Sean/Jim (mm, rom)

Sean walked down the damp and shop-lined street. The still-unfamiliar sounds of German conversation drifted past his ears, the odd phrase jumping into clarity - Wnschen Sie Pommes mit dem? - as he passed. He looked every inch the native his grandparents had been - tall and straw-headed, with good humor evident on his broad peasant face - but he was still a foreigner, struggling to get his bearings in his ancestral land.

On this beautiful afternoon, Sean was attempting to find the train station. Being alone in a strange country with only his job for social interaction was wearing thin; at least his stateside girlfriend was arriving tonight. It would be wonderful to have someone to come home to, someone from home. Someone familiar.

Sean haltingly asked directions from a bicycle courier stopped at a light. From the gargle of language that followed, he gleaned several facts and turned around to see a familiar-looking edifice, with multilingual glyphs indicating the presence of trains. Checking his watch - hopelessly late - Sean ran towards Bay D.

"Jana?" But the people left from the debarking were unfamiliar, checking their maps and pagers as they wandered towards the city. "Jana? Louder, hopeful but almost panicked. As Sean's heart leapt into his throat, a black-clad figure stepped out from behind two old women in pantsuits and windbreakers. "Staniel? What the hell are you doing here?"

"It's Jim now. And I came to tell you Jana couldn't make it." Jim couldn't conceal the malicious twinkle in his eye, the only thing setting apart his well-scrubbed and earnest face from a supporting character in a Danny Kaye musical. In his stark black traveling costume, betraying vocally nothing of his New Jersey origin, Jim looked very much an urban coffee shop denizen momentarily separated from his self-published chapbook. Jana, for her part, kicked forlornly at the inside of a Munich train depot storage locker.

Sean stopped and blinked, trying to make sense of the situation. At last his easy grin appeared; the familiar face was not his girlfriend, but at least it was familiar. "Well, you wanna go get something to drink?" Jim nodded his cheerful assent, picking up his single black bag and tossing it on his shoulder. He absently patted his side, remembering after a momentary startle that he'd had to leave Little Elvis back in the States. He felt naked without his customary sidearm, but he willed himself to turn his attention back to his new host. His attention - and his secret agenda.

At the pub, the two editors bellied up to the bar as Sean introduced Jim to his German friends. "This is Herr Alt -" he indicated the appropriate stein "- and this is my good pal Herr Pils." A few rounds later, Jim was telling Sean with great seriousness that Cabbage Patch dolls were a CIA conditioning project, modeled on post-nuclear mutants, and Sean was racking his brain to remember the last dozen concerts he'd seen, or at least with what fluid each band had showered the audience. As he described the dancing in the orchestra pit, Sean's hazel eyes made contact with Jim's bottomless chestnut; after far too long, both men flushed and buried themselves anew in their beers.

The bar closed, or at least started wobbling enough to be disconcerting, and the two editors spilled out onto the streets again. After some deliberation, they headed in the general direction of Sean's flat.

As they walked together, bumping into each other slightly, Jim moved a slender arm over to Sean's husky shoulder, his inebriation masking his trepidation. He grinned sheepishly, his perfect teeth glinting dully in the glow of the street lamp. "You realize," he said, "that we really should get gay with each other."

"Sweet Jesus that's a good idea," Sean emoted drunkenly.

And so they did.

***

Sean fell asleep cradling Jim gently in his strong arms, until Jim disentangled himself to spend forty-five minutes in the bathroom taking out his contact lenses. On returning to the bedroom he stopped in the doorway, affectionately regarding on the sleeping webmaster bathed in the soft red glow of his digital alarm clock. After a few moments of Jim's intense gaze, Sean stirred. His robust snoring broke into a mumble,

" - talking about pigs here. Mmm. Wuh?"

"I was just wondering, what about the website?." Jim wondered, almost to himself. "I mean, we're both busy having gay sex in Germany. Who's going to upload this week's Zirealism?"

Sean's sleepy eyes barely opened as he patted Jim's vacant spot on the bed and moved the covers aside to invite him back in, "Oh, Anna will put something up. She usually does."