the first time in his personal life, he had the sickening feeling he had made a tragic mistake.

"Forgive me," Alan said. He drew a hand across his face to check, but to his relief, it came back dry. "Another reason I eschew mixing sex and love."

"Then you're missing out on something wonderful," Denny said.

"Yes, I have been."

Denny stroked his hair, as Alan began to fade in and out.

"You smell good," Alan murmured.

Denny froze. "You're not going to sniff my shorts again, are you?"

"Not right now." Alan pressed his face against Denny's breast. "You just smell so very, very good."

"Floris for Men. Flown in from Harrod's."

Alan squeezed his chest. "Indeed." Before he nodded off, he had a thought. "Set the alarm for two, would you."

"You don't need the alarm. I'll wake you up."

Alan opened one lazy eye to him. "We can't miss that court appearance."

"I said, I'll get you up. I'm not going anywhere." Denny stretched one arm to the nightstand for his smoldering cigar. With the other he stroked Alan's hair.

Alan closed his eyes. His head sagged down to Denny's chest, and let himself doze off.