Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Every muscle that Blair Sandburg owned was threatening to leave his body and attach itself to the next couch potato who walked by.

Blair didn’t blame them one bit. He’d never fully appreciated how completely out of shape he was until he’d started the PT at the police academy. Sure, he’d never been a mass of quivering, gelatinous flesh, and he exercised—sporadically—but there was no doubt he’d always tended toward the weedy side. He was a classic ectomorph, without the height to carry it off.

But the rigorous physical regimen was finally yielding some results after two long months; besides the pain, he could actually notice a “before” and “after” when he checked himself out in the bathroom mirror. His subcutaneous fat had pretty much disappeared, which meant swimming the English Channel anytime soon was out of the question, but also meant he’d lost the last traces of a resemblance to a selectively furry chipmunk. In addition to that, his endurance was way up. From panting through a mile in about seven minutes, he could now manage five without undue effort.

However, the one area that still needed a big improvement was his muscle mass. The situps and the pushups weren’t cutting it, because let’s face it, lifting Blair Sandburg or part thereof was not much of a strain. It annoyed him that the minute he attempted a task requiring real strength, his arms and legs seemed to turn into big, wet noodles. Combat training started in three weeks, and odds were that he’d spend most of the course flat on his ass if he didn’t start shaping up.

So he’d bitten the bullet and bought a membership to the cheapest gym he could find, which was way the hell over on Beaton, but it wasn’t like the extra expenditure of gas to drive him half an hour would eat in to what he was saving. He could’ve worked out at the gym at the station for free, but he didn’t want to punish his po’ ol’ body in a fish bowl. The Major Crimes yahoos were already laying five to three that he wouldn’t graduate next April; the last thing he wanted to do was lengthen the odds by showing them his lack of prowess in lifting heavy metal objects.

Sitting sprawled on the living room floor, he tried one last time to stretch his aching leg muscles, but they screamed at him so loudly he wondered if some of Jim’s abilities had rubbed off on him. Giving up, he flopped back onto the hardwood and closed his eyes.

Dimly, he registered the sound of the key turning in the lock, but he couldn’t make himself care. Crisp, even footsteps echoed in his ears, then:

“Sandburg? Blair? Oh, my God!”

Weakly, he raised a hand, both to let Jim know he was all right and to fend him off. Whenever the other man worried that Blair was injured, he tended to do stupid things like touch him to check if he was still alive. Blair was sure that if Jim laid a hand on him he’d turn into one huge, convulsing spasm.

“’Malright,” he muttered, opening his eyes to meet Jim’s clear, pale gaze. “Gym.”

Jim stared at him, waiting.

“Oh. I mean, I just came from the gym,” he said stupidly. He tried to lever himself up, but his body had other ideas. A pained groan escaped his lips, and he subsided into wet noodle state again.

“What the hell did you do there?” Jim asked, more fear than reproach in his voice.

“Went too hard at the weights, I guess,” Blair managed. “They guaranteed me I could go from 98-pound weakling to Ahhnold in a month, but I figured out their evil scheme—nobody survives the first week.”

Jim frowned. “How much did you stretch?”

Blair grunted. “Not enough, obviously. My entire body is seizing up—in another few minutes I’m gonna be curled up like a dead cockroach.”

Instead of the smart crack or the jovial mano-a-mano whack on the shoulder, Blair was surprised to find Jim’s expression was now radiating concern. He felt the fingers of his right hand enclosed in the bigger man’s strong, sure grip, and instead of pain, only registered warmth.

“Listen,” Jim told him softly, “I know it’s going to hurt, but you need to get into the shower, all right? Get yourself under a hot shower and just stand there until you drain the tank.”

Blair suddenly remembered why he’d raced home from the gym, thus foregoing the requisite stretching. “Aw, shit, man, it was my night to cook, I’m sorry—”

“Forget about it. I’ll order some Chinese, okay?” The grip on Blair’s hand tightened, and he steeled himself. “You ready?” Jim asked him, still in that gruff but gentle voice. “Come on, I got you.”

Trying his best to ignore the outraged cries shooting into his brain, Blair allowed the hand to pull him to his feet. Jim lifted him as though he weighed no more than a toy poodle, but then the guy had enough muscle mass to rate his own gravitational field.

“Hey,” Blair said, while Jim steadied him on his feet, “if this workout thing doesn’t produce any more muscle, can you spare me some of yours?”

Jim took him by the shoulders and turned him in the direction of the bathroom.

“I get it, I get it,” Blair grumbled, forcing his feet into a shuffle worthy of a Georgia chain gang.

If he had to collapse, why the hell couldn’t he have done it in a normal place, like a bed?

Newsflash: because Blair Sandburg is about as far from normal as you can get and still be on this planet.

Jim was glad the kid wasn’t a Sentinel, because his heart rate still hadn’t returned to normal after he’d spotted Blair lying flat on the floor.

And suddenly he’d had a flash of the younger man, hair and clothes dripping wet, lips turning blue, body still and unmoving—

Fuck. Don’t think about that.

There was no reason to believe that Blair would have been attacked here in the loft—at least, no immediate reason. There were no crazed serial killers or Yakuza mobsters or evil Sentinels gunning for him at this particular point in time. But nevertheless, since that terrible day, Jim couldn’t stop his heart from tripping into overdrive the minute he thought the other man might be in danger.

And considering he wasn’t exactly the poster boy for discussing his feelings, he hadn’t mentioned it to Blair. Hell, he hadn’t even done much to try to sort it out in his own head. He knew there was caring, and protectiveness, and deep friendship in there, but he was also aware that a huge helping of it was guilt, pure and undistilled. He’d eaten his share of that dish over the years; he recognized its flavor as easily as he did the spices Blair put into his Pad Thai noodles.

The hell of it was, it wasn’t just Blair’s near-death experience that was tying him up in twisted knots, because the feeling had intensified exponentially the day of the press conference. Yeah, that press conference. The one where Sandburg threw away every hope he had of an anthropology career, everything he’d ever wanted professionally, for the sake of—

—of saving Jim’s ass. An ass that probably would’ve been shot off a long time ago without the kid’s help, so what the hell difference did it make if the whole thing blew up in his face now?

It still confounded him, that he had treated Sandburg so shamefully. When he thought back to those days, it was like he was watching somebody else saying those things, pushing the other man away at every opportunity, pouting like a spoiled brat who hadn’t gotten what he wanted for Christmas.

Behaving like—like some jilted lover in a bad play.

I just thought we agreed I’d get to read it first. What the hell was that, anyway? It sounded perilously close to something Carolyn had thrown at him in the last, mine-field days of their marriage.

And the best consolation prize he could come up with, after he’d guilted the kid into giving away his entire life? Hey, why don’t you come play in my sandbox as a reward for your troubles. It’s not anything like what you’ve always wanted, but at least it’s a chance for you to get shot on an even more regular basis. Oh, and did I neglect to mention that I’m scared shitless every time you so much as get a hangnail?

Should make for an interesting partnership, shouldn’t it?

Jim started at the sound of the shower roaring into life, and realized he’d been zoning in a perfectly normal way for once, lost in his own head as his thoughts chased round and round like a dog after its own tail.

Shaking his head to clear it, he strode over to the phone and hit the speed dial for Fong’s.

“You want me to what?”

“Geez, Sandburg, it was just a suggestion,” Jim said testily. “I thought you could use it.”

“Yeah, I could, sure, but in all the years we’ve known one another, you’ve never offered—”

Jim shot him an eloquent look that Blair recognized as the patented Ellison will you please shut the fuck up about this look.

“Maybe because I never actually saw you exercise enough to need one,” the older man returned. “Christ, I’m not asking you to marry me, you know? It’s only that the food isn’t gonna be here for another twenty minutes, and I thought—”

Blair reached up to snag a sweater off a hanger and his shoulders cracked. He let his arm drop and favored Jim with an expression he hoped resembled contrition. “Yeah, uh, actually, that’d be great. I mean, what the hell am I doing, turning you down?” He glanced at Jim’s huge, square hands for an instant, then jerked his head at the bed. “You want me, ah—”

Jim followed the line of his gaze, and nodded sharply. “Yeah. It’d be better there.”

As Blair walked—at least it was now more of a walk than a shuffle—over to the futon and stretched out on it face-down, it occurred to him that he should alert the media, because Hell had now officially frozen over.

Jim Ellison had offered him a back rub.

He hadn’t actually used the words, “back rub”—the words had been mumbled, though he’d picked out “limber” and “knots” and a lot of awkward hand gestures, then he’d had to ask for clarification, which had pissed Jim off from the start. Sorry, buddy, not always psychic, though I try. It’d be a lot easier on both of us if I were.

Okay, Jim was right sometimes when he accused him of trying to talk everything to death, but there were certain subjects that needed precise communication, such as one man offering to fondle another guy’s bod, however platonic the intention may be.

Whoever’s version of reality prevailed here, the upshot of it was that he was sprawled out, clad only in a pair of track pants, waiting for—

Warm hands. Hot, even. Strong fingers digging into flesh, a sudden, bone-deep pressure, gouging the heat into his—

“Oh! Ohhhhhhh. Oh, fuck.”

Jim’s hands, lifted from his shoulders. “Hurts?”

“Yeah, I mean, no, not in a bad way. Hurts so good, you know, man? Don’t stop.” Blair wiggled a little on the mattress, astonished to find the kneaded muscles already felt slightly better.

Above him, Jim snorted. “You make the same sounds for pain or happiness.”

“Jim, quit quoting Walter Matthau and just—aaaaah, God—”

For the next few minutes or few hours, Blair thought he experienced what it was like to lose himself in sensory input the way Jim did. There was no reality outside of the sure, heavy touch of Jim’s hands, no part of Blair that lived outside their immediate sphere of influence. Eventually, however, the restorative power of those healing hands radiated outward, traveling beyond the confines of his back and neck and arms and shoulders, enveloping him in their lifegiving warmth, awakening parts of him that were nowhere near the point of contact…

Like his dick.

Head flopped down over his bunched pillow, Blair stared unblinkingly at the wrinkled white sheet two inches in front of his nose.

Sweet motherfucking Buddha.

Okay, okay, think. He’d never gotten a massage from a man before, only women, and women with whom he’d been intimate, so it was only natural that his lizard brain would associate receiving a massage with the horizontal mambo. And he was tired, and he’d just been through an intense physical experience, and he hadn’t been with a woman in at least three weeks, and he hadn’t whacked off in—

Okay, this line of thought wasn’t helping.

“You want me to do your front?”

Blair twitched. “Hmmph? What? Oh…uhh…”

“Did I wake you up?”

“No, I wasn’t—” stall, shit, stall, “—uh, where did you learn to give back rubs like this, man? ‘Zat a course at the Academy, because I don’t recall seeing it on the syllabus.” Return to the here and now, Blair admonished his nether regions. This is not a woman. This is Jim Ellison. Jim’s hands, Jim’s fingers, Jim’s leg pressed up against your—

Why wasn’t this helping?

Jim gave him a whack on the shoulderblade. “Very funny. Look, it’s a simple question—”

“I’m just curious. It must be a Special Forces thing, then, huh? Out there in the jungle, no day spas in sight, guys need some way to loosen the ol’ musculature, right? So did that come before or after the training on How To Blow Shit Up?”

“Sandburg, what the hell—”

A pause.

The sound of an indrawn breath.

Oh, God, oh, Godgodgod, why hadn’t he thought about it? Jim could smell him.

Was smelling him.

Blair’s dick got harder.

Suddenly, the warmth was gone from his side, and the hands left his back where they had been resting comfortably. Jim had stood up—like a guy shot out of a cannon, Blair would be willing to bet.

The doorbell sounded.

Blair remembered how to breathe.

“Food’s here,” Jim said inanely.

“Yeah,” Blair grunted.

“I’ll, ah, get it.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Okay, then.” Blair listened to him pad out of the room and open the front door.

And then he sprang to his feet and hastily pulled on his tightest, dick-strangling jeans, and further covered the evidence with the longest shirt he could find.

“Hey, Megan, can I ask you something, uh, a little personal?”

Inspector Megan Connor lifted her gaze and eyed Blair over her computer monitor. “You can ask,” she drawled.

“Well,” Blair began, picking at a thread on his shirt sleeve, “have you ever, ah, had occasion to question a fundamental part of your identity?”

The woman regarded him with a puzzled expression. “How d’you mean?”

“Well, I mean like a major life choice—you know. Your career, your sexuality, your self-image.”

Megan raised an eyebrow. “I might have,” she said archly. “Why do you ask?”

Blair debated with himself for a moment or two. Megan was anything but a gossip; for half a year now, she’d kept her own counsel about Jim’s Sentinel abilities. He cast a surreptitious glance at the other cops milling about the bull pen, sitting at their desks, shooting the breeze casually. None of them were close enough to hear their conversation, and Jim had been called away to a meeting across town, so he knew he was safe there.

“Because I’m looking for pointers,” he said heavily.

“Oh, Sandy,” Megan said, her eyes instantly filled with sisterly concern. “Are things not going well at the Academy? Are you regretting your decision to become a cop?”

“No! I mean,” Blair stammered, his face growing hot, “it’s, ah, it’s not that. Well.” He frowned, considering. “That could be part of it, I suppose. The upheaval of the past couple of months. The all-consuming desire to finish the dissertation, contradicted by feelings of loyalty and friendship. The ambiguity I feel about joining the police force, which is represented in my mind by…” Suddenly, his face lit into a grin as all the puzzle pieces slammed into place. “Yeah, that makes a lot of sense!”

Megan blinked at him. “What does?”

Impulsively, Blair leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. “Thanks. I’m glad I could talk to you about this.”

Her expression rueful, Megan shook her head at him. “Anytime, Sandy.”

“Earth to Jim!”

Jim abruptly realized the man across the desk from him had been asking him a question for some time, but he hadn’t heard a word. Come to think of it, his mind had been wandering all through this meeting.

Unfortunately, considering the man across the desk was a shrink, and Jim was undergoing his yearly psych evaluation, letting his mind wander belonged in the category of Really Stupid Ideas.

“Sorry, doc,” he said, passing his hand over his eyes. “I, uh, think I’m coming down with something.” Another stupid idea. With his luck, this guy’d check out the results of his physical—which he’d undergone this morning—and find out there was nothing wrong with him. Psychosomatic illnesses did not look good when you were trying to convince someone you were normal.

He should’ve brought Sandburg along, or at least told him about it. Blair had helped him prepare for every psych evaluation since they’d met. The trouble was, this time Blair was the problem, not the solution.

“Well,” the shrink was saying with a smile, holding up both hands, “don’t give your germs to me. I just got over the ‘flu and I’m not looking for a fresh infection.”

“Sorry,” Jim muttered again, automatically.

The doctor frowned. “It’s okay, Jim. I was kidding. Look, are you sure there’s nothing going on that you’d like to talk about with me?”

Jim fought to keep his expression neutral. “No. Everything’s great.”

The other man blew out a breath. He was a young guy, and he’d done the evaluation on Jim last year. Used to judging people by instinct, Jim had figured him as a good egg from the first, but the fact still remained that he worked for the police force, and anything Jim said here could and would be held against him. As in the Special Forces, the minute a cop admitted he needed counseling, he might as well flush his career down the toilet.

“Look,” the shrink—Doctor Bellini—said quietly, “I can tell there’s something wrong, Jim. And I want to help. How about this: you can tell me what’s bothering you, I can—hopefully—help you to come to terms with it, and then we both can forget the conversation ever took place. Okay?”

Jim narrowed his eyes. “Why would you—”

Bellini waved a hand. “Because I’m tired of going through the motions. Every cop comes in here with problems, because, hell, they’re human, and this is one of the toughest jobs you can have, and I play dance around the goddamned maypole with them every year, pretending nothing’s wrong.” He sighed. “Oh, I’m not saying I haven’t had to pull a couple of people because of evaluations—the ones who are really in trouble aren’t able to hide that from me—but I know that’s not what’s going on here. I just—I just want to help.”

Jim focused in on his hearing and sight, trying to detect any signs that would tell him the other man was lying: elevated heartbeat, nervous sweat, a tiny twitch in a muscle. He found nothing. Pulling back, he studied Bellini’s earnest, open face, then blurted out the question that had been consuming him for days.

“How do you know if you might be gay?”

Bellini showed no signs of shock or revulsion, merely interest. He cocked his head. “You mean usually? Usually, the indications occur about the same time as they do for heterosexuals, in pre-adolescence.”

Jim closed his eyes briefly. “No. I mean, you’re going along through life, convinced you’re straight—you’ve always been straight, you can’t conceive of ever wanting another guy—and then something happens that makes you wonder if you weren’t fooling yourself all along.”

Bellini leaned back. “Well, first of all, sexuality isn’t a case of black or white. There’s a continuum of varying shades of gray, and just because you’re not usually attracted to a particular gender doesn’t mean it’s never going to happen. But let’s come back to your situation. What kind of ‘something’ are we talking about here? What exactly happened that made you doubt your orientation?”

Jim blinked. What kind of ‘something’ was he talking about? “It’s not like anything actually happened,” he clarified. “It’s mainly been—I don’t know, considering the possibilities, maybe. Dreams, mostly.” Never mind that the memory of the heady scent of Blair’s arousal would hit him like a blow to the gut at the most inappropriate times, like when he was sitting across the table from the guy eating breakfast. Never mind that most of the time he’d considered it as he slept, he’d woken up stuck to the sheets. Never mind that his dreams involved a scenario where the Chinese food never showed up and Jim started by peeling those Academy track pants off and running his hands over Blair’s ass, which was so unbelievably smooth he just had to lean forward and—

“Jim. Jim.”

Jim shook his head. “Sorry, sorry. I—I just don’t know what to do about it.”

“What would you like to do about it?”

“I’d like it to go away,” he admitted, then cringed when he realized this had been his first reaction to his Sentinel senses as well. And look what happened there.

Bellini smiled enigmatically. “Funny, I wouldn’t have pegged you for a homophobe.”

“I’m not!” Jim protested, then leaned forward, elbows propped on knees. “Look, I, ah, I was in the military, right? I knew there were guys in my outfit who were gay, guys who in an aesthetic sense were pretty damned nice to look at. So why the hell didn’t I notice anything then?”

Bellini glanced at the file lying on his desk, then back up again. “Maybe a buff body is not all it takes to attract you, Jim.”

Oh, shit. Shit.

Of course. Everything the Department knew of his life was in that personnel file. Like the fact he’d been living with another guy for over three years. Like the fact he’d fought off several cops to bring Blair back to the land of the living. Jim straightened slowly, prepared for flight.

Bellini shook his head. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to be naming any names. I know the Department policy, and between you and me, it’s bull. If you don’t love your partner in at least a platonic sense, you can’t be half of a truly effective team.” He paused. “It’s perfectly natural that a few of those partnerships would develop into something more.”

Jim gritted his teeth. “I don’t want it.”

“Why not?” Jim hesitated, and the other man jumped in. “Don’t think about it, just spit out anything that comes to mind.”

“Because—because it’s complicated. It’s always been complicated, from day one. He’s—he’s—we’re like oil and water. It’s as if he sees the world backwards and upside-down. He drives me nuts on a regular basis. He gets himself into stuff because of me—he’s been shot, he’s fucking died, and he just keeps coming back—and now he’s in the Academy, and I don’t even know if it’s what he wants. If he gets hurt again, I don’t know what I’ll do. It’s just—oh, hell—” Jim scrubbed his hands over his face.

“Yeah,” Bellini said gently. “Sounds like love to me.”

“Hey, loverboy!”

Blair closed his eyes briefly before turning around. He could do this; he’d faced down terrorists, bullshitted crazed psychopathic killers. What was one no-neck trainee with a single-digit IQ?

Okay, he thought as Hardy’s beefy body came closer, filling his vision, a really big no-neck trainee with a single digit IQ.

“What can I do for you?” he said, with as much manly bluster as he could manage.

Hardy frowned, as if he hadn’t expected the question. “What can you do for me?”

“I believe that’s what I said, yeah.”

“What can you do for me?”

“See, now,” Blair said, unable to resist, “I didn’t put exactly that emphasis on ‘do’, but you’re getting the hang of it. Keep trying.” And with that, he turned to go.

“Hey! Where you think you’re going?”

“I think I’m going home,” Blair explained wearily. “I think it’s been a long week and I want to put my feet up and forget about the proper procedure for handling domestic violence and the proper procedure for approaching people about to commit suicide in messy ways and just chill, you know? Come on, man, don’t you want to take a break?”

Hardy frowned. “From what?”

Oh, Jesus. Blair gave this guy another week at the most before he was washed out. “Look, it’s been real, but I have to go.” He scanned the parking lot, looking for Jim’s truck. It was still a little early, though, so he didn’t expect to find it. Why did the Volvo have to be in the shop today of all days?

“Looking for your boyfriend?”

Blair sighed; this was so old, it was growing a beard. His patience exhausted, he rounded on the muscle-bound young man and snarled, “Yeah, Hardy, you guessed it. Your brother is right; Jim and I are fucking like rabbits every night and twice on Sundays. Of course, your brother is also a bigoted prick who will I pray to God never make detective, and is not fit to lick Jim Ellison’s boots, never mind contemplate his sex life—”

That did it, Blair thought as he was seized by the lapels of his coat and pulled up onto his toes. I was wondering what it would take to penetrate that thick skull.

“Take your hands off of him. Now.”

The growl that vibrated through the air came from behind him, but Blair didn’t have to see him to recognize that voice.

“Jim, I’d like you to meet a prince of a guy, Rob Hardy. His friends call him ‘Two by Four’.”

“Did you hear me, recruit?” Oh, man, now Jim’s tone had descended into the Scary Special Forces Mofo range.

This was a really, really bad time to be getting turned on.

“I heard you,” Hardy said, his eyes never leaving Blair’s face. “Fag.”

Blair sighed and shook his head. “I almost feel sorry for you,” he muttered.

It took him a few seconds to realize that everything seemed to have stopped. Jim didn’t say anything. Hardy didn’t say anything, just kept his hands fisted in Blair’s lapels. Then a slow, evil grin broke out on Hardy’s face, and Blair wished he could turn around and figure out what the hell had happened to his partner.

“Uh, I hate to break this up,” he said finally, “but you’re twisting my coat out of shape. And we fags really hate when you mess with the duds, so—” Grabbing his own fistful of Hardy’s coat for leverage, Blair drew back his right foot and aimed a vicious kick at the bigger man’s leg.

He heard a snap and a howl, and suddenly he was stumbling backwards as Hardy crumpled inelegantly onto the sidewalk. Strong hands gripping his shoulders from behind kept him from falling as he regained his footing on shaky legs.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Hardy was wailing, clutching his leg, “you broke it, you fucker, you broke it.”

Blair knew that he should’ve been horrified, but all he could manage was a strange sense of feeling partially outside his own body, divorced from it, as though it no longer belonged completely to him.

“Not bad for a cocksucker, huh?” he said, in a tone easily as dangerous as Jim’s.

Blair was beginning to wonder if Jim had gone into permanent zoneout. They’d been back in the loft for a full fifteen and a half minutes, and he hadn’t shown the slightest signs of wanting to tear him into small, even strips. This after a long and draining session with the Academy officials and the cops, giving statements, answering questions, and promising not to injure any more of his classmates before the whole matter came up for review.

Thankfully, Hardy had been an equal opportunity asshole, and within about a half hour they’d rounded up six other people, most of them women, who’d either experienced his wit and charm first-hand or seen it happen to someone else, including Blair. That had to help his case. The other bonus was that it didn’t look like Hardy was going to press charges.

“You want something to eat?”

Blair looked over at Jim, who was leaning on the kitchen island, looking more than slightly out of touch with reality. “Depends. What’ve we got?”

Jim pushed himself off from the counter and strode over to the cupboard, then opened the door and peered inside. “Uh…soup.”

“That’s it?”

“Pretty much.”

“Oh, shit, was it my week to shop?”

Jim closed the cupboard door, then waved a magnanimous hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

Don’t worry about it? It was getting to be Invasion of the Body Snatchers time in here. “Okay, well, I’ll go get some takeout. Wonderburgers on me.” Blair propelled himself up off the couch and grabbed his coat off the rack.

“Your car’s still in the shop.”

Blair banged his head against the door. “This is so not my week—”

“I read the witness statements.” Jim’s voice was dull, lifeless.

“And?” Blair asked warily, face still pressed against the door.

“And one of them said that Hardy has been harassing you since the first day of classes.”

“Yeah? What’s your point?”

“My point,” Jim said, still in that quiet, flat voice, “is that you never said anything. To—you never reported it.”

Blair pushed back from the door and met Jim’s gaze. “I kind of figured it went with the territory.”

That got a reaction; Jim’s brows drew together in a scowl. “Went with the territory? The territory of what?”

“Of becoming a cop. Or to be more precise,” he continued, holding up a hand to forestall Jim’s comment, “of becoming a short-assed cop with way too much hair for most other cops to be happy with.”

Jim shook his head. “Why the hell would you think that? Has anyone on the force ever harassed you?”

Blair’s gaze drifted to Jim’s left shoulder.

“Jesus, Blair,” Jim breathed. “Who?”

Blair shook his head. “It doesn’t matter who.”

“It goddamn well does. Was it that asshole Hardy’s brother? I’ll call the precinct—”

“Hardy’s brother is one step above meter maid. He’s got the brain capacity of a termite. I don’t know how either of those idiots even made it as far as they did—”

Jim blew out a breath. “Their dad’s a Lieu down at the 27th Precinct. But that doesn’t matter; we can still have a complaint—”

“Look,” Blair said, holding up his hands, “can we please forget about this? I’m not going to be filing harassment charges, and I’ll only press for assault if Hardy decides to do the same. I’ve never gotten any grief like that from anyone in Major Crimes, and they’re the only people I care about anyway, because they’re the ones I’ll be working with. Yeah, I’ve been called fag a few times by cops, Jim, but I’ve been called that off and on since junior high, either because I got better marks than 98% of the class, or had long hair, or both. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It does,” Jim insisted. “It’s harassment, Sandburg, and we can’t just—”

“Jesus Christ!” Blair exploded suddenly, surprising both of them. “I broke another human being’s leg today, Jim. I only wanted to make him let go, but something took over and I—I don’t know what the fuck happened.” He pressed his hands into his eyes, fighting a wave of dizziness that swamped him. “I can still feel it, feel the crack of my boot hitting the bone. I swear to God I forgot I was wearing the steel toes, I swear to God. Jesus, I can’t believe I—”

At the first attack of nausea, his hands moved swiftly to cover his mouth. Fuck, fuck, he thought, and then he was moving toward the bathroom as fast as his feet could carry him. He barely made it to the toilet in time.

Jim spent a couple of minutes listening to Sandburg puke, then picked up the phone and ordered some Indian food from that new place over on Maynard. Blair would have to eat something, and hopefully a good curry and a few poppadums would restore his appetite.

After that, he flopped down on the couch and waited for him to clean up. It wasn’t long before Blair emerged, face pale and blotchy; seeing him like that caused something inside Jim to twist unpleasantly.

Bellini had advised him to face his fears, to open up to Blair, but there was no way in hell he could lay any of that on him tonight. And besides, he didn’t have the first clue how to open up even if he wanted to. Was there a special tool for that, like an attachment on a Swiss Army Knife? If so, Jim suspected he hadn’t been outfitted with that model.

Blair sank into the chair, in deference to Jim’s sense of smell, no doubt, though the kid must’ve brushed his teeth about half a dozen times, because Jim couldn’t pick up much of anything besides the overpowering scents of mint toothpaste and soap. “You okay?”

“I will be,” Blair murmured, head upturned toward the ceiling.

“I’m sorry for pushing it. I won’t bring it up again.”

“S’okay,” Blair said. “I understand.”

Do you? Then explain it to me, will you? He prepared to apologize again, this time for the unconscionable sin of not backing his partner up when he needed him. The epithet that Blair took in stride had never been leveled at Jim in his entire life, and the timing of it had frozen him in place for crucial seconds, seconds in which Blair was forced to take matters into his own hands. Part of the younger man’s anguish—no, all of it—could be laid at Jim’s feet.

Jim opened his mouth to say this, but what actually came out was, “I, ah, ordered some Indian.”

Blair nodded absently, then sat up and leaned forward, his gaze pinning Jim like a bug. “Jim, could you teach me some fighting techniques?”

Jim frowned. “Don’t you start a class in combat soon?”

“That’s just it, man,” Blair said wearily. “After today, I’m scared of what I might do.”

“Sandburg,” Jim began, “that was an extraordinary situation. I hardly think you’re going to be—” he trailed off, unwilling to refer to it directly and risk making Blair sick again. “I mean, you don’t have to worry. They’ll take you through the basics in a controlled way.”

“And I’ll end up screwing up one way or the other. You know that saying, ‘I don’t know my own strength?’ Well, I’ve been feeling like I wasn’t ready for this course, that I didn’t have the power to carry it off. Now I don’t know what’s going on with me. I feel like I don’t have control over my own body.”

The irony of that statement was not lost on Jim. Aloud, he said, “A successful fighter isn’t always the most powerful one. You know that. You have to use what you’ve got, and also learn to turn your disadvantages into strengths.”

Blair’s mouth twisted. “You mean like the fact I’m at least a head shorter than most of the goons out there?”

“The best fighter I ever saw was a skinny sergeant in the SAS who barely made 5’8”. He could flatten guys twice his size.”

“So teach me,” Blair pleaded. “I can’t fuck up again, Jim. If they don’t kick me out over this—”

“They won’t,” Jim said roughly.

“Will you?”

Jim took a deep breath, let it out. “Where would we practice?”

“The gym I go to is pretty deserted a couple of nights of the week. I can probably rent a room there cheap.”

The last obstacle gone, Jim admitted defeat. “Okay. Sure.”

Blair blew out a sigh of relief, grinned at him. “Thanks, man.”

As they drifted onto safer topics of conversation, Jim wondered whether either of them would survive to see Blair’s graduation from the Academy.

Blair knew as much about hand-to-hand combat as he did about the latest Madonna CD, but even he could tell this wasn’t working.

They’d been going at this for almost an hour, and Jim had been treating him like he was made of china. Sure, okay, some of that was introduction—how to fall, how to deflect a blow, how to twist out of a hold. But now it was starting to become obvious that Jim wasn’t giving it one hundred percent, which admittedly would probably kill him, but there wasn’t even fifty percent there.

“Look, ah, Jim,” he began tentatively, after the twentieth repetition of the same move, “d’you think maybe I’ve got the hang of this by now?”

Jim straightened and blinked at him; it pissed Blair off a little that while he himself was practically dripping over here, the bigger man hadn’t even broken a sweat. Must be a trick he’d picked up in the jungle or something—conservation of moisture.

“Uh, sure,” Jim said, seemingly caught off guard. “You want to review the other block?”

Blair’s jaw clenched. “I was thinking maybe we could move on to something more advanced,” he offered.

Jim blinked again. “I was going to save that for the next time.”

“Okay, okay, that’s fine, but could I maybe get a preview here?” Blair asked, realizing he was whining but not caring. “See, I’m kind of nervous about this whole thing, fear of the unknown’s never exactly been a problem for me, you know, but this is killing me here. I want to have an idea of what to expect.”

Jim stared at him, frozen again, and suddenly it occurred to Blair that he’d been doing that a lot lately. “Jim, are you zoning? God, man, I’m sorry, I haven’t been paying enough attention to your—”

“Sandburg. I’m fine.”

Blair shut up. Waited.

“C’mere.”

Blair hesitated for an instant, then jerked forward as though he was being pulled by an invisible string. When he was close enough to feel Jim’s breath on his overheated face, he stopped.

“Okay,” Jim murmured. “Remember what I was showing you about falling?”

Blair frowned. Cripes, not that again. “Jim…”

“You’re going to do the same thing to me.”

Blair stared up at him. “I’m going to drop you?”

“Do you remember the moves?”

“Sure, sure,” Blair said. “But—”

“Don’t think. Just do it.”

Blair’s hands came up of their own accord, curling around Jim’s biceps, at the same time his right foot swept to knock Jim’s feet out from under him. Jim toppled obediently, almost gracefully for such a big man. It was beautiful.

And completely fake.

Blair opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Jim was on his feet again. “Good,” he said approvingly. “Try it again.”

After the third time, Blair couldn’t hold back any longer. “Jim,” he said slowly, hands curling into fists. “You can take off the kid gloves, all right?”

The other man regarded him steadily from his place on the mat, and remained stoically silent.

“Look, man, I know what you’re doing.”

“So do I,” Jim growled. “You can’t learn everything you need to know about combat training in an hour. You have to start slow.”

“Slow, yeah, slow is fine, but this is glacial, here.” Blair ran a frustrated hand over his damp hair. “On the one hand, you’re telling me I can do this, I can take on guys bigger than I am, and then when we get down to it you treat me like I’m this eighty-year-old grandmother with a bad hip. Tell me the truth: can I do this or can’t I?”

Jim pushed himself into a sitting position. “You can do this,” he said evenly.

Blair spread his hands in a Well? gesture.

“But it’s gonna take time—”

“Goddammit!” Blair exploded. “I don’t have that kind of time, okay? I have to pick up this stuff now, or I’m sunk. I’m going to fail this combat course, Jim, it’s like I’m getting one of Naomi’s premonitions or something—”

Blair wasn’t even sure how he ended up flat on his ass. All he knew was that one second, he was babbling and frothing at the mouth, and the next second, he was lying on the mat, legs sprawled, the air forced from his lungs—

—because Jim’s big, heavy, solid body was pinning him to the ground.

“You think this is a fucking game?” Jim growled in Blair’s face. “You think knowing how to react in a life-threatening situation is easier to learn than the burial practices of the Maori?”

Blair shook his head; it was about the only part of his body capable of movement.

Oh, wrong. Not the only part. Silently, Blair thanked God for the protective cup that hid a multitude of sins from the man currently pressing every ounce of flesh he owned against Blair’s helpless body. One of these days, he’d have to find a way to deal with these inconvenient hard-ons. Maybe elecroshock therapy?

“Good,” Jim was saying. “Because it’s not easier. I was trained for one thing in the Rangers, you understand? Not how to subdue someone without injuring them, not how to fight someone and cause the minimum damage. I was trained to kill. And when I started my combat course at the Academy, I was scared shitless that the instincts I’d developed would kick in, and suddenly I’d be standing over a guy with a crushed windpipe or a nasal bone jammed into his brain.”

Blair winced.

“Yeah. So in a way, I know where you’re coming from. I know what the problem is. But the thing is, if you’re in a fight for your life or the life of someone else, you can’t always moderate the amount of force you use. It’s not always possible. And you have to face the fact right now that one of these days you may have to kill someone in the line of duty.”

Blair fought to hold Jim’s gaze. “You think I haven’t thought about that?” he croaked.

“No, Chief, I don’t think you have. Intellectually, yeah, I’m sure you’ve acknowledged the possibility. But emotionally, I don’t think you’ve faced it.”

“Look who’s talking about getting in touch with his emotions,” Blair muttered. “How do you know I haven’t?”

Jim’s gaze held his for another moment, and then he pushed himself up and off Blair’s body. “Because if you’d thought about it, you wouldn’t still be at the Academy.”

The words hit Blair harder than he’d hit the mat. “You—you mean you’re just waiting for me to—wash out?” He shook his head. “Then why did you even ask me to do this? Why did you want me to become your partner?”

Jim hauled himself to his feet and offered a hand to Blair, who waved it away impatiently. His skin felt too small for him, like he was about to pop. “Answer me, dammit!”

“I was being selfish, all right?” Jim rasped. “I admit it. I—liked having you as my partner, and I didn’t want it to end. But that doesn’t mean it’s the way you should go.”

“It’s what I want,” Blair muttered, aware he sounded childish.

“Since when?” Jim demanded, chuckling bitterly. “Since two months ago? Since the day you threw your entire life down the toilet?”

“I did that for you!” Blair yelled, aware that he was having possibly one of the worst conversations of his life in a skanky practice room in a skankier gym that stank of human sweat. It was not a congenial setting, as it were.

“Yeah, well,” Jim muttered, contemplating an unidentified stain at the corner of the mat, “maybe that wasn’t the greatest decision.”

“It was the only decision,” Blair gritted. “The only decision that felt right to me.”

“All I’m saying is that this whole incident with Hardy, your concerns about what happened, might be a sign of something bigger. It might be an indication that you’ve got doubts about becoming a cop. Which would be perfectly natural; I mean, the first time I met your mother she called me a pig.”

As quickly as he’d been primed to explode, Blair now felt deflated, hollow. “You seem preoccupied with labels these days, man.” He met Jim’s clear blue gaze. “Is that all I am to you?”

Jim’s jaw clenched spasmodically. “It doesn’t matter what you are to me.”

Blair cocked his head, conscious of a tiny alarm bell ringing in his head. Unfortunately, he was too tapped out to try to decipher what it was trying to warn him about. “You really think that, don’t you?” he murmured. “You really think the equation should be reduced, rendered down to simplest terms, unemotional, cold figures. Like three million.”

Jim pursed his lips.

“I swear, Jim, if you say right now that I should have taken it, I will try that windpipe trick.”

“I wasn’t going to say that. But there are other alternatives, and I never even gave you a chance to think about them.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the private sector. Such as a hundred other things you’d be suited for.”

Blair smiled ruefully. “You underestimate me. I thought about my options.”

“And?”

Blair held Jim’s gaze without faltering. “And here I am,” he said softly.

Jim looked a little wobbly on his feet for a moment, as if Blair had sucker-punched him. “I, ah, I—” He rubbed a hand over his eyes, wiping away the sweat that had formed on his forehead. Blair wanted to laugh until he burst. Now he was sweating. That was Jim, sure enough. Give him the choice between running around Cascade five times or talking about his feelings, and he’d have his sneakers on and be out the door before you could blink.

“Never mind,” Blair murmured, suddenly overwhelmed by the maelstrom of hurt and affection and anger spinning around in his gut. “Let’s just—call it a night, huh?” He struggled to his feet, wincing at the pain as he tried to unkink his legs.

Suddenly, strong hands were pulling him up; unprepared, he stumbled and fell forward, smack into Jim’s broad chest. The hands instantly moved to bracket his shoulders, and he looked up to see—

—pale blue eyes, the only ethereal thing about the man, the only physical indication that there might be something of the spirit world about him. A mouth that was slightly open, as though breathing had become difficult. High cheekbones covered by skin tinged with blood flowing scant millimeters under the surface.

Blair was aware of the heat of Jim’s chest where it burned against his, the pressure of Jim’s hands on his shoulders, the tilt of his head as he leaned forward—

—Holy. Shit.

Blair’s pulse leapt at the thought that Jim was about to kiss him, which was outrageous, insane, fucking impossible.

“Jim,” he breathed, and they were so close that he could feel the breath from that word rebound off Jim’s skin.

That broke the spell; as if he’d been treated to some of that electroshock, Jim’s hands convulsed on the other man’s shoulders and released him, and he took two steps back like they’d been playing a really weird version of Mother May I.

“Yeah, Chief,” he said, and his voice was old, like he’d aged fifty years in a few seconds. “Let’s get out of here.”

Jim stood up from the table and extended his hand. “Thanks for agreeing to meet me, Doc.”

Bellini smiled and took his hand in a firm grip. “Richard, please. I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to call me.”

Jim rubbed the back of his neck as he sat down again. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Still, I feel bad dragging you out on your day off.”

The psychiatrist waved a hand. Today, he was much more casually dressed, in jeans, a charcoal sweater and a leather jacket that made him look even younger than he had in his office. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got a date later on, and I’m nervous as hell; this’ll keep me distracted.”

Jim chuckled. “Blind?”

The other man grinned. “As a bat. A mutual friend set us up.” He studied the menu. “So what’s good here?”

After they had ordered and gotten their drinks—beer for Jim, a glass of wine for Bellini—Jim tried to initiate conversation a couple of times, then realized he hadn’t the faintest idea of what to say.

“So, is this where we talk about the weather?” Bellini said, smiling over the rim of his glass.

Jim shook his head. “This is harder than I thought.”

“Why don’t you start with the impetus for your call Thursday morning. You said something had happened the night before, and you didn’t know what to do. Did you talk to Blair?”

Jim took a swig of his beer. “Sort of,” he hedged.

Bellini raised an eyebrow. Jim sighed.

“Not really,” he admitted. “It started out pretty typically: he wanted to go one way, I wanted to go another, we argued. I told him that maybe he would have been better off not going to the Academy. That there were other jobs he could have considered.”

“What did he say to that?”

“He, ah, he—” he blew my mind “—he said he’d considered them. And that he’d decided to join the force anyway.”

“And did you believe him?”

“Yeah,” Jim murmured, “but I know he hasn’t thought about it enough. He’s capable—I’m not saying he isn’t. He’s fearless when he needs to be, and he’s had a lot of experience with working cases. But he’s not prepared for the possibility that he might have to kill someone in the line of duty.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“No. But I know it’s true.”

Bellini caught and held Jim’s gaze. “Were you prepared the first time you killed someone?”

Jim’s eyes widened, and the thunder of his heartbeat blotted out every other sound for a few seconds. “No,” he croaked finally.

“Nothing can prepare you for that, I would imagine. Not intelligence, or reason, or training.”

Jim focused on the edge of his beer mug. “Yeah.”

“So that wasn’t the real reason you argued with him, was it?”

Jim’s jaw clenched. “I guess not.”

“What’s the real reason?”

Jim wiped his suddenly-damp palms on his jeans. “You tell me.”

Bellini chuckled and took another sip of his wine. “Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. You have to walk the path with me, Grasshopper.”

Jim closed his eyes briefly. “How much do you know about Blair?”

“I might have taken a peek at his file after you called me,” Bellini said easily.

“Then you saw that he was declared dead at the scene by paramedics about five months ago.”

A shadow crossed Bellini's features before his sympathetic expression reasserted itself. “Mm-hmm. And that he made a miraculous recovery, thanks to you.”

Jim shook his head. “It’s because of me he was almost killed. I was responsible. I’ve been responsible for everything bad that’s happened to him since we’ve met. If it wasn’t for me, he’d be leading the life he always wanted. He’d have his doctorate, and he’d be happy.”

“He’s not happy now?”

“He can’t be!” Jim snapped, keeping his voice as low as possible.

“Why not? Because he’s with you?”

Jim stiffened, feeling as though the other man had just clotheslined him. He was lying on the pavement, wondering how the hell he got there.

“How long were you married, Jim?”

Jim’s brain reeled at the change of subject. But it wasn’t a change, was it? No wonder this guy had a diploma on his wall. “Not long enough,” he gritted.

“Maybe not for some things,” Bellini said quietly. “Long enough for you to doubt yourself, though. Long enough for you to wonder why the hell anyone would want to remain loyal to you, through thick and thin.”

Jim’s fingers dug into his thighs hard enough to leave bruises.

“You think that might have some resonance in your relationship with Blair? You ever question his dedication to you, and realize later that maybe you shouldn’t have? You ever wonder when he’s going to just say, ‘enough, already’ and take off?”

Jim met the psychiatrist’s understanding brown-eyed gaze. “Yeah, yeah, and yeah,” he breathed. “So many times I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Three for three? So you’re telling me I can skip dealing with your no doubt equally traumatic childhood, right? Because I don’t think that’s gonna go well with the salad you ordered.”

Jim smiled ruefully. “Next time, I’ll get the soup.”

“Smart choice.”

“So now that I know where it comes from, what do I do about it?” Jim asked.

“Start by talking to him, Jim,” Bellini answered, his voice gentle. “Tell him you don’t have all the answers yet. It’s not a crime, and you might find out he’s got some for you.”

Jim snorted. “Yeah. I can hear it now. ‘Jim, just let me try this root used by the Hopi Indians to induce visions, man. We’ll have the answers for you in no time.’”

Bellini laughed.

Jim drank about half his beer in one gulp. “I, ah, I almost kissed him Wednesday night,” he blurted.

The psychiatrist’s smile didn’t fade. “Well, good for you. I saw his picture in the personnel file, and I have to say, if my date tonight is half as gorgeous as he is, I’m going to be very grateful to my friend.”

Jim’s eyebrows rose for his hairline, which was a long way to go. Bellini just kept grinning.

“Yeah, Jim,” he said. “You never can tell, huh?”

“Sandburg, I am not in the mood.”

Great. Nobody wants to talk to me. “Simon, man, I just need a couple of minutes, all right?” Blair knew that he was groveling, but he didn’t give a shit. The past couple of days, he felt like he’d been living at right angles to everybody else. He was desperate to return to the vertical.

Simon Banks blew cigar smoke at him. The fact that Simon was smoking and therefore defying the ban was an eloquent indication of the way the Captain's day was going. “Sandburg,” he said again, “I’m here on a Saturday, a Saturday when I should have been taking my son to the Jags game, because the higher ups could not wait another forty-eight hours for paperwork they won’t look at until Monday anyway. I’m pissed off. I’m ready to throw something out this window. If you stick around much longer, that something might be you.”

“I just need to ask you one question.”

Banks glared at him, then glanced at his watch. “You have thirty seconds.”

“Do you think I have what it takes to be a cop?”

Simon scowled at him. “Yes. Now get lost.”

Blair strode forward and planted himself in one of the chairs on the other side of Simon’s desk. The big man’s scowl deepened. “Come on, man, I need something here. I feel like everything’s falling apart.”

“I thought you were cleared by the board. Jim told me they expelled Hardy.”

“Yeah, yeah, I was, and they did, but that’s not all of it.”

“Then what? You’re not failing a course.”

Blair spread his hands. “Simon, hey, this is me we’re talking about. I’m at the top of my class.”

“So what, then?” Simon demanded, clearly way past the end of his patience.

“Jim doesn’t—ah, I mean, I don’t think he wants me to become a cop. I don’t think he believes I have what it takes.”

Simon shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. It was his idea in the first place.”

“And you backed him up?”

“Of course I did.” Simon blew smoke and slumped in his chair. “Look, you know I’m no good at this ‘nurturing’ crap…”

“Has he said anything to you? Anything that might explain why he’s changed his mind?”

“How do you know he has?”

“He as good as told me!” Blair exclaimed, leaping to his feet and beginning to pace. “I—I don’t know what’s going on with him. One minute it’s all, ‘Hey, Chief, you’re the best partner I’ve ever had,’ and then it’s, ‘Maybe you should’ve gone to work for McDonald’s—’”

“Sandburg—”

“—and I realized this has been getting worse since my first day at the Academy. He’s been getting more and more distant, and he doesn’t do that male bonding shit with me like he used to—”

“—I really don’t want to know the details of what you two—”

“—no more pats on the back, or slaps on the cheek. You know, those really used to drive me nuts, because I never knew when they were coming, but it’s funny the things you miss when they’re gone—”

“SANDBURG!”

Blair jumped. “What?”

Simon hid his face in his hands. “If I beg you to go away, will you? At this point, I’m willing to pay.”

Deflated, Blair nodded. “Yeah, okay. Sorry. I’ll—” he pointed at the door “—quit ruining your weekend.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Simon sighed from behind his hands. “It was ruined before you showed up.”

“Okay, that’s, ah, that’s—great. Well, not great—I mean—oh, fuck.” He turned to go. “See you.”

“Blair.”

He turned around and met Simon’s piercing gaze. “Talk to him. You’re good at that.” He paused. “And you’re good at being a cop. You have been for a long time now.”

“Thanks,” Blair said softly. And to spare Simon more pain, he left without another word.

As he drove the Volvo out of the parking garage and headed for home, he felt a lot less horizontal than he had been. He still wasn’t fully upright, but he was getting there. A weekend of studying stretched in front of him, and while the subjects may not have been familiar, the process was comforting. He’d hit the books, and maybe try to think up a way to approach Jim that wasn’t going to result in having his head bitten off.

Hey, Jim, I wanted to ask you about Wednesday night, at the gym. I was wondering, you know, if you were putting the moves on me, or if it was just gas.

Hey, Jim, have you been considering any major changes in sexual orientation? Because I’ve been getting spontaneous erections around you lately, and I thought it might be more scientifically valid if we compared notes. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine, whaddaya say?

Hey, Jim. I think I’m losing my mind. How about you?

The light changed, and Blair turned onto Maynard, a quaint little commercial street near the loft. The block was crammed with intimate restaurants and small shops, and as if on command, Blair’s stomach growled. Man, it was past one, and he hadn’t eaten a thing all day. He scanned the street for a parking space and pulled over; a lamb dhansak and Naan bread from that Indian place would be just the ticket to see him through a long afternoon of studying.

He climbed out of the Volvo and looked up and down the street, checking the traffic. He lifted his eyes to the opposite sidewalk and saw—

—Jim leaving the Italian restaurant next door with a guy.

Jim. With a guy. A guy he hadn’t told Blair anything about.

A really good-looking young guy with an expensive leather jacket and a smile that could power New Mexico.

As Blair stood there against the side of the Volvo, frozen, he watched Jim return the smile, then give the guy a friendly pat on the shoulder before turning and heading for his truck.

Blair didn’t get those kinds of pats anymore. But this guy did.

Some rational part of his brain tried to take over, to tell him that it wasn’t a big deal, that the guy was probably an old Army buddy or a cop Jim knew who’d transferred to another precinct. It didn’t mean anything. He sure as hell shouldn’t be standing here in the December cold, shivering and feeling like he’d been kicked.

He wasn’t jealous, dammit. He just missed Jim touching him.

He just wanted Jim to touch him.

Blair watched the truck pull out into the traffic and drive off in the opposite direction, oblivious to his presence.

Taking a deep breath, Blair checked the street once more, then headed for the Indian restaurant, filled with a new determination to be noticed.

Jim was this close to strangling him.

“Sandburg,” he growled, as Blair brushed past him in the kitchen for about the hundredth time, whacking his elbow and making him lose his grip on the wooden spoon he was using to stir the sauce.

“Hmm?” The younger man had been bopping around the loft all afternoon like a monkey on crack, which had actually become an unusual state for him since he’d enrolled at the police academy. Not that Blair was now the poster boy for gravitas, but he’d settled some, become more—normal.

Or maybe Jim had gone in the opposite direction, so that it averaged out.

“You’re driving me nuts, here,” Jim said irritably, immediately regretting it when Blair’s little monkey face got this serious boo-boo look about it. There was even a slight pout in that full lower lip, a pout that made Jim want to close the distance between them and run his tongue—

Down, boy. Talking first, pout-licking later.

Richard’s advice was no doubt the best way to go. He’d always been what you might call a man of action, but if ever he needed to sit down and discuss something, he recognized that this was it. Hell, he was contemplating a whole new life, here, a whole new direction, and he’d be asking the same of Blair. You couldn’t just about-face and hope it worked out; you’d end up marching over a cliff.

“Sorry, Jim,” Blair was saying, only his apology was accompanied by the gentle stroking of fingers on his offended elbow. His naked elbow, because Jim had discarded his sweater in favor of a worn t-shirt that he didn’t care about messing up. He did this because Blair had come home with an armful of groceries from the Asian market and a jones to try some “authentic Indonesian cuisine,” and he’d merrily dragged Jim into a crazy afternoon of cooking enough dishes to feed six people.

“’S’okay,” Jim rasped, distracted by the glide of Blair’s fingers against his skin. Shit, he wasn’t even dialed up, here, and he could’ve picked out every ridge and valley of the kid’s fingerprint if somebody had wanted him to.

“Hey,” Blair said softly, his face close to Jim’s now, his expression radiating concern. “You okay?”

Jim swallowed. Resisted the urge to shake his head and yank the smaller body up against his until he could feel every millimeter of him.

Talk to him. Just start talking.

“Fine, Chief,” Jim muttered, belatedly picking up the spoon and setting it in motion again. “You told me to stir, I’m stirring.”

He felt the weight of Blair’s gaze on him long after he’d narrowed his focus to the pot in front of him.

This wasn’t getting him anywhere.

Upon reflection, the theory that a companionable evening spent cooking and kibitzing in the loft would fix whatever had gone wrong between the two of them was, well, dumb. He supposed he’d wanted it to be a reminder of the couple of hundred other evenings they’d spent cooking and kibitzing together, and hence would magically fix the mysterious, unknown something that had fucked everything up and made Jim not want to be his partner any more.

But magic solutions were obviously not on the menu tonight.

Blair felt awkward, totally out of touch with his own body, and he hadn’t been this goofy since he’d gone to his first junior high dance and spilled punch all over Mary O’Rourke, who he’d been desperately in love with for five whole weeks. It was pathetic, really, because if there was anyone who knew the subtle science of using body language to accomplish a goal, it was Blair Sandburg. For example, he knew twenty places on a woman’s body that it was perfectly acceptable to touch in polite society, but when the right pressure or caress was applied? Look out, baby. Of course, there was an escalation sequence involved, too—the crest of the shoulder before the elbow, the elbow before the back of the…

Oh, hell, what did it matter anyway? His vast experience and skill were useless to him, because he was no longer dealing with the same territory. Jim Ellison’s body was an alien landscape to him, full of hidden pitfalls and locked-up secrets. The knowledge of feminine anatomy was definitely non-transferable, and Blair was ready to run up the white flag and admit defeat.

It didn’t help that there was so much of the bastard. True, it had never escaped Blair’s notice that Jim was a big guy, complete with a musculature that would have sent Gray running for his sketchpad. But when confronted directly with the evidence, especially when it was wrapped up in a faded gray t-shirt that was so worn out it looked painted on his perfect pecs—well, it was more than a little daunting. It made Blair start thinking about what exactly he was hoping to have happen here, and what he’d do with that body if it were ever put on offer.

Because what was the ultimate goal of this elaborate display of body language, assuming he managed to get it right? Was he hoping for a reconciliation of sorts, a return to the old days of BlairandJimness, the pats, the slaps, the easy way they had with each other when everything was in the groove? Or was he aiming for something newer, more complicated, and maybe more than a little terrifying?

That would explain the awkwardness, right there. On the one hand, his brain was commanding him to Stop! Look! Listen! Slow the fuck down! and on the other, his dick was exhorting him to Go! Hump! Now! No wonder he was acting like a twelve-year-old with his first boner.

Thankfully, the food preparation was finally over with, and they were sitting down to eat—

—enough food to last them a week and a half.

Blair attempted an ingratiating smile, but figured he probably just looked constipated. “Guess I went a little overboard, huh?” he ventured, waving a hand over the multitude of dishes and bowls piled between them.

Jim’s gaze flickered over the table, then up to his face. “I hadn’t noticed,” he said, and the tone was drier than the Mojave, but there was a spark in those sky blues that made Blair’s pulse sit up and take notice.

He hadn’t seen that spark in forever, he realized. He’d give anything to know what had made it go out.

Their gazes caught and held for a long moment, and then Jim cleared his throat and said, “So, I guess we’d better sample the fruits of our labor, huh?” and began spooning out portions of jasmine rice and fish curry. A slightly stunned Blair followed suit a few seconds later.

The first forkful was halfway to his mouth when he heard a groan from across the table, and every nerve ending in his body went on alert.

“Wh—” he began, afraid something had happened to Jim’s senses, but the words died in his throat when he registered Jim’s expression.

So that was what bliss looked like on Jim.

His eyes were closed, his expression utterly serene, as if he’d just been handed the secrets of the universe courtesy of the Look Ho Ho Market.

Or as if he’d just come his brains out. Twice.

Blair returned his attention to his own plate, but it was way past too late. His jeans were officially three sizes too small, and he was careening down the slippery slide at Fantasy World. Desperately, he began to shovel food in his face, heedless of the taste.

Eat, chew, swallow. Eat, chew, swallow.

That worked for a few minutes, until Jim helped himself to another dish and made a new noise somewhere between a moan and a whimper, and then Blair was off on another X-rated ride. Another round of Eat, Chew, Swallow, then another groan, another ride. This was getting to be a bad habit, he mused.

Okay. Try conversation.

“So, ah, who was that guy I saw you with earlier?”

Okay. That sucked.

Jim’s head snapped up, and his eyes narrowed slightly, not enough that anyone but Blair would probably notice. “What guy?”

“The, ah, the guy in the leather jacket. Young guy. You were coming out of La Trattoria?”

Jim’s gaze slid from Blair’s face and settled on his shoulder. “That was, uh, a guy I know from work,” he said. “I’ve known him for a while.”

“Oh. That’s good.” Blair frowned at himself. “I mean, good you keep in touch.”

“Yeah.” Jim spooned out some more rice onto his plate.

“He a good friend?” Blair heard himself say.

Okay, you can shut up anytime now.

Jim shifted in his seat, like it had suddenly grown too warm for him. “Not really. I don’t know him all that well.”

“You just said—”

“I said I’d known him for a while,” Jim said, voice low and slow, “not that I knew him well.”

“Right, okay, sorry,” Blair murmured.

“You preparing for your exam in Interrogation Techniques?” Jim said, attempting levity. It sailed off the cliff and landed flatter than Wile E. Coyote.

“No, I was just curious.”

“Well, you heard about the curious cat, didn’t you, Chief?” Jim cracked.

Blair didn’t answer. Suddenly everything on his plate looked rubbery and inedible.

“Sandburg?” A pause. “Blair?”

Blair’s eyes rose to Jim’s face, startled. His given name wasn’t a moniker Jim used often, so it grabbed his attention when it did.

“I was only kidding. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Blair managed tightly. “I know.” He regarded the food, then waved a hand. “You done?”

Jim opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Yeah, I guess.” He wiped his mouth and stood. “What do you want to do with the leftovers?”

Throw them out, Blair wanted to say, but what came out was, “I guess I’ll dig up the Tupperware. They’ll make good lunches through the week.”

Jim chuckled. “We’ll be the envy of the whole department,” and Blair looked up at him, searching for signs of sarcasm, but saw only approbation and a tentative kind of warmth in the other man’s face.

It was like a punch to the gut, and he’d had a few of those since hooking up with Jim, so he ought to know.

Together, they cleared the table, and then there were a couple of minutes of foolishness while Jim hauled container after plastic container out of a drawer, until Blair laughed and held up his hands and said, “All right, already, I think that’s enough!” and Jim grinned back at him, and it was just like old times.

And not, Blair thought as his traitorous body responded to even that small mark of favor from his friend and partner.

Partner. The word had sharp edges that cut into his brain as he turned it over in his mind. So many meanings to that word, but were any of them true?

He dumped the last of the rice into a container and sealed the lid, then leaned back against the counter and looked up at Jim. “I dropped by the station today to see Simon.”

“He call you about a case?” Jim asked, still spooning curry.

“No. I—needed a little confidence boost, I guess.”

Jim chuckled. “Yeah, Simon’s a real confidence booster,” he drawled.

“On the contrary,” Blair murmured. “I wanted an honest opinion, and I got one.”

Jim’s smile faded. “An opinion about what?”

“About whether or not I was cut out to be a cop.”

A dozen emotions flickered across Jim’s face, but they moved too quickly for Blair to be able to pin any one of them down. “Of course you are,” he gritted with surprising vehemence. “If anyone’s been telling you different—”

“You’ll defend my virtue?” Blair said, suddenly seized with a desire to shake the man standing beside him until his teeth rattled. “That’s very chivalrous of you, Jim, but you’ll have to joust with yourself on that one.”

Jim blinked, and Blair was treated to another twelve emotions, or maybe the same ones backwards, he couldn’t be sure. “Jesus,” Jim said.

“Yeah,” Blair agreed.

“I never meant to—you have to believe me—”

“It’s okay, I mean, I don’t—”

“—It’s not you, I swear to God—”

“—clue how this happened or what I did to convince you I couldn’t—”

“—all me, I’ve been screwed up for a while, I think, only I didn’t know it, but I’m trying to get it sorted—”

“—handle it, but I want you to know I’m determined to stay with—”

“—that guy you saw me with, see, he’s a shrink, and he’s been helping me with some stuff. I know that doesn’t sound like me, but—”

“—whatever it takes, whatever I need to do to prove it, I’m just hoping you’ll—”

“—not sure who ‘me’ even is any more, Chief. But none of that matters right now, because more than anything I want you to know—”

“—tell me what the hell went missing along the way, because I want it back, and—”

“—that you’re the most important consideration in all of this.”

“—because you’re number one, man, you always have been.”

Blair stared at Jim. They were both breathing as though they’d just run a marathon; Blair didn’t need super senses to see the pulse leaping crazily in Jim’s neck.

“What did you say?” Blair asked.

“You didn’t get any of it?” Jim returned, exasperated. Blair shook his head, and Jim slammed his hand against the counter, making the dishes rattle. “That’s great, that’s fabulous. I finally get up the balls, and you’re not even listening!”

“Whoa, now, there, Secretariat,” Blair said, as Jim began to pace, “let’s look at the photo finish. You weren’t listening to me, either!”

“Well, I’m the one who started first!”

There was something surreal about this whole thing, but Blair couldn’t be bothered to try to put his finger on it. “Okay, so, give it to me again,” he said, folding his arms. “I’m listening now.”

Jim stopped pacing and stared at him, stonily silent.

Blair watched as the other man’s expression went through those lightning-fast changes once more, only this time he imagined he recognized some of them.

But that couldn’t be right. And that one—that one there. That definitely wasn’t—

Jim’s expression turned Sphinx-like, and he took a step toward Blair.

Blair tried to move back, but he’d forgotten he was pressed up against the counter.

“You’re listening,” Jim said finally.

Blair nodded, kind of weakly. “All ears.”

Jim’s stare shifted to his ears, exposed by the ponytail. Blair felt them turn pink.

Jim took another step—half-step really, because at that point he couldn’t move without walking through Blair. And he didn’t look like he wanted to walk through him.

He looked like he wanted to—

Jim reached up and placed his hands on either side of Blair’s face. Blair sucked in a breath, and froze, and got impossibly hard all at once.

“Funny,” Jim said slowly. The tips of his fingers brushed Blair’s earlobes, making them tingle. “I would have sworn you were all mouth.”

The mouth in question opened on a gasp as Jim’s thumbs stroked over his lips.

That internal debate Blair’d been having with himself earlier about whether he wanted the old, comfortable relationship or a new, scary one? It just became academic, because with or without his consent, the relationship was now headed toward scary at full speed. To employ a metaphor, it was sailing into shark-infested waters. Jaws was on their tail, ready to swallow their asses.

And the scariest thing of all was that Blair no longer gave a damn.

Jim’s thumbs barely had time to get out of the way as Blair surged upward. When their mouths met, it wasn’t like any first kiss he’d ever had, because before this he’d always teased and gentled and seduced. Mister Sensitive, that was his style.

No style here. This first kiss was one of a kind, hard and intense and sloppy and unbelievably exciting, not that he hadn’t been a little excited to begin with, but this was hurricane strength. Jim was a force of Nature, he’d known that from the first day when he got himself slammed up against a wall, but this was a whole new kind of force, because they were both in on it now, whipping up the waves, sending the tsunami crashing against the peaceful fishing village until there was nothing left but a lot of sticks.

Dimly, Blair registered the feel of Jim’s corded arms encircling his back, and he experienced a moment of panic, because while he’d dated women taller than him, he’d never gone near one with twice his muscle mass. But there was an electric thrill under the flight response, a heretofore unrecognized desire to soak up that power, just rub up against it and let it ooze into his pores. Of course, it was also fun to test it a little, push and pull and twist and demonstrate some power of his own, so he gave it his best shot. Acting on instinct, he tried some of that fancy footwork Jim had shown him, and the next thing he knew their positions were reversed, with Blair now grinding the bigger man into the counter.

Jim broke away from the kiss long enough to let out a groan, and Blair was startled to realize that there was a hard ridge pressing into his belly, and that this hard ridge probably belonged to Jim Ellison. Jesus, he was as turned on as Blair was, and really, Blair should have been able to deduce that from the way Jim had just tried to mine his tonsils, but there was nothing like a big, solid erection to hammer the fact home.

Blair’s eyes slammed shut and he shuddered. Okay, putting ‘hammer’ and ‘erection’ in the same sentence had a peculiar effect on him. Must file that tidbit of information away for later.

Wait a minute. Something was wrong here. The arms were gone; strong hands were moving to his shoulders and propelling him backward.

Blair’s eyes opened.

Jim was looking winded and messy and half-debauched, and Blair decided he wanted to start debauching the other half as soon as possible. He grinned lasciviously and took a step forward—

—only to be stopped dead by the hands still on his shoulders.

“Sandburg.”

Oh, shit, Blair thought. “I have this rule,” he said, not allowing his smile to fade. “Once a person has had their tongue in my mouth, calling me by my last name is definitely out.”

Jim’s jaw tightened. Double shit. “I, ah, I’m s—”

No. No way are you going to do this now. “You say you’re sorry, I’ll break your leg. I can do that, you know.” Starved for contact already, Blair’s hands rose to press against Jim’s chest.

Jim flinched. His eyes focused on a point somewhere past Blair’s shoulder.

“Don’t you dare look away,” Blair growled, suddenly angry. The flight response was gone, leaving only fight. “You can’t kiss me like you want to eat me alive and then say it shouldn’t have happened.” Once the words were out of his mouth, Blair realized he sounded like a whiny teenage girl, but it was too late to unsay them.

“It shouldn’t have,” Jim said stubbornly.

Blair’s hands clenched into fists. “Goddammit!” he exclaimed, whacking Jim’s pecs once for emphasis. “You’re the biggest pain in the ass I’ve ever met! Why can’t you just admit—”

“Admit what? I don’t even know what the hell this is!” Jim exploded, setting Blair away from him and moving out of range of Blair’s hands.

“Neither do I,” Blair said quietly, “but I’m willing to try to find out.” God, there she was again.

“Yeah, well, I’m sick of experiments,” Jim said heavily. “I want to know where I’m going for once.”

Blair opened his mouth to answer—

—and the phone rang.

Like a drowning man reaching for a life preserver, Jim dove for the phone and picked it up before the second ring. “Ellison,” he said, his voice scratchy as an old 78.

There was a long pause, in which Blair watched his expression darken. “Who is this?”

Another pause. “What?” Blair mouthed, but Jim only made a chopping motion with his hand. He listened a little longer, then every muscle in his body seemed to tense.

“Listen to me, you sick fuck,” Jim snarled into the phone, “you do not want to play games with me, do you understand? Because I will make sure—”

Even without enhanced senses, Blair could hear the click at the other end of the line.

“What the hell was that?” he breathed.

Jim jabbed the speed dial, then handed the phone to Blair. “Tell the station you want them to run a check on our number, see if they can get a record of the number that just called.” He strode over to the windows and yanked the curtains open, then peered into the night.

“What the hell—” Blair started again, but then Rafe picked up, and he never got a chance to finish his sentence, because by the time he was done Jim had slipped on his coat and was out the door.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

Jim drove the truck like he was chasing a perp, not even registering the street lights. He thought he heard a couple of horns behind him, but he was focused on two goals, to the exclusion of all else.

Going after the bastard who’d made that phone call.

And getting as far away from the loft as he could.

An argument they’d had months ago about Sandburg’s dissertation came back to haunt him.

Jim, I said that most of your life choices are fear-based.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he muttered to the Blair-voice in his head. Just because he didn’t like to dissect himself under a microscope didn’t mean he wasn’t at least partially aware of his own failings.

Maybe when it came to baring his soul, he was a coward.

Lost in his own head, he almost drove right by the place he was headed.

Cursing, he pulled the truck over abruptly, almost getting rear-ended in the process. He flipped his cell phone and hit the speed dial for the station. Rafe answered on the second ring.

“Jim, where the hell are you? Sandburg’s been calling for you every two minutes to see if you’ve showed up here yet.”

Peering through the windshield, Jim focused on the windows in the low-rise across the street. The one he was looking for was on the third floor, but he didn’t know any more than that. Half of them were dark. “Any word on the call?”

“Nada. You weren’t on long enough. You know that,” Rafe chided.

Jim scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah, I thought so, but I hoped…”

“What the hell was it about? Sandburg didn’t know.”

“It was Hardy,” Jim growled.

“The one that assaulted Blair? You recognized his voice?”

“No. He had a distorter on the line.”

“Then how do you—”

“I just know, okay?” Jim snapped.

“Okay, okay,” Rafe said. “You don’t have to bust my balls.”

“Sorry.” Jim closed his eyes. The words were burned into his brain, playing on an endless loop.

You and your boyfriend better stay awake twenty four seven, Ellison. ‘Cause I’m watching you.

Maybe next time you’re fucking him, you’ll get fucked. Only not the way you like, faggot.

Is his tight little ass worth it, Ellison?

On the other end of the line, he heard Rafe draw in a breath. “You’re outside his place now, aren’t you?”

“Two points,” Jim muttered.

“Don’t even think about it. We haven’t got any evidence yet.”

“We won’t get any.” Because I’m going to twist his thick fucking neck until it snaps.

“Jim. Jim, listen to me. Don’t fuck this up. Get a grip.”

“I think he’s watching our apartment,” Jim growled. “I’m not gonna sit around—”

“You’re not gonna sit around. We’re not, okay? We look after our own. You know that.”

Jim closed his eyes. “I want to bring him in for questioning.”

“Fair enough. But let’s wait until tomorrow, okay? Give you a chance to cool off.”

Jim’s hand tightened on the wheel until he thought the knuckles would pop off. “Yeah. Okay. You’re right.”

“I’m always right.”

Jim shook his head. “I’ll remember that the next time I’m looking for the secrets of the universe,” he cracked, then closed the phone.

He sat in the dark watching the third floor for a while longer, then turned the key in the ignition, put the truck in gear and pulled away from the curb.

Blair came awake with a start when a hand shook his shoulder gently. He raised his head and stared blearily at the man leaning over him in the semi-darkness.

“Jim, are you okay?” Jesus, he’d been worried. He blinked a couple of times and Jim’s face hove into full focus, the strain lines between the eyes and around the mouth more visible than usual.

His hands itched to smooth those lines away, and he wondered how he had moved so effortlessly from the place he had been to the place he stood now.

"Yeah, I’m—good,” Jim said softly. Blair searched for some shift in expression, some indication that this homecoming was different from all the others—

—and found none.

Well. That was—great.

“What was that call about?”

Jim stared at him for a second, and Blair could tell he’d been hoping that question would just go by the wayside. “He was disguising his voice, and I didn’t keep him on long enough for them to do a successful trace, but I have reason to believe it was Hardy.”

Blair frowned. “Whoa, hang on. Are you saying he made a threatening phone call?” Jim nodded, once. “How threatening are we talking here?”

Jim paused, then said flatly, “Death threat threatening.”

Blair sat all the way up, every nerve ending suddenly on high alert. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Before Blair could offer him a spot on the couch, Jim sat down heavily in the chair beside it. “I wish I was.”

Blair swung his legs onto the floor and put his head in his hands. “Jesus Christ. What can we do?”

“I’m going to haul him in for questioning in the morning. Put the fear of God in him.”

Despite the situation, Blair felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. “Or the fear of Jim Ellison.”

Jim didn’t smile at that; instead, the creases around his eyes and mouth deepened. “I’m sorry, Chief.”

Blair’s heart was suddenly shot through with adrenaline. “Sorry? What do you have to be sorry about?” But even as the words left his mouth, he knew the answer.

Jesus. Jim was going to tell him it had been a mistake.

“This is my fault. If I hadn’t provoked him—” Jim trailed off, shrugged.

Tired as he was, it took Blair a second to process the unexpected words. “You mean—you blame yourself for that? But that’s just—it wasn’t—”

Jim shrugged again, and stood abruptly, looking exhausted and angry and more than a little lost.

“Hey,” Blair murmured, softly. His hand reached out and brushed down over Jim’s arm. He stopped at the wrist, touched the warm skin there. That was safe, right?

Under his fingers, he felt Jim stiffen.

Apparently nothing was safe right now. And Blair had two choices: he could do his thang, get up in Jim’s face at one in the morning and demand they talk out the fact that only a few hours ago they’d been kissing one another stupid, or…he could let Jim sleep.

Against his will, his mind conjured up an image of the two of them sprawled in Jim’s big bed, Blair draped over the other man like a blanket as they slept.

God, Blair thought, suppressing a moan. Get a grip.

Aloud, he stuttered, “I, ah, I guess we’d better turn in, huh? I mean, you turn in—where you usually turn in and I—turn in down, uh, here.”

Oh, brilliant. Why don’t you draw him a sketch of the loft, complete with stick figures labeled “J” and “B”?

“I…yeah. I’m pretty worn out.” Jim paused for a moment, his pale blue eyes roaming over Blair’s face. “Thank you.”

Blair wasn’t sure why he was being thanked—was it thanks for being considerate, or thanks for not slicing open Jim’s guts with the rusty knife of ‘let’s-talk-about-this’ discussions?

The other man gave Blair one last tight-lipped smile and then disappeared into the bathroom. Before he could emerge again Blair retreated to his own room, where he flopped onto his bed and stared sightlessly up at the ceiling.

He lay awake for a long time, wishing he were somewhere else.

“Jim!”

Jim resisted the urge to smash his head against the wall. He’d almost made it. Assuming his best bland expression, he turned around to face his Captain.

“Hey, Simon,” he said, trying for casual, “what are you doing here? Thought this was your day off.”

The bigger man’s scowl told Jim succinctly that he was not bullshitting anybody. “Thought it was yours, too,” he said, folding his arms.

“I, ah, had to come in and check a few figures.”

“Where’s Sandburg?”

He shrugged. “Still asleep when I left.” You mean when you slinked out of the loft at six in the morning, a small and annoying voice corrected in his head. “I didn’t need him to come along.”

Simon’s eyebrows threatened to climb clear off his forehead. “Oh, no? You didn’t need him to help you put the screws to Robert Hardy?”

Jim flinched. “Rafe called you.”

“Damn right, Rafe called me,” Simon growled. “Why the hell do you think I’m here at eight-thirty on a Sunday morning? You think I like giving up my weekends, which I give up way too damned often, I might add?”

Jim clenched his jaw. “I’m sorry,” he said, simply. “Rafe shouldn’t have told you.”

Simon snorted. “Oh, yeah, it would’ve been a lot better to come in tomorrow and find out you were up on charges with IA for smoking the son of one of the most kiss-ass Lieus in the city.” He darted a glance around the mostly quiet hall and then jerked his head in the direction of the interrogation rooms. “C’mon, let’s go somewhere without an audience.”

Once they were safely shut up in an unoccupied room, Simon gracefully eased his tall frame into a chair and sighed. “Okay. Why don’t you fill me in on a few details before I go in there and question Hardy.” It wasn’t a request. Jim knew better than to argue it should be him in there doing the questioning, because it shouldn’t be, and they both knew it.

“How much do you know?” he asked instead.

“Pretty much everything, except for the details of the call last night. Rafe implied you had some secret method for knowing it was Hardy, which remained mysterious to him.”

“Did you read the report I filed on the incident at the police academy?”

Simon locked gazes with him. “Yeah.”

“Let’s just say the message was similar. Only this time, he threatened to kill me, and possibly both of us. He said we’d better stay awake, which led me to suspect that he might be watching the loft.”

Simon pursed his lips. “We can check on the buildings with visual access to your place. See if there have been any new renters or suspicious activity.”

“Yeah, I got Rafe following up on that for me.”

Simon hesitated, and Jim tensed automatically. “Between us, Jim…would there have been anything he could’ve seen?”

Oh, Christ, Jim thought. He hadn’t been anticipating the question, but he should’ve. Caught off guard, he was sure everything showed in his face. He forced the words past a suddenly tight throat. “Yeah. He might’ve seen…something.” That made it sound like more than it was, so he added hastily, “Last night. That was the only time. I mean—” He trailed off, feeling like he’d been called before the principal for whacking off in the boys’ locker room.

Simon nodded once, and his gaze flicked away. “You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. And I’m not going to do anything with the information.”

“You should,” Jim rasped. “It’s fraternization.”

“To be honest with you,” Simon said blithely, “my hunch was that the two of you had been—ah, together—since Peru. If not sooner.” He held up a hand. “Not that I spend my free time thinking about the details.”

“Jesus Christ, Simon,” Jim huffed, the revelation like a punch to the gut. If Simon thought he and Blair were fucking, how many other people thought the same? And what had they been doing all this time to give them that impression?

“My point is, I don’t really give a shit what you two do,” the bigger man snapped. “You’re the best team I’ve ever seen. That’s all I care about. And now, the subject is most definitely closed.” He pushed himself to his feet and aimed a finger at the wall. “Next door, right?”

Jim nodded.

“I’m sure I can’t stop you from listening in,” Simon said, “but if you come into that room I will kick your ass from here to Portland.”

“Understood, sir.”

Simon shot him one last scowl to hold him in place, then left the room. Jim sank into a chair and dialed up his hearing; he gripped the wooden table in front of him in the hopes it would keep him anchored. He couldn’t go barging in there and screw this up right at the beginning.

Blair’s life might be at stake.

He heard the sound of a key turning in a lock, then a rustle of footsteps. A chair squeaking.

“Finally!” Hardy’s voice, so loud it made him wince. “Would somebody mind telling me what the FUCK I’m doing here? A coupla uniforms haul me out of bed at the crack of dawn—”

Simon’s deep voice cut across Hardy’s ranting. “The sun rises at six-twenty. The officers rang your doorbell at eight o’clock.”

“Fucking smart-ass—”

More sounds of movement, then, “That’s Captain Smart-Ass to you, you little prick. Now shut up and let me get this over with.”

Silence.

“You are here on suspicion of uttering death threats, as the officers would have informed you. And considering the threat was directed at one of my detectives, I take this matter very seriously.”

“I didn’t utter nothing!” the other man wailed. “I want my lawyer!”

“You mean your daddy’s lawyer, don’t you? How is Mike these days, anyway? He pissed his little boy washed out?”

Hardy’s voice turned low and nasty. “I didn’t wash out. That cock—”

“Watch your mouth, boy.” Simon’s voice was lower and nastier.

Jim’s fingers dug into the tabletop.

“That Sandburg had me kicked out,” Hardy finished sullenly.

“And you resent him, don’t you?” Simon said calmly. “You want to make him pay.”

Silence, except for a heartbeat—doubtless Hardy’s—pounding at a breakneck pace.

“I know my rights,” Hardy said.

“Where were you last night at seven-thirty?”

“Home.”

“Anybody with you?”

“Yeah. My girlfriend. Some of us have ‘em, you know.”

Jim shifted in his chair.

“She willing to testify to that?”

“Sure.”

“You’d better be sure, boy. Because we’re not messing around here. This is not some fag joke you can laugh off. This is hard time—and I do mean hard, sweetheart. Prison life would not agree with you, I can guarantee it.”

A muffled scrape, probably a chair being pushed back. “We done?”

A pause. “For now. Don’t leave town.”

Jim was up and moving before he realized what he was doing. He opened the door to the room just as Hardy was emerging from the one next door.

Hardy’s beady, piglike eyes flickered over him nervously.

“Jim.” A warning. Simon.

The blood roared in his ears, blocking out all other sound.

Hardy was saying something, but he couldn’t tell what it was. He took a deep breath and willed himself to calm.

“—him away from me, man.”

Jim took a step forward.

“I’ll be watching you, too,” he growled. “Twenty-four seven.”

And then he was amazed to see genuine, honest terror bloom in the kid’s face, along with a vast, bottomless confusion.

He didn’t have a clue what Jim was talking about.

He wasn’t the one.

As the kid turned and fled down the hall, Jim leaned back against the wall, the easing of the adrenaline rush making him dizzy.

“Dammit,” he breathed, as Simon stared at him. “Why couldn’t it be simple for once?”

“Your time is up. Please put down your pencils and stay seated until your booklet is collected.”

Blair stretched his arms over his head, wincing as he heard the crack. The last exam of the semester, and he was ready to collapse. Oh, the tests themselves were a breeze compared to the ones he used to write at Rainier; he’d finished this one a half hour early. It wasn’t the workload at the police academy that was draining his energy.

It had been six full days now since the phone call, and they were no closer to finding the culprit than they had been when they started. Well, Jim was no closer to finding a culprit—Blair had made several attempts to get involved in the investigation, but had been rebuffed every time.

“You need to get ready for your exams, Chief.”

Blair refrained from telling Jim he could do the exams with his eyes closed and both hands tied behind his back, because they both knew it, and Jim probably had a hundred other excuses lined up if that one fell through. The truth was, Jim didn’t want Blair anywhere near this case, and while it pissed him off immeasurably, there wasn’t a lot he could do about it.

Or, to be more precise, there wasn’t a whole lot he wanted to do about it. The call had burst the bubble he’d been floating in for the last couple of weeks, taking his new, exhilarating feelings and tainting them, changing them subtly. It wasn’t that he now thought those desires were wrong, exactly, but there was an undeniable sense of—not-rightness—that plagued him every time he looked at Jim. He hated the homophobic bastard for doing that to him, for making something that should have remained private into fodder for a police report.

It appeared he wasn’t alone in feeling that way. Jim had been radiating ‘keep back fifty feet’ vibes ever since Sunday, and while that normally wouldn’t deter Blair for more than two minutes, they were no longer navigating in the land of the normal. No, they were solidly in the country of Holy-Shit-How-Did-We-Get-Here, and there were no maps or compasses to guide them. And for the first time in his life, instead of plunging ahead into the unknown without heed to his direction, Blair found himself standing at the edge of the jungle, terrified of losing his way.

It wasn’t the fact that Jim was a guy that had him scared. While Blair had always thought of himself as ninety-nine percent hetero, there was a small part of him that had wondered. He’d been egged on by a number of gay friends he’d accumulated over the years, a couple of whom had overtly offered to lead him down the garden path. True, he’d be lying if he said he’d never been tempted, but in the end, there’d never been anyone who’d raised it above the level of an experiment for him. And despite his tomcat ways, Blair maintained an idealistic belief that joining with another person should at least strive for the transcendent. The thought of engaging in sex just so that he could measure his responses on some sort of meter stick left him cold.

Jim, Blair now realized, had never had a chilling effect on him. From day one, he’d been dragged along on the roller coaster of being Jim Ellison’s partner, friend, shaman and guide; his body had cycled so much adrenaline in the past three and a half years, he was surprised it was still functioning. Apart from the shooting and the jumping and the running and the drowning, there was the minefield of Jim’s psyche to deal with, the boy who grew up under the lash of his father’s slights hiding under the surface, waiting to explode. Despite Jim’s tentative reconciliation with his family, Blair had no doubt the scars of Jim’s formative years—the loneliness, the fear of rejection—still informed his choices as an adult. Anyone who tried to get past the shield Jim put up around himself as protection from the world encountered that history sooner or later. Blair had butted his head against that barrier more than once, and as a result had glimpsed the inner sanctum on a few occasions, much to his surprise and delight. It sounded goofy as hell, but there was something about Jim’s honest, open smile that was worth all the bruises. That was when the roller coaster really picked up speed, did a loop that stopped his heart, then jump-started it again.

Blair’s heart raced now as his mind began making connections. At least in part, wasn’t that a large component of his own fear? If he pushed on ahead, succeeded in stripping away all the defenses around Fort Ellison, would he be able to handle the truths he found inside the temple? Would he revel in the beauty of the artifacts, or be overwhelmed by them?

There was no getting around the fact that Jim was the single most important person in his life, surpassing even Naomi at this point. It was a relationship that had taken him from boy to man in more ways than one, that had completely changed his life’s path. And now he was pursuing a course that would entwine his life with Jim’s permanently. Until death do us part—hell, yeah, that was a real possibility. When he graduated from the academy next spring, they’d be partners in every sense of the word except one.

Maybe the idea of crossing that one final line was more than either of them could wrap their heads around.

“Blair?”

Shaking his head dazedly, Blair looked up to take in his surroundings. He was sitting like a dork in a rapidly emptying exam hall while Brandy Morris, a pretty blonde cadet he knew from his weapons training, hovered over him with a concerned look on her unlined features.

He’d turned thirty in May with nary a whimper, but as soon as he hit the Academy, he felt like the Old Man in the Hemingway novel. There was something about the athletic, fresh-faced openness of the women here that brought out some previously dormant paternal instinct. He wanted to take them out to toss a football around, or play one-on-one with them on the court.

Man. That was just sick.

“Hey, Brandy,” he said, trying his smile on for size and surprising himself that it still fit. “How’d your exam go?”

The willowy girl rolled her eyes expressively. “Please.”

Blair chuckled, then shuddered when he realized he sounded like Mr. Cleaver.

“I, uh,” Brandy murmured, lowering her voice and leaning closer as Blair stood, “I wanted to tell you I was glad I could help with the—the situation. Uh, with Rob Hardy.”

Blair froze for a moment, processing, then relaxed. Right. She’d been one of the witnesses to Hardy’s behavior, and had sworn an affidavit. “Yeah. I meant to thank you for that—”

“Oh, there was no need to,” Brandy added hastily. “He would have made a terrible cop. And besides,” she said, her voice growing in confidence, “it was so obvious he was completely wrong about you.”

Blair frowned; his normally sharp brain was too fried to—

Waittaminute. “Wrong?”

“Yeah,” the girl enthused. “In my opinion, it’s not right for someone to say things like that when they’re not true. You’re not—” she waved a hand at him in a gesture designed to indicate his all-American, apple-pie straightness.

“Queer?” he supplied helpfully.

Brandy wrinkled her perky nose. He would’ve found that cute a year ago, but it only irritated the hell out of him now.

“Brandy,” Blair began slowly, “how do you know he was wrong about me?”

“Well, it’s obvious, I mean…” The young woman’s mouth, which obviously had a habit of racing ahead of her higher mental functions, trailed off.

“Oh,” she breathed after a long pause.

“Yeah,” agreed Blair. “Oh.” As he watched the confusion play across her face, the ninety-nine percent hetero voice in his head screamed at him from the depths of its confused, straight little soul. For Chrissakes, take it back! Just because you kissed one guy doesn’t mean you have to buy a rainbow flag and march in the next Pride parade! Think about your rep, man!

He silenced it with a firm backhand. Even if her statement hadn’t possessed an element of irony, he reflected, he still would’ve done it. Giving the noogie to complacency had always been one of his favorite pastimes, after all.

“Still glad you testified?” Blair asked sweetly, showing his teeth.

Brandy’s eyes widened. “Of course! I mean, it’s not, I would’ve done the same no matter…”

She nattered on a while longer, and Blair just let her run. It was cruel to do this to her, but the teacher in him argued he was imparting a valuable life lesson that would prove useful in her future career. A habit of making assumptions could be extremely dangerous when you were a cop.

“Well,” Brandy was saying, finally winding down, “I, uh, that’s wonderful, I mean, wonderful for you. You must be…”

“Color-coordinated?” Blair offered helpfully.

“No!” Brandy gasped, covering her mouth. “I mean…I should get going. I’ve got another exam this afternoon. See you—around.” And without waiting for a response from him, she fled the hall.

Blair grinned for the first time in what felt like forever. Okay, he was headed down a completely new road, but that didn’t mean he had to leave everything behind, now, did it?

Blair was playing air guitar.

Jim let himself into the loft without gaining the attention of the other man, though his Ranger-honed stealth didn’t play a factor. An elephant could’ve stomped into the place and Sandburg wouldn’t have noticed.

He was gyrating around the living room in his bare feet, his eyes closed, the hair that wasn’t restrained by the headphones bobbing and weaving like Muhammad Ali. As Jim watched, he plucked at the unseen guitar, his mouth working like Hendrix, then stuck out his pouty lips à la Mick Jagger.

Jim shut his own eyes and concentrated on picking up the sound leaking from the headphones. Santana; Jin-go-lo-ba, if he wasn’t mistaken. Blair was lost in the rhythm of the song now, his feet nimbly tapping out the beat as he danced like a man possessed.

Idly, Jim remembered the first time he’d seen Blair’s feet. It was one of the first mornings he’d spent in the loft, and he’d been making pancakes—pretty good ones, actually. Poised at the top of the stairs, Jim had zoned momentarily on the delicious scent, and picked an image to distract himself, settling oddly on the place where Sandburg’s naked feet intersected the tile of the kitchen. They were surprisingly well-formed—the feet, not the tile—but big for his body, as if there were a few drops of Hobbit blood in his family tree.

There was something comforting about those feet, Jim reflected. Something real. And after a week of chasing a ghost, he needed something real.

He pushed away the logical conclusion to that line of reasoning.

“Jim! Holy shit!” Blair’s eyes nearly popped out of his head and one hand clutched at his heart dramatically as he spotted Jim standing by the door. The younger man yanked off the headphones. “You scared the crap outta me!”

Jim countered with his best scowl. “Yeah, and I’m glad it was me and not the psycho who called the other night. Where’s the piece I gave you?” He’d given Blair his backup gun on Sunday, which the other man had accepted without comment. Technically, he wouldn’t have his permit to carry until he graduated, but Jim didn’t really give a shit, and neither of them bothered to bring it up.

“It’s in my nightstand drawer,” Blair answered, a little defensively. “You really think we have to be worried about this asshole at five-thirty in the afternoon?”

“It’s dark,” Jim growled, stalking toward the windows. “That’s all the opportunity he might need.”

Behind him, Sandburg huffed out a breath. “Yeah, okay, I’m sorry, I forgot we were still at Def Con Four here.”

Jim stopped in front of the doors to the balcony, hands reaching out to finger the new, heavy curtains he’d installed Tuesday.

Damn. It wasn’t Blair’s fault this whole thing had blown him sideways, made him remember how cranky and bitter and scared he was deep in his gut. He turned back around. “Sandburg…” he began, then hesitated when he saw the look on the other man’s face.

Right. Blair, not Sandburg. He willed himself to speak, but as usual was too late.

“My night to cook, right?” Blair said, voice flat. “I’ll get started.” But before he headed for the kitchen, Blair paused, a sudden, fragile smile blooming on his too-open face.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey what?”

“I just realized—five-thirty. You haven’t been home before eight all week.”

Jim kept his expression as neutral as possible while he scrambled for an explanation. He’d hoped Sandburg wouldn’t notice the late nights he’d been putting in the last few days, but apparently he had. The reasons were complex, but cowardice had played a large part. Tonight, Simon had finally sent him home early after privately telling him he was becoming a major pain in the ass.

Choosing bluster over honesty, he griped, “Yeah, I’ve been busy looking for the guy who wants to kill us. Any objections?”

Blair’s face fell like a ton of bricks. “No, no objections,” he said softly, turning away.

Feeling like a complete and utter bastard, Jim stood motionless, eyes scanning the apartments across the street for signs of activity. As a guilty pleasure, he listened to Blair’s feet as they padded across the floor.

“Jeez, that tile’s cold!”

Jim’s gaze shifted from window to distant window as each passed his rigorous inspection. Clear…clear…clear…

Shit.

He snapped back to awareness at the clanging sound of a pan hitting the stove. When he turned around, Sandburg’s feet were encased in a pair of thick wool work socks.

He shoved away the feeling of disappointment as he crossed the living room, heading for the stairs.

Blair came instantly awake when he registered a soft noise coming from above him. A couple of years ago, he’d have startled awake, arms and legs tangling in the sheets as he tried to free himself. Now, he lay stock still, listening intently.

Another soft thump, and a low sound that could be Jim’s voice.

Oh, boy.

Without thinking, Blair stretched out and smoothly slid out the drawer of his nightstand. He flung the blankets off his body with one hand, while the other retrieved the revolver Jim had given him. The dull gunmetal glowed in the faint light seeping through the French doors.

Okay. Slow, and silent. Or as silent as you can be.

He opened the door cautiously, wincing as the hinge squeaked faintly. A peek through the crack he made revealed no activity, so he opened it further, just enough to squeeze through. Holding the gun in the two-handed grip he’d demonstrated on his exam yesterday, he inspected the quiet living room and kitchen.

Another groan—definitely a groan—from upstairs had his heart hammering triple-time. Blair stayed flattened against the lower wall as long as he could, then leapt out beside the stairs, the gun angled upwards.

Nothing.

Blair felt relief wash over him as the odds suddenly tipped toward “bad nightmare” and away from “crazed gay-bashing killer.” Staying on full alert nevertheless, he climbed the stairs steadily, watching and listening for any signs of movement.

When he reached the top of the stairs, he lowered the .38 and breathed out a brief prayer of thanks.

Jim was the only occupant of the bedroom, though he was tangled up in his sheets and blankets more thoroughly than a mummy. As Blair watched, his body jerked as if electroshocked. In the next moment, he threw back his head and shouted out to the night.

“Blair!”

The younger man nearly dropped the gun at the shock of that—no, not the word itself, but the undertones of pain and fear and rage woven into that syllable. Before he knew it, he had laid the gun gingerly on the floor and was kneeling beside the bed.

“Jim, wake up,” he murmured, one hand reaching up to touch a trembling shoulder. He made contact—

—and Jim’s own hands shot out to wrap around Blair’s throat.

“Jim. Let. Go,” Blair croaked.

Jim’s eyes snapped open at that, and with his own dimming vision Blair could make out the dilation in the Sentinel’s pupils. His hands released their grip immediately as he returned to full awareness.

“Jesus, Blair, Jesus,” he breathed. “I’m sorry, did I hurt—”

Blair tested his neck muscles with a brief roll. Both men winced as one of his vertebrae gave a sharp crack. “S’okay,” Blair assured him. “It’s nothing a good chiropractor can’t fix.”

“Fuck,” Jim spat, only now realizing his predicament. He sat up with difficulty and began tugging savagely at the bedding that confined his legs. “How did I—”

“Here, you’re making it worse,” Blair murmured, turning on the bedside lamp and settling on the edge of the mattress. “Let me.”

“Sandburg, I can—” Jim husked, but was silenced by the younger man’s piercing glare. He sighed and leaned back while Blair untangled him with brisk efficiency.

When he was done, Blair turned back to the other man. Jim's blue eyes were still haunted by the shadows he'd just seen. “Now, what was that about?” Blair asked softly. When Jim hesitated, he shoved him gently with an elbow. “Tell Auntie Blair.”

Jim shook his head, his gaze fixed on a faraway point. “Just a nightmare,” he said.

A surprising anger welled in Blair, and before he could suppress it, it burst forth. “Dammit, Jim,” he growled.

Jim’s gaze, open and raw, locked with Blair’s. “You were dead,” he said flatly.

Blair sucked in a startled breath.

Jim shook his head again. “And there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.” His voice dropped to a whisper, and his eyes seemed to look right through the other man. “Pale. You were so—” His jaw clenched and he scrubbed a hand over his face.

“Okay, okay,” Blair soothed, already having heard more than he wanted to hear. His hand, he realized, was now stroking slowly over Jim’s bare shoulder and upper arm. Under his fingers, he felt Jim’s taut muscles relax.

“Listen,” Blair murmured, “I want to get in on this investigation.”

Jim’s biceps tightened again. “Your new semester starts Monday.”

“Yeah, and apart from the combat, it’s going to be a breeze, just like the first one. I can handle both and you know it.”

The bigger man shifted on the bed, away from Blair’s calming hand. “I’ve got it covered.”

Blair resisted the urge to do a little throttling of his own. “You don’t have it covered, Jim; that’s just my point. This thing is eating you up, can’t you see that? Blackout curtains on the goddamned windows, long days, nightmares—”

“The nightmare wasn’t about that,” Jim snapped.

Blair frowned, confused. “What do you mean? You’re not dreaming this guy kills me?”

“No,” Jim rasped.

“Then who? Who’s responsible?”

Jim’s tortured gaze lifted to Blair’s face. “I am.”

Blair’s heart did a backflip. “You—what the hell are you talking about?”

Jim hesitated as though gathering himself for a deep dive, then released the words in a rush. “It’s the same nightmare I’ve been having since Alex Barnes first came to Cascade. It’s night, I’m in the jungle, and I see a wolf. I take out one of my arrows and shoot; the wolf falls, and when I come closer…it changes. Into you.”

Holy sweet mother of Astarte’s tits. “I, jeez, Jim, that’s…” Blair frowned, finally pulling everything together. “Wait a minute. You’ve been having this nightmare since…since May?”

Jim started to pull those walls around him. “Off and on.”

“My God,” Blair breathed. “But how come I never noticed before tonight?”

Jim shrugged. “This one was worse.”

“Worse how?”

Jim shook his head, more a childish I’m-not-telling than a negation.

“Jim,” Blair insisted. “How was it different?”

This time, when Jim looked at him, Blair could see the walls crumble, stone by stone, and he got one of those rare, cherished glimpses of the man inside the fortress.

It scared the bejesus out of him.

“The nightmare wasn’t different,” Jim growled, his voice hoarse and frayed. “I’m different.”

And before Blair could figure out what that meant, Jim was kissing him stupid again.

This was a bad idea.

But God help him, he couldn’t make himself stop.

Jim felt Blair’s whole body shudder against him as Jim hauled him close and kissed him, rough and hard. To be honest, he’d been running on adrenaline all week, and the reoccurrence of the nightmare after over a month of peaceful dreams had been the final straw. Every time it’d happened in the past, he’d had to get up and go downstairs to reassure himself that the other man was still whole, still breathing. To wake up and find him right there, alive and well, was more than his overloaded nervous system could guard against, especially after last Saturday.

Last Saturday—Christ. He’d thought about that kiss all week, about the way Blair had responded. Just like everything else they shared, the kid gave as good as he got. When he’d used the lessons Jim had taught him to gain the upper hand, Jim had almost come in his jeans. Blair might be smaller, but he was surprisingly strong, and unbelievably smart, and a damn sight tougher than he looked.

Jim wrapped an arm around Blair’s back, pulling him closer, and the younger man followed his lead, struggling until he was stretched out beside him on the mattress, his legs tangling with Jim’s. Moaning, Blair deepened the kiss, his tongue plunging lewdly into the depths of Jim’s mouth. Jim countered by pulling back slightly so that he could nip at the other man’s full lower lip. When that move earned him a soft groan, Jim soothed the same spot with the tip of his tongue.

God, Blair’s mouth was more addictive than Golden and twice as dangerous. When Jim had first laid eyes on him, he’d noticed the mouth, simply because it was one of the kid’s more striking attributes. Women paid plastic surgeons big bucks to get themselves lips like that. But if you’d told him then that one day he’d be trying to eat them off Blair’s face, he’d have laughed his ass off.

Who’s laughing now, Ellison?

His hand slid from Blair’s back, since the other man was now eagerly pressing against him without his help, and trailed around to his front, where it slid under the rumpled long-sleeved shirt Blair had obviously been sleeping in. He felt a little jolt of strangeness as he registered the feel of dense hair under his palm, but soldiered on gamely, pulling away slightly so he could run that hand up his chest. When his fingertips skated over a nipple, Blair broke away from him, panting harshly.

“No ring?” Jim murmured, the sound of his own voice unnaturally loud in his ears.

“No,” Blair managed between pants. “Though if I’d known we were going to be doing this, I would’ve, ah—oh!” Blair’s body jerked convulsively as Jim scratched the nub with a nail.

“You like that?” Jim whispered.

“‘Like’ isn’t the word, man,” Blair breathed, surging forward to attack Jim’s mouth with ardent, if slightly sloppy, passion. Jim’s hand moved blindly to undo the buttons on Blair's shirt, then splayed across Blair’s newly exposed chest, absorbing the cacophonous beat of his heart.

Alive. Alive. Alive.

Blair twisted against him, one hand pushing at his shoulder, and the next thing Jim knew, he was flat on his back, the younger man straddling his belly. Curly, fragrant hair tumbled around Jim’s face, enveloping him; with a growl, he plunged his hands into that unruly mane, one hand collecting it and holding it against Blair’s nape. The other man gazed down at him with wide, dilated blue eyes, his lips swollen with kisses, his chin raw with beard burn.

Beautiful, Jim thought, and the realization startled him, made heat and pressure collect in his chest.

What were they doing? What in God’s name was this?

As if reading his thoughts, Blair stroked Jim’s face and neck with his fingertips before kissing him again, this time with a breathtaking gentleness. “Don’t,” he murmured.

“Don’t what?”

“You know what,” Blair countered, teeth grazing Jim’s jawline.

“We should talk about it,” Jim said, planting small, absent kisses on whatever part of Blair’s face was easily accessible.

Blair’s incredible mouth hovered over Jim’s again, open and teasing. “Yeah,” he agreed. “We should.”

“Mmm,” Jim said, having completely forgotten the topic of conversation. The hand holding Blair’s hair captive gripped the back of his neck and pulled him down for another deep kiss that left them both gasping.

After a few moments’ recovery, Blair drawled, “If I’d known you could kiss like this, I would’ve jumped you a lot sooner.”

“I didn’t know I could kiss like this either,” Jim murmured, pausing to suck strongly on Blair’s lower lip. “I must be inspired.”

Blair’s low chuckle went straight to Jim’s groin. “I’m inspirational, huh?” he asked, returning the favor to Jim’s lower lip. “Cool.”

Then Blair shifted, and Jim felt something hard press into his lower belly.

Jesus God.

He looked up and was caught by Blair’s gaze. There was lust and need there, but there was also understanding, concern, and a few other ingredients Jim was too afraid to catalogue at this moment.

Breaking Jim’s hold on his neck, Blair levered himself to a sitting position, being careful not to rest his full weight on Jim’s stomach. From his new vantage point, Jim could see him scoping out the terrain, his gaze sweeping over Jim’s chest, arms and shoulders. Jim felt a blush steal over his skin at the scrutiny.

“You gonna stare at me all night?” he said irritably, after a few seconds.

Blair started as though he’d been doing a little zoning of his own. “I might,” he returned smoothly. “I’m a pretty visual guy.” Then a small smile curled those bruised lips, and Jim bit back a groan. “Or I might experiment with some of the other senses.” This time Jim did groan as Blair’s left hand brushed over his chest.

“Christ, Jim,” Blair breathed, taking his hand away. “You dialed up?”

Awash in sensation, Jim could only gasp, “I don’t know.” He closed his eyes and tried to even out his breathing.

“Should I stop?” Blair asked, worry in his voice, and for some reason hearing that emotion pumped Jim up more than anything they’d done so far tonight. It was odd, for him to feel…well, cherished, cared for…in bed. Not that the women he’d been with had lacked the capacity, but he’d always felt it was up to him to do the cherishing. Deep down, he had an old-fashioned attitude toward his role as a man, the attitude that he was ultimately responsible for everything that happened—or didn’t happen—in the bedroom. A woman’s satisfaction was, among other things, a duty to him.

Now, his duty had gone out the window, because Blair had been cherishing and caring for him since day one, and he thought he’d allowed it because he didn’t have a choice if he wanted to stay sane. But here they were, in bed together, and suddenly Jim realized he’d grown accustomed to that feeling, gotten to the point where he needed it, craved it.

You’re vulnerable. You’re weak. Voices shouted in his head: his DI back in Basic, his high school football coach, his dad.

Jim shook his head to clear it. No. That’s not what this is. It’s not like that.

“Jim?” Hands stroked over his face. “Talk to me, will you?”

Blindly, not allowing himself to think, Jim turned into one of those hands and kissed the fingers. Above him, he could hear Blair’s soft intake of breath. The fingers traced his mouth reverently; Jim parted his lips, and they slipped inside.

Blair groaned his name as Jim’s tongue swirled around the pad of his index finger, the whorls and swirls of Blair’s fingerprint rough against his taste buds. Meanwhile, Jim’s hands began pushing the open shirt off Blair's shoulders. With a reluctant sigh, Blair pulled his fingers from Jim’s mouth so that he could free his arms from the sleeves. When Jim heard the shirt land on the floor beside the bed, he opened his eyes.

Blair stared down at him, hair even crazier than usual, hands fisting and releasing restlessly on his thighs, chest heaving, eyes shadowed and wild.

Jim’s gaze slipped lower, and registered the noticeable bulge in the gray sweatpants the other man wore. He licked suddenly dry lips. “You okay?” he rasped, one hand settling in the thatch of hair covering Blair’s left pec.

Blair laughed, a machine-gun burst. “I’m scared shitless,” he confessed, placing his own hand over Jim’s. “How about you?”

Ignoring the voices clamoring for his attention, Jim smiled up at him. “Pretty much the same,” he admitted.

As Jim watched and listened, Blair’s breathing evened, his heartbeat calmed.

“Well, hell,” Blair breathed, “I guess I’m okay, then.” And leaning forward, he captured Jim’s mouth in a hard, bruising kiss that silenced Jim’s doubts.

With a feral growl, Jim pulled the other man tight against him and rolled them, pinning Blair’s lithe body under his. The younger man gasped and shuddered as Jim licked and sucked his way down Blair’s neck, over his collarbone. When his tongue flicked out to taste a nipple, Blair arched and shouted.

Jesus, the kid wasn’t even a Sentinel, yet he was so incredibly responsive. But then, Blair rarely held anything back, so it wasn’t surprising that he would make a gift of his body like this, just open himself up and let Jim see everything.

His hand strayed to the waistband of Blair’s track pants. Blair gasped and clenched his jaw when Jim slid one fingertip under the elastic.

“Can I?” Jim demanded, voice rough. “Blair, can I?”

“Fuck, yes,” Blair gritted, squirming under Jim’s hands.

Gingerly, Jim eased the pants down, careful of Blair’s arousal. The scent of pheromones and Blair struck him like a two-by-four, but he didn’t stop until he’d finished his task. Crawling back up Blair’s body, he was startled—well, that he wasn’t more startled. The kid might have long hair and a mouth most women would kill for, but nothing about that body was the least bit feminine. Nevertheless, there was no getting around the fact he was hard enough to cut diamonds, and it was all thanks to one hairy anthropologist.

Deciding he’d worry about the implications of that later, Jim kissed him softly, then pulled back so that he could watch Blair’s reactions. He reached down, and without giving him any warning, experimentally trailed one finger up the underside of Blair’s thick erection.

“Oh, God!” Blair shouted. He stiffened as if shot, his hands scrabbled against Jim’s back and yanked him down, and then Jim almost had a heart attack as he felt Blair Sandburg come in four quick spurts against his belly.

“Oh, God, oh, fuck, sorry, sorry, sorry,” Blair was chanting as he trembled, still wracked by aftershocks. “It was your eyes, man, your eyes, your eyes—”

“Shhh,” Jim whispered, silencing him with reassuring kisses. “It’s okay, everything’s okay,” he added, even though his body informed him that everything was most definitely Not Okay. His nostrils were full of the astonishing scent of Blair’s come, his own arousal was practically vibrating with need, and his emotions had just spiked off the goddamned charts.

Blair began to struggle beneath him, and Jim rolled obligingly to the side. He closed his eyes and tried to regain some sort of equilibrium as Blair grabbed a few tissues from the nightstand and did a quick cleanup job on himself.

When he felt the tissues gently swabbing his own belly, those pesky feelings crept up behind him and walloped him all over again. His hand shot out to still Blair’s. “I’ve got it, Chief,” he said.

“But it’s my…uh, fault,” Blair protested lamely. Wrestling his hand free, he accidentally brushed Jim’s still-very-much-interested arousal. Jim’s eyes flew open and he groaned.

Blair’s eyes sparked with mischief. “On second thought…” he drawled, scrambling up onto his knees and surveying the length of Jim’s body, “maybe I could find something else to occupy my hands.” And before Jim could think of a smart-assed retort, Blair had taken his palm and pressed it to the front of Jim’s boxers.

Tissues abruptly forgotten, Jim’s world narrowed to the rhythm of that strong, sure hand. His own hips responded, lifting to meet each stroke as the sensations took him higher and higher. Nearing the precipice, Jim looked up at Blair pleadingly, his need and the honesty of Blair’s earlier display making him reckless. As if reading his mind, Blair leaned over him and gave him his mouth to shout into as he flung Jim off the cliff.

Heart jackhammering in his chest, Jim felt every ounce of strength leave his body as he oozed boneless onto the mattress. Dimly, he registered the light going off, then felt Blair snuggle up beside him, settling into the crook of his arm as though it were something he did every night.

“Blair,” he murmured when he could trust his voice again, “what the hell did we just do?”

His only answer was a soft snore, and the even, reassuring beat of Blair’s heart.

Blair was dreaming of the jungle.

He was in one of those semi-aware fugue states where the dreamer’s mind is capable of making pithy comments about the dream itself. Nothing profound, just odd observations such as What the hell? or Is that even anatomically possible? Strangely enough, these editorial asides never seemed to interrupt the dream or move him to wakefulness.

For instance, there was the inevitable question of what a timber wolf was doing in the Peruvian rainforest. Blair asked the question, but the wolf just kept on truckin’, weaving effortlessly through the undergrowth as though it belonged there. He—the wolf—whatever—was headed toward some destination that was clear to the animal but not yet revealed to him.

And then he saw the black jaguar standing on the stone altar, and he thought, Well, duh. Of course it’s all about sex.

The thing was, he’d never been a fan of bestiality, so he wasn’t keen to know what happened next. Reluctantly, he bore witness as the wolf approached the altar, then sniffed at the big cat with predatory interest. Emitting a low, piteous yowl, the jaguar flopped down onto its side, exposing its belly—

Okay, definitely weird—

—and then lay there, a willing sacrifice, as the wolf proceeded to tear out its throat.

“Holy fuck!” Blair sat bolt upright in bed, every nerve ending shorted out, his body shivering in terror. He stared about him wildly, taking in his surroundings. Sunlight streaming through the skylights above his head. Big bed; Jim’s bed.

Currently empty of Jim.

Memories of the previous night flooded his consciousness, filling the vacuum left by the dream. Another shiver ran through him, but there was an entirely different emotion behind it.

Well, no, actually; it was still terror. Terror mixed with lust, though.

If he’d ever bothered to contemplate the topic, he would’ve guessed that Jim was fairly intense in bed, with or without the super senses. But even if he’d spent weeks on end theorizing on the Ellison Love Machine, the raw, elemental power of the experience would have eluded him completely. Feeling all that muscle and skin and bone and heart under your control was incredible enough. Holding onto it as it came apart under your hands was—shattering.

As his heart rate returned to normal, Blair registered the sound of running water. Jim was taking a shower.

Jim. Shower. Water. Wet. Naked.

Blair shook his head to clear it. Since when had he morphed into one of the guys from Quest for Fire? This newly-discovered caveman side to him was hard to stuff back in the id box even in the cold light of morning.

Blowing out a breath, Blair swung his legs over the edge of the bed and padded over to the chair against the wall, where Jim had folded his track pants and shirt and left them on the seat. This time, the thought of his partner’s obsessive neatness only brought a surge of affection. Donning the sweats hastily, he padded down the stairs and over to the bathroom door, then raised his hand to knock.

And stopped. What the hell was he doing? He’d never interrupted Jim in the shower before; did one night of—of whatever the hell that had been—give him the right to invade the man’s privacy? What did it entitle him to, exactly? Jim wasn’t exactly an easy guy to navigate; there were plenty of hidden booby traps built into those sturdy defences. Walk the wrong path to the target, and—kaboom.

And then he remembered the look on Jim’s face as the older man lay there and—God, just watched him come, and he realized he didn’t give a damn how many explosions he had to survive for a chance to be looked at like that again.

Blair rested his head against the closed door. Man, he was so far gone it wasn’t even funny.

“You okay, Chief?”

Blair started at the sound of the gruff question coming from inside the bathroom. Hell. In his fugue state he'd momentarily forgotten Jim could pick out the sounds of his breathing, of his heartbeat, knew how close he was, always.

The thought warmed him and frightened him at the same time.

“Yeah, I’m fine. You, ah, you gonna be a while?”

There was a pregnant silence, then: “Almost done.”

“‘Kay. Want coffee?”

“Sure.”

And that was that. Blair shoved off from the door and ambled to the kitchen, where he watched his hands go through the morning ritual. Filter, fine grind Kenyan, spoon, water, hit the switch, done. A pang of hunger arrowed through his gut at the scent of the coffee, and he placated it with a glass of OJ, which when swished and gargled like Listerine was also useful for dispelling the worst of the morning breath.

Now what? Feeling as though every one of his highly developed and expensively educated brain cells had deserted him, he looked down at his state of dishabille and decided it behooved him to put on something that at least smelled clean. No doubt he reeked, but a cleanup in the kitchen sink was out of the question.

He’d almost made it to the safety of his bedroom when he heard the bathroom door opening. Helpless to do anything but stare, he leaned back against a pillar for support as Jim emerged accompanied by a cloud of fragrant steam, like one of the gods descending Olympus for a little nookie with a fortunate mortal.

Jim was wearing a small towel wrapped tightly around his narrow waist, and Blair swore he must’ve borrowed some of those senses, because even from several feet away he could count every drop of water still clinging to Jim’s skin. There were eight, and Blair wanted to lick them all off. One by one.

“Uh,” he said intelligently, when Jim seemed inclined to just stand there, looking several astral planes beyond perfect, “coffee should be ready—soon.”

Jim blinked. “Yeah. That’s—good.” He took a step forward, toward Blair, then stopped.

That was when Blair finally registered the look on the other man’s face.

Uncertainty. Apprehension. Maybe—dare he hope—a bit of desire mixed in with it?

Jim took another, surer step, and this close Blair could tell Jim’s eyes were doing a little appreciating of their own. Blair felt a flush spread over his chest, up his neck, everywhere Jim’s gaze touched down.

Then he treated Blair to one of those open, vulnerable little-boy smiles. It was gone in a flash, but that didn’t stop Blair’s internal organs from melting together into one big, inconvenient puddle.

“Jim—” he began, then cut himself off when he realized he didn’t have a clue what to say next.

That crease between Jim’s eyebrows deepened. “Yeah?”

Blair tried for a smile, shook his head. Tell me, he pleaded silently. Tell me what the hell to say to you. “I feel like I’m in the Three Bears’ house,” he blurted.

The crease deepened further. “What—”

Blair threw up his hands. “You know. Too hot, too cold, just right? How do I find the middle ground without scaring you off or disappointing you?”

The frown eased infinitesimally. “Say what you think,” Jim said gruffly.

“What I think?” Blair chuckled. “I think this is crazy. How about what I feel? You want to hear that one?”

Jim assumed the air of a man in front of a firing squad. “Sure.”

“I feel too hot, too cold, just right,” Blair whispered. “Everything. God, Jim—” because the other man was coming closer, slowly, as if he were being pulled by some invisible string, as if he didn’t want to come but didn’t have any more control over his actions than a puppet.

Jim’s hand shook as it grabbed a fistful of Blair’s hair, belying the smartass smirk on his face. “You don’t look much like Goldilocks,” he drawled, and his fingers were sinking deeper, sliding against Blair’s skull, and Blair’s brain started packing its bags for a long vacation.

“Don’t—I must stink—” he croaked out.

And then Jim leaned in and pressed his nose right up against Blair’s neck, and he inhaled deeply.

Okay, that was it, final call for the flight to Fiji, and Blair’s cerebellum was handing over its boarding pass. He groaned aloud and tipped his head back, inviting further exploration.

And then he heard Jim murmur into his jugular, “Yeah, you do kinda stink.”

He pulled back and patted Blair’s cheeks. The ones on his face.

Brainless, Blair sagged back against the pillar. “Wha—”

Jim grinned.

“You—b—bastard!” Blair spluttered, lunging forward.

Iron hands caught him by the shoulders and held on.

“Hot and cold, Chief,” Jim said calmly, but this time there was no mischief in his expression, just honest, raw emotion, and the pit of Blair’s stomach joined his brain.

Jim lowered his head until his mouth was brushing Blair’s.

“Just right,” Jim whispered, and kissed him.

Oh hell yeah, Blair agreed, wrapping his arms around that solid, damp body and hanging on for dear life. Jim’s lips teased his, tasting, sampling, suckling. It hadn’t escaped him last night that Jim really seemed to enjoy kissing him; luckily for Blair, this appeared to have the makings of a lasting obsession.

After an eternity, Jim released his mouth, wandering west to bite and nibble at Blair’s earlobe. Then his tongue began trailing a path eastward again—

“Ow!” Jim recoiled as if he’d been shocked.

“What’s wrong?” Blair asked, pleased he could still string at least two words together.

“That’s, ah, some stubble you’ve got there, sweetcheeks,” Jim said, that smartass smile in full force once again.

Blair grinned back. “What can I say? I’m a manly man, bursting with testosterone.”

“Uh huh.” Jim yanked playfully on a strand of hair. “I noticed.”

Grabbing Jim’s hand, Blair tugged it lower. He had the satisfaction of seeing Jim’s eyes widen as he pressed the older man’s hand to his now rather obvious erection. “Notice this, Ellison,” he growled.

Just like that, Blair was flattened up against the pillar, and six-foot-some of horny cop was grinding into him. He wasn’t sure who reached for whom, but once they were kissing again Blair didn’t much care who started it. His hands glided lower, down the muscled back until they were stopped by the barrier of the towel.

What the hell, Blair thought, sliding his right hand around to Jim’s side and working the knot free.

The other man responded with a surprised grunt into Blair’s mouth. Undaunted, Blair continued his explorations, pausing to caress the astonishingly smooth skin of Jim’s hip before arriving at his final destination. He experienced a brief moment of heretofore-straight-guy panic as it hit him that this would be his first time touching a dick that didn’t belong to him. There was an accompanying jolt when if further occurred to him that given their relative proportions, chances were that Jim was more gifted in that department. Not that he was lacking, you understand; only that—

—just do it already, for the love of—

Laying his misgivings firmly aside, Blair finally made contact. Okay. Definitely bigger, but not by much. The same heat and hardness, the same silky feel, and if he wasn’t mistaken they were both cut, so the mechanics were—

Jim broke away from the kiss and threw his head back, gasping as though emerging from deep water. “Jesus, Blair—”

Without pausing to think about it, Blair took advantage of the bigger man’s moment of weakness by shoving off from the pillar and pushing him backward until he was pressed up against the kitchen island. “Yeah?” Blair asked, painting on his—no pun intended—cockiest smile. His hand wrapped around Jim’s length and began a ragged but ruthless rhythm. After a few successful strokes, he risked a glance down.

Wow. That was—his hand. His hand on—

Jim groaned again, and his own hands left Blair’s body so that he could grip the edge of the countertop for support. “You’re—shit, the coffee’s gonna get stale—” he ground out, trying for a matching cockiness and failing miserably, because he was on the edge of coming, and man, that was definitely a good look for him.

Blair’s right hand gained speed, while the left wandered up to pinch a nipple. Jim shuddered like Dorothy’s house in the tornado, and Blair grinned at the thought that at least some of the geography was familiar.

Leaning as close to Jim’s ear as he could get, he growled, “Fuck the coffee.”

“Oh, Christ,” Jim gasped, and came all over Blair’s still-moving hand.

It took Blair a few seconds, but it finally struck him that he’d just given Jim Ellison a hand job before the poor bastard even had a chance to drink any of his morning Kenyan roast. Standing up. In the middle of the apartment.

On the up side, Jim certainly didn’t seem to mind, judging from the way he leaned in and kissed Blair once he’d stopped hyperventilating. It was deep and sloppy and unexpectedly sweet, and something inside him rolled over and stuck its paws up in the air.

Right. That pesky wolf.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Jim managed, resting his forehead against Blair’s.

Blair released Jim’s dick, giving it a final pat before wiping his hand on his sweats. “Hey, when I start a new project, I’m nothing if not enthusiastic,” he drawled.

Jim pulled back and frowned at him. “New project?”

Oh shit, Blair groaned inwardly. Way to kill the mood, Sandburg. “That’s not what I meant—it’s only that—well, I mean, this is new territory for me. I’ve never—” he waved a hand lamely between them “—with a guy.”

“Yeah,” Jim said, looking away. “I hear that.”

Blair chuckled. “Oh, man, do not make me think of Naomi at a time like this.” Before Jim could pull one of his patented disappearing acts, he closed the distance between them and pressed their groins together, letting Jim feel his erection. “‘Cause this will not survive extended reference to my mother.”

Jim still wasn’t looking at him. “Can’t have that, now can we?” he muttered, and inside Blair’s brain the puzzle pieces came together with an audible clunk.

“Hey, look at me,” he ordered. Jim’s lips thinned but he obeyed. “What do you think this is? More to the point, what do you think I think this is?”

Jim shook his head. “Sorry, that’s too much psychology for a Saturday morning.”

Blair ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I’m not sure what the hell we’re doing here, Jim, but if you’re thinking I’m going to go in there and notch my bedpost—” Suddenly angry, he stepped back a pace, putting cold air between them. “Jesus, do you even know how much you mean to me? Do you even get it after all this time?”

Jim blinked and remained silent. Blair resisted the urge to pummel him senseless. “Okay,” he breathed. “This has been a pretty intense few hours, here, and maybe we need some time to process. It’s not like this has to be figured out in the next five seconds, right? You go ahead and have your coffee, and I’ll go in there—” he pointed at the bathroom “—and whack off in the shower.”

Jim’s features softened slightly. “Blair—”

“What?”

The older man’s cheeks reddened as he gestured at Blair’s sweats. “I can—”

Blair shook his head. This beautiful, buff man was standing there naked, less than five minutes after a mind-blowing orgasm, and an oblique reference to sex was making him blush. How could you stay mad at a guy like that?

Aloud, he sighed, “No reciprocation necessary, man. This wasn’t about that. And it never will be. I don’t get a lot about what’s happening with us, but I know that much.”

And before Jim could think of anything else to say, Blair had escaped into the safety of the bathroom and closed the door behind him. He knew from experience that the other man wouldn’t try to invade his privacy.

Carolyn had always been too much of a lady to call him a prick.

Too bad. Maybe if she had, he would’ve gotten a clue sooner than this.

Do you even know how much you mean to me? Do you even get it after all this time?

“No, Chief,” Jim breathed into the silence of the empty elevator, “I don’t have a goddamned clue.”

The doors opened and he stepped into the hallway outside Major Crimes, feeling like he had I am the worst kind of bastard tattooed across his forehead. He’d cleaned himself up in the kitchen sink, dressed and run out of the apartment as fast as his coward’s legs would carry him—again. This was getting to be a bad habit, one he’d have to remedy as soon as he got himself outfitted with a new personality.

For a moment, he debated calling Bellini, then vetoed it. That would be great—having a conversation about his sexual orientation crisis in the middle of the bullpen. Even if Bellini agreed to meet him, and he knew he would, he didn’t think the man would be able to tell him anything Jim couldn’t figure out for himself.

Hey Doc, just thought I’d let you know Blair and I rubbed each other off, and it was about the hottest sex I’ve ever had. Problem is, if we ever do anything more than that, I think the top of my head will go sailing across the room.

But God help me, I want more. He held up a hand, his Sentinel vision easily discerning the tremor in the fingers. Look at that, for Christ’s sake. All I have to do is think about him, and I start shaking like an addict craving his next fix.

Bellini’s mellow voice spoke in his head. That’s fascinating, Jim. Why don’t you tell me what you think that means.

“I think it means I’m royally fucked,” Jim muttered under his breath, reaching for the door to the bullpen.

“Talking to yourself is the first sign of an unstable mind.”

Jim started at the sound of Megan Connor’s annoyingly chipper voice coming from directly behind him. Tossing a glare at her over his shoulder, he bit out, “I wasn’t aware you were a practicing shrink, Connor.”

The woman smirked and shrugged her shoulders. “Call me a student of human nature.”

“I’ll call you a—”

“Careful, Jimbo,” she said, chuckling, then sobered. “Seriously, what are you doing here? You don’t have a shift today, remember?”

Momentarily caught off-guard, Jim schooled his features to his best stony mask look. “Yeah, well, I wanted to see if Rafe had found anything last night…”

“About your caller?” She shook her head. “That trail’s gone cold, I’m afraid.”

“Glad to have your expert opinion,” he growled, rounding the corner of his desk and settling himself into his chair. A feeling of safety instantly enveloped him. Maybe he could stay here for a few months. The chair wasn’t so uncomfortable, and if sleeping became a problem, he could always stretch out on one of the interrogation room tables. They were sturdy enough—

“Jim. Jim?”

“What?”

“Bloody hell, you need a tranquilizer dart this morning,” Megan huffed, plunking down in the seat next to him. Sandburg’s—Blair’s—seat. “You have a bad date last night or something?”

“What makes you say that?” he snapped.

Megan cocked her head and pursed her lips, then pointed at his neck. “Oh, I don’t know…maybe the massive love bite right…there?”

“Where? Oh, man!” Jim sprang to his feet, desperate to find a mirror. How could he have missed that? Unless Blair had marked him this morning—

“Gotcha,” Connor said softly.

Jim stared down at her. As realization dawned, his gaze must have turned more than a little murderous, because she blanched slightly and held up her hands in a placating gesture. “Just kidding?” she offered weakly.

Jim clenched his fists, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Again.

“I wish you’d go home,” Connor said, not unkindly. “Whatever’s got you trussed up like a Christmas goose, you need to take care of it before you can hope to do anything here.”

Jim opened his eyes, aware something akin to desperation must be showing in them. “I—” can’t go home, he almost said aloud. “No. It’s okay. I’m good.” He sat abruptly, earning a speculative frown from the woman beside him. “So, have we got anything new?”

Megan watched him for another moment before responding. “Actually, we do,” she admitted, leaning across to her own desk and plucking a file from the top. “Came in about an hour ago, though the last incident happened Thursday. It’s been kicking around the beat cops for a while, and someone finally noticed there might be a pattern, so they sent it up to us.”

Jim took the file from her and opened it. There was a series of black and white photos inside it, and he flipped through them slowly. "Assault victims?”

“Yeah,” Megan breathed. “They’re all male prostitutes from Southtown. Most of them pre-op transsexuals, though there are a few who aren’t.”

Jim flipped to the next photograph, showing a severely battered African-American woman, and scowled. “Oh, no.”

Megan glanced over her shoulder. “You know—her?”

“Yeah. Sam Washington—I guess by now she’d be Salome.”

“Good choice of name. I’d definitely go biblical.” Megan perused the report. “Says here she checked out of the hospital and disappeared. Bet she’s not the only one.”

Jim hadn’t even reached the bottom of the photos. “God. How many are there?”

“Twenty-two,” Megan said calmly.

Jim scanned the report. “The first one was over four months ago,” he said. “And they never saw a pattern before this?”

The woman shook her head. “You know how it is. It’s not uncommon for prossies to be the victims of violence. And when they’re men…”

Jim raised an eyebrow.

“Come on, Jim,” Megan said softly. “Don’t tell me things are different in the great democracy.”

Jim clenched his jaw. The only other person who knew all the details of what had gone down with Blair and Hardy was Simon, but even though he knew her comment was unintentionally ironic, his gut churned anyway. Aloud, he said, “Neither I nor any detective in this department ever treated a victim with anything less than the respect they deserve.”

“I’m not implying anything about this department. But not every cop has had the benefit of the sensitivity training. And from what I’ve seen in the report, that seems to be the problem with these cases.” She tapped the file with a fingernail. “No one is talking to us on this one. The police aren’t popular in Southtown to begin with, and these men come from a part of Southtown that most Southies won’t even go near. It’s a kind of demilitarized zone between Southtown and the gay village—”

“They call it Vaseline Alley.”

Megan’s eyebrows climbed skyward.

“Yeah, I’m familiar with it,” Jim said, his tone defensive. “I worked in Vice before I came to Major Crimes.”

“Right,” Megan murmured. “Your experience there is probably why this ended up in our laps, then. But I don’t think the case is going to be easy, even if you still have connections down there.”

Jim laid the file on his desk and sighed. “It never is.”

Blair wasn’t surprised to find Jim’s truck parked in the underground garage when he got to the police station around three in the afternoon. He’d been mad enough to spit nails when he emerged from the shower to find Jim gone, but after an hour-long run and a punishing session with the weights at the gym, he had to admit it was typical Jim behavior. He’d offered the guy space, and Jim’s interpretation of that was to put as much space between them as possible. Upon reflection, it was kind of surprising the other man hadn’t ended up in Canada.

You want this, you have to buy all the territory that comes with it, a nagging voice inside him shrilled.

Sighing, Blair leaned back against the wall of the elevator, ignoring the glance from the uniform sharing the car with him. It was all well and good to tell himself he knew better, that he was headed for trouble, that this could end up being a bigger disaster than the Johnstown Flood. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shut out the memory of Jim, open and wanting, needing Blair’s hands on him like he needed his next breath.

Man, the price of that territory might be sky-high, but the real estate was prime-fucking-grade-A, wasn’t it?

He grinned stupidly, marveling at the fact he was now an equal-opportunity pig. The uniform was staring at him openly now, obviously ignorant of the rules of Elevator Etiquette; Blair waved a hand at him, his grin continuing unabated. “Don’t mind me, man,” he said breezily. “Just got laid and feelin’ fine, you know?”

The guy pursed his lips in a disapproving gesture and turned back to the contemplation of the doors. God, some of these cops needed the pole removed from their asses—but that was true of most people, wasn’t it? You got used to traveling along one track, and after a while it never occurred to you to try a different route. He’d always made a point of changing trains whenever possible, but this new thing with Jim, coupled with the career change, added up to the biggest derailment of his life. It was shaking him up, sure, but ultimately it wasn’t such a departure from his normal pattern as he’d originally thought.

For Jim, though, this had to be a major deal. Blair might not fully understand the other man’s perspective, but he had to respect it. There had been hundreds of times over the course of his relationship with Jim that he’d had to weigh just how far to push, and when to pull back and retreat. He hadn’t always gotten it right, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. So what if he’d have to try harder with this? It was just a variation on a theme. He could do this.

The doors opened on the Major Crimes floor, and Blair nodded at the beat cop one last time before exiting, striding forward with a new confidence. Reaching the door of the bullpen, he pulled it open and walked through. Jim was sitting at his desk, his focus on the computer screen, but as soon as Blair walked through the door, the pale blue gaze rose and pinned him like a bug.

Blair froze. They both did, actually; the younger man catalogued Jim’s reactions one by one, as no doubt the Sentinel was for him. The difference was that while all Blair could do from eight feet away was read body language and expression, Jim could probably smell the samosa he ate for lunch.

He didn’t know if his choice of takeout was telling Jim anything, but Blair was getting zip from his perusal of the older man. It was like he’d been transformed into one of those stone statues outside the Moche temples. Silently, he willed the other man to smile, frown, yell, fucking do something.

When that didn’t work, he tried to get some reaction out of his own body. No luck there, either.

Suddenly Megan stepped in front of Jim’s desk, severing the connection between them. “I called over to the two-seven,” she said to Jim. “The guy who worked the last case isn’t on duty again until Monday night.” She paused. “Jim? You alive in there?” Then she turned, as if following the line of Jim’s gaze, and spotted Blair. “Oh, hi, Sandy,” she said, smiling. “What’re you doing here?”

Blair opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Megan frowned at him.

“I called him.” Jim rose to his feet and snagged his three-quarter coat off the rack in one smooth motion. “Figured he could help us out.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire, thought Blair, and as if Jim had just read his mind, he shot the younger man a warning glance over Megan’s shoulder.

“Uh, yeah. He, ah, called me,” Blair said. “But he didn’t fill me in on any of the details,” he added testily.

Jim waved a hand. “Connor, bring him up to speed, will you? The two of you can head over to the hospital and interview the latest victim while I check out some of my old contacts in Southtown.”

Blair’s brain tried to process several pieces of information at once. Latest victim. That meant whatever this was, it didn’t have anything to do with Hardy or the threatening call. The two of you.

The two of you. As in Blair and Megan, not Blair and Jim.

Jim was heading out alone.

Jim was coming closer. His body filled Blair’s vision, and Blair’s eyes raked from the top of Jim’s head, down the column of his neck, over the tense line of his shoulders…

His hands twitched with the urge to reach up and ease that tension away. He clenched them into fists instead.

“We’ll meet back here later and compare notes, okay?” Jim said, loud enough for Megan to hear, but there was something in his eyes that was just for Blair. In the couple of seconds before he brushed past, Blair read an apology mixed up with a jumble of other emotions he couldn’t begin to decipher.

That would have to be enough for now.

He could do this, he reminded himself. Turning toward Megan, he painted on his best professional-cop look. “So, what’s the scoop?”

Nothing. Fucking nothing.

After three hours scouring every dive and bath house in and around Vaseline Alley, Jim had come up empty-handed. He’d lost a lot of his best contacts down here—informants in this neighborhood were not exactly the most stable residents—and the few he’d been able to dig up were closed up tight. They’d seen nothing, they’d heard nothing, they knew nothing.

Darkness fell early this time of year, and the garish lights of the strip were making his head pound as he walked along, slightly hunched against the sharp wind that had sprung up in the last hour. The young hustlers were out already, shivering in their tank tops and cutoffs. Down near the corner, a queen in fishnet stockings was leaning into a Mustang, smiling and gesturing at the driver. After a few more moments, she opened the passenger door and climbed in. Another successful sale.

“Hey, sugar, you looking for someone special?”

Jim took in the sashay of slim hips and the scent of way too much cologne as the hustler walked up to him. Probably trans, but if she was, the transformation wasn’t complete, because Jim could discern a definite overlay of male hormones.

Or maybe that was just the leftovers of the last guy she’d been with.

“Yeah, actually, I am,” Jim admitted. “Salome.”

The carefully plucked brows knitted together. “What do you want with her?” Protective tone, almost fierce. Good. At least there was someone sticking up for her.

Jim smiled. “She’s an old friend.”

“Yeah? Well, I’ll pass on you were looking for her. What’s your name?”

“Jim.”

“Well, Jim, if she wants to see you, she’ll be here tomorrow night, same time. Okay?”

“Okay,” he returned, knowing he probably wouldn’t see either of them tomorrow night. Salome had been one of his best informants, but if she was a victim, he doubted even she’d be willing to come forward. Especially since there was a rotten smell to this whole thing, a smell that bugged the hell out of him. The street was too quiet, and there was an undercurrent of fear that hadn’t been here when he’d worked Vice.

Jim sighed and headed for the truck. He and fear were getting to be old buddies.

“Care to tell me what that was all about?”

Blair jerked the wheel of the Volvo at Megan’s unexpected question, nearly driving the car into a column of the hospital’s indoor parking garage. “What what was all about?” he asked, a sinking feeling hitting him in the solar plexus.

Megan sighed. “Back at the station, between you and Jim. You two have a quarrel?”

Blair chuckled. “When are we not quarrelling?” he shot back, trying to keep it light.

But Megan was too sharp for his attempt at diversion. “You know what I mean. He couldn’t get out of there fast enough when you showed up.”

“Yeah,” Blair acknowledged, before he could stop himself. He pulled into a spot and shut off the motor. “Look, ah, it’s not anything you have to worry about, okay? We’re sorting it out.”

“Fair enough,” Megan said, shrugging. “I just want you to know I’m willing to lend a sympathetic ear whenever either of you needs it.”

Blair winced, feeling like a heel. “I appreciate that, Megan. Thanks.” They exchanged friendly smiles, but Blair still breathed a sigh of relief when she turned away and opened the car door.

Upstairs, the nurse at the station led them to the room, and she made the introductions, which eased the way somewhat; obviously the victim, Lana Turner, had been well treated at the hospital. However, as soon as the nurse was gone, Lana’s bruised face twisted into a scowl.

“I got nothing to say to you,” she husked.

Blair pointed to a chair, waited for Lana’s slight nod before sitting in it. “I wish you would,” he said softly. “Because we’re committed to going after the guy who’s been doing this.”

“Guys,” Lana snorted.

“More than one?” Megan asked.

Lana shot her a dismissive glance. “Honey, I may be a woman trapped in a man’s body, but I can bench-press two hundred easy. You think one guy could do this to me?”

“Two hundred? You’ve got me beat,” Blair chuckled. “I just made it past a hundred.”

Lana pursed generous lips. “Keep working on it, chicken.”

Megan stepped forward. “If you can identify these men and agree to testify, we can offer you protection.”

Lana eyed Megan appraisingly. “I like your style,” she said, waving a hand to take in the Inspector’s green tailored suit and high heels. “It’s more rock star than cop chic, but everybody has to march to the beat of their own personal drummer.” She raised an eyebrow at Blair, then reached out to finger one of his curls. “And you are delicious enough to eat. If I didn’t have this broken leg, I’d offer you a freebie. The rock star could even watch.”

“I appreciate it,” Blair said smoothly. Digging one of Jim’s cards out of his wallet, he passed it over to Lana. “Listen, if you change your mind, we’re here for you.”

“To protect and serve, huh?” Lana murmured. “That’s what they all say.”

A chill climbed Blair’s spine at the words, and the meaningful look in Lana’s eyes as she spoke them.

Oh, man, he thought. Unless I’m out in left field, things just got a whole hell of a lot more complicated.