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Here's another 9,000 words. I'm trying to divide it in good places to stop :-) I've made a tag for it so it's easy to find all the parts.
"Two months on the streets and I shoot someone," Blair said, knowing he was being unreasonable and not caring. "You told me some officers put in their twenty years without shooting anyone, and I do it after two months."
He leaned back against the couch, noting with an irritable familiarity that with his hair short it didn't get caught between his shoulders and the furniture. He didn't want to notice that. He was bored with noticing that, but it didn't stop him doing it every single fucking time.
Jim sat down on the coffee table facing him and patted his knee reassuringly. "It's not like he's dead, Chief. You shot him in the arm."
"And the bullet shattered his shoulder and he'll never use that arm again."
"He'll never use it to fire a gun at an eight-year-old kid whose only crime was riding her bike on his yard and ruining his precious fucking grass," Jim said. "Blair, the guy was a nutcase, hopped up on drugs, seriously unstable; if you hadn't shot him his next bullet might have hit her."
"You," Blair muttered.
"What?"
Blair lifted his head and met Jim's gaze. "It might have hit you," he said, making it clear because sometimes you had to be honest or hate yourself in the morning. "Tanya was safe; she'd gotten out of the line of fire; he was aiming at you and that's why I shot him." He stared up at the distant ceiling of the loft. "And I was aiming for his heart, going for the kill. I just missed."
"Chief…" Jim murmured, sounding shaken. "That's not what you said in your report."
"Well, no," Blair said with a bitter sarcasm, dragging his gaze back to Jim with an effort. "It wasn't. Somehow, I thought putting it in black and white that when it comes to you I've got a protective streak a mile wide, and God help anyone who tried to hurt you, might be misunderstood."
Jim was gaping at him, thunderstruck and speechless, his throat working as he tried to swallow.
"And it doesn't matter that we don't do the deed; we're still fucked even if we're not fucking," Blair went on recklessly, flinging words against the silence, bullets against glass. "Because you matter more to me than anyone I'm supposed to be out there protecting and you always will and I'd never put anyone before you."
"Not even Tanya? Or any other kid, any other citizen?" Jim asked, his voice quiet enough that Blair had to concentrate to hear him.
Citizen. It was an oddly formal word to use, one Blair knew the history of and Jim most likely didn't because he didn't need to. Jim knew what it meant at a simpler level; people he was sworn to protect by profession, by nature, by choice. That was a good enough definition for him.
"I can give you the proper answer, the textbook one," Blair said tiredly. "I can even say honestly that I'd be willing to die myself to keep her safe -- anyone safe." He smiled, a crooked smile, one that bent his mouth in ways it didn't want to go. "I'm just not willing for you to do it."
"That's not your call."
"No. I know that. Doesn't change anything."
"Why? And don't give me crap about it being a shaman thing; a true shaman knows there's no greater honor, no better death, than to go out protecting the people of the tribe."
"It's nothing to do with the Sentinel thing." Blair sighed. "You're going to make me say it, aren't you? I love you. I fucking love you and you die and I'm lost. Man. I'm just --" he sliced his hand across the air. "I'm gone. You brought me back; I can't do that. You probably wouldn't let me, even if I knew how, and I don't know, don't have a fucking clue."
"I didn't know, either." Jim's face was flushed now, his eyes darkening. "And what, you think I've got some sort of death wish? You bring me back, you hear me, Sandburg?"
He could hear him; no trouble hearing Jim when he was yelling at him from a distance of about a foot.
"Okay," he said, the single, inadequate word all he had to offer.
Jim gave an incredulous snort and shook his head, repeating the word under his breath. "Sandburg, only you could make resurrection sound as mundane as getting takeout."
"Whatever," Blair mumbled, feeling exhausted. He closed his eyes. "I shot someone."
"This where I came in."
Jim's voice was amused now, relaxed. Blair wasn't sure whether to be grateful Jim had accepted his declaration so calmly or insulted. Though, thinking about it, it wouldn't really have come as much of a surprise, after all.
"This love thing…" Jim's fingers brushed Blair's knee lightly as if in warning. "It's the friendly, brothers in arms, best buds type still?"
"Always," Blair affirmed. And then, because he could be a vicious son of a bitch at times, the kind you really didn't want mad at you, he cracked his eyes open and added, "And it's the want to fuck you raw, wake up wrapped around you, lick whipped cream off your six-pack type, too. And that love came first, and man, has it gotten to be a habit."
'That's love?" Jim sounded thoughtful, not shocked. "Sounds like something from below the waist, not behind your ribs, Chief."
"You got a problem with good old-fashioned lust? When it's attached to everything else I've got in my head and my gut when it comes to you?"
Jim pursed his lips and then shook his head slowly. "Can't say that I have."
The hand on Blair's knee was a heavy weight now, an anchor.
"Chief?"
"Mmm?" Blair managed to say through the beat of blood, racing, rushing, changing direction. "Yes, I do."
"You answered the question before you even heard it." Again with the considering purse of the lips. "But that's okay. I don't mind you being in my head or any other part of my body."
"You think I can read your mind?" Blair chuckled, the sound a little shaky to be amused. "No. Lucky guess. Extrapolation of where the conversation was going based on how well I know you. I skipped to the bit where you asked if I wanted to have sex to save time."
"Sometimes it feels that way. Like we've got this telepathy thing going on." Jim pulled a pained face. "Not really. I can't hear you or anything, Chief. It's just… this connection."
Blair looked at him. "Do you mind?"
"Used to." Jim's hand rose and Blair felt Jim's finger draw a wavering line from his temple to his chin. "Not now. Sometimes with you I lose sight of where the lines are between us. If there even are any."
"The anthropologist in me says there are," Blair told him. "Two males, sharing a home, a job; forget the Sentinel stuff; the power dynamics between us as men are fascinating as hell."
"Lines can get erased." Jim's expression was serious, even abstracted, all his attention seemingly concentrated on the route his finger was taking, the light touch of that single fingertip imbued with so much intimacy that Blair's throat ached from it.
Jim. Touching him. Doing something that was a world away from flirtation and seduction. Making Blair hard without him even noticing it happening, a side-effect, not a goal, until his confined erection protested, alerting him, and he dropped his hand automatically to ease it into a more comfortable position.
Jim's gaze went to Blair's lap and he smiled, a bare twitch of lips Blair had once spent a whole sleepless night obsessing over, allowing himself feverish fantasies from the romantic to the raunchy, vanilla to kinky. Kinky enough, in fact, that he'd gotten up early, staggering with weariness, dick chafed, head swimming, and let himself out of the loft before Jim woke. It had been worth the early start because he'd have babbled blushing apologies and Jim would have wanted details -- maybe -- and they weren't, oh, God, they really weren't, anything he wanted to share with a man scratching his ass sleepily as he waited for the coffee to brew.
"I suppose." Blair drew in a deep breath and tried to snatch some oxygen from the air because clearly Jim was hogging it all, if Blair's lightheadedness was anything to go by. "If we wanted to."
Jim's smile grew and the cock of his eyebrow as he glanced up at Blair was so deliberately lecherous that Blair grinned back, losing his doubts and, for the moment, setting aside his distress over the day's events.
Which, genuine though it was, was tempered by the fact that Jim was in one piece and that was never going to be something Blair regretted, no matter how dearly bought.
"I can see yours; want to see mine?" Jim offered, his gaze returning to the outlined thrust of Blair's erection.
"Wouldn't be the first time," Blair said dryly. "Anyone ever tell you that you've got an exhibitionist streak, Jim?"
"I thought you were going to say 'sadistic'," Jim answered. "Though it sometimes felt more like masochism. You may have thought I was showing you what you couldn't have, but it was the other way around."
"I wasn't the one wandering around in my shorts."
"No. you were the one looking at me in my shorts and coming close to tripping on your tongue." Jim went from the coffee table to his knees in a single, graceful slide and pushed Blair's legs apart casually so that he could shift even closer. Staring down into Jim's face, not up, was novel, but Blair barely spared it a thought. That act of unthinking possessiveness, as if Blair's body was Jim's to move, pose, position -- that should have been a line that needed to be erased, and it had taken him this long -- years -- to realize that it had never existed between them. It had always been this way and he did it, too, every time he pushed Jim's senses to their limits and then manipulated Jim's strung-out body to a quiescent calm with words or touch.
Jim's hands came to rest on Blair's hips, his fingers spread, his thumbs describing small circles in the shallow hollows there, the warmth of his hands tangible even through a layer of denim. "You looked at me as if you had this list of things you wanted to do to me."
"Well… not a list exactly. I may have given it some thought from time to time."
"In the shower?"
Jim's head ducked before Blair could admit that, yes, the shower and thinking about Jim had often gone hand in hand. A low murmur, verging on a growl, came from Jim's throat, and sent a shiver through Blair.
"Jim?" he asked uncertainly.
Jim mouthed the swell of Blair's balls, the damp heat of his breath soaking through to Blair's skin a moment later. Or maybe Blair's body had flushed hot; it didn't really seem important. Blair gave a high, shocked whimper even as he was arching his hips and grinding against that open, eager mouth.
Jim looked up at him, a brief, swift glance. "I need you to get out of these jeans. Or just push them down."
"That's not very romantic --" Jim made a frustrated snarling sound and rubbed his forehead against Blair's thigh, clearly making an effort to stay calm. "Screw romance," Blair decided. "Sure."
He unzipped and pushed his jeans and shorts down with a wriggle he tried to make sensuous and spread his legs as wide as they could go. The tough fabric dug into his thighs but he didn't care. Jim nuzzled the bared skin of Blair's leg and bit down, sucking hard enough to leave a mark on the skin.
It hurt and Blair threaded his fingers through the soft, short hair on Jim's head and tugged, remonstrating with him silently and getting a penitent kiss on the stinging skin.
"Sorry," Jim whispered. "Sorry --"
Blair leaned forward and used the hand in Jim's hair to angle Jim's head and expose his neck. "Don't apologize. Just let me get even."
This close he could smell Jim, the familiar scent concentrated, intensified. Blair took one approving snuffle, moaned, and licked at skin, marking his territory, claiming his spot. Then he let the kisses he peppered over it get harder, wetter, until without using his teeth -- much -- he'd left a patch of reddened skin.
He drew back, feeling the ache in his untouched cock, and surveyed the mark with satisfaction. It would fade before anyone else saw it, but for now it was there.
"Why are you in such a rush?" Blair asked softly. "Years of not doing anything, and you decide it has to happen now, in the next thirty seconds? And that's all the time you'll get before I come, just to warn you."
"I didn't decide; you did." Jim rubbed his hand over his marked neck. "When you told me all that stuff."
"Still not getting the connection between me telling you something you already knew and wham-bam, Blair gets a blow job."
"Yousaidit," Jim said doggedly. "You've never said it before. It made a difference and I just -- Sandburg, I'm fucking hurting here. Let me do this or say no and I'll go and jerk off in my room."
Blair scowled at him. "Just try leaving me like this and see how far you get. Jesus, Jim, do it. Just go easy on the teeth, that's all."
He got a surprisingly sweet smile and then Jim wrapped his hand around the base of Blair's cock and rubbed the head of it over his closed lips, once, twice, three times. By the third pass, Jim's mouth had relaxed enough that Blair could feel the smooth, damp skin of his inner lips but it wasn't enough. He tried to push inside that waiting haven and Jim's free hand smacked down on his hip and held him in place.
"I can make it last longer than thirty seconds," Jim said, the words a caress because he didn't move his mouth away as he spoke. "Two minutes, at least."
"Okay, okay. God." Blair dug the fingers of one hand deep into a cushion lying beside him and stroked roughly, awkwardly at the back of Jim's head. "I can't believe you're doing this. Really can't. We were just talking, three minutes ago, talking, and now --"
"You're still talking." Jim gave him a look so annoyed, so exasperated that Blair relaxed. Not everything had changed. Jim waited until Blair had been silent for long enough to suit him and then nodded. "Thank you."
It didn't sound sarcastic.
Blair leaned back and let his hand drop to Jim's shoulder and then away in as clear a message as he could send that he was done interrupting.
Jim sighed with relief and went back to what he'd been doing.
***
Simon glanced at his watch. "Damn. I'm supposed to be in a meeting… Look, just go down to the lobby, will you, Blair? There isn't anyone on duty you know upstairs and I don't think it's a good idea to make Jim deal with you in front of people he works with."
"He's not going to hit me, or yell," Blair protested.
"Hit you? No." Simon showed his teeth. "Not while I'm there, he won't. Yelling at you is a different story and if he says something in the heat of the moment and lets more slip than he means to… well."
"Fine," Blair said, sighing. "I'll wait down there."
"He won't be long," Simon assured him. "Clearing his desk -- you know him; there's never that much on it. He works hard. Too hard, sometimes. He lost a week's leave last year because he didn't use it."
"Sounds like Jim." Blair stood. "Simon… I thought you knew. What had happened, where I was; Jim knew so I thought he'd tell you."
"Does that sound like Jim, too?" Simon asked dryly. "He didn't say anything much, Blair. Just came in one morning looking like hell and an hour later I got the call from admin. that you'd handed in your resignation, effective immediately. I had him in my office right away and all I got was that blank stare of his." Simon looked rueful. "Took me the best part of ten minutes yelling to get a few details out; you weren't happy being a cop, the trip away and all that happened out there had made you re-evaluate your life's direction… Got to hand it to him, he had your line of bullshit down. It rang true."
"Thanks," Blair said, not hiding the bitterness. "And I thought I was doing okay as a cop. Guess I was wrong, huh?"
"You were doing fine," Simon said. "Not sure how well you'd have made out working with anyone but Jim, but no one expected you to swap partners. But are you going to tell me you don't like it better where you are? Teaching, writing, researching?"
"I like it," Blair said. "I'm probably even better at it than being a cop. But it's not where I chose to be. And it's not -- Simon, I miss him."
"Hold it right there." Simon raised his hand, palm out. "Don't want to know if you've been crying into your pillow for seven years."
"I miss him," Blair repeated through his teeth. "This is all so fucking stupid but he wouldn't listen to me."
"That must have been a shock."
"Yeah, actually it was," Blair admitted. "Sometimes it took a while to get through to him but I always managed it in the end. Not that time."
"Mmm." Simon walked to the door and paused. "Think you'll do better this time?"
Blair smiled brightly. "Count on it."
"Huh." Okay, he hadn't really expected Simon to buy that. "Just as long as he remembers he's supposed to use his shovel to dig up the money, not hit you over the head with." Simon nodded at the notebook. "You know how to decode that?"
"I already have."
It had been easy enough; a cipher based on Brother Marcus' favorite psalm.
"So you didn't really need Jim at all?"
Blair looked at him. "I wouldn't say that, Simon."
***
"Didn't we go through this once before?"
"It's not the same, Jim! I'm not going for a year and you know I'm coming back. It's not the same at all."
"You still won't be here. You're supposed to be my partner, dammit."
"Megan knows what to do. I've discussed it with her and she's going to be fine. You haven't zoned in months, anyway."
"You just can't fucking wait to go, can you?"
"I can't --? Jim, what the hell is this? It's three months. Three. An exchange program, not an expedition. I'll be working in a city with access to phones, e-mail -- we can talk every day."
"I don't need you to hold my fucking hand, Sandburg! I just don't see why they're sending you."
"Because I volunteered. Because it's going to be fascinating to see how the infrastructure of a foreign police force compares to ours. Because it's Peru and I feel a connection to that place because of you, because of my own trip there."
"Because you can't wait to get away from me."
Blair stared at Jim, refusing to back down although Jim was looking pretty intimidating, his face reddened, his jaw muscle jumping. "It's looking more appealing every moment. Jesus, what's gotten into you? Think I'm going to hook up with someone tall, dark and handsome? Because I've --"
The planned, half-formed words 'already got that covered with you' were lost in the red haze of pain as Jim's fist collided with his gut, driving in, knocking the breath out of him in one undignified grunt and gasp.
He doubled over, fighting to drag air back into his body, flashing back to the time he'd drowned and the world had narrowed, collapsed to the atoms of oxygen held within the shell of his skin, the fragile dying flesh.
Even then, even knowing who'd reduced him to this, his hand groped out for Jim, needing something to hold on to because he was damned if he was going to his knees. Jim allowed his arm to be grabbed but that was it. No words of apology, swift and flurried, no encircling hug, no anxiously rubbing hand.
Blair glanced up through watering eyes and saw the shock in Jim's face, a mirror for his own expression a few moments earlier.
Well, at least Jim didn't look satisfied with himself; if he had, Blair would have been tempted to hit him back. He didn't fool himself that a few months of training made it likely that he'd manage to connect his fist with Jim's jaw, but male pride demanded some response.
"Are you going to hit me again?" he said thickly through the pain.
Jim stared at him and then shook his head, a slow, heavy movement.
"You're insane, you know that. I wouldn't screw around on you, Jim. I just wouldn't."
"Why am I different from everyone else you've been with and fucked over?"
The insult, and the judgment implied, was as much of a blow as the actual one had been. Blair saw himself briefly through Jim's eyes, remembered every shared confidence about the women he'd dated, realized just how he must have appeared. He'd always assumed Jim's occasionally sarcastic comments about his love life were Jim's way of joking, based maybe in envy; finding out that they'd been no more than the simple truth hurt.
"You are, okay?" He was standing straight now, his hands curled into fists by his side. "And yes, I've had trouble committing, but you of all people should know I haven't left a trail of broken hearts. I've dated for fun, for sex -- never serious and they knew that. Hell, apart from Sam, name me one who holds a grudge; I could pick up that phone right now, call any one of them and get --"
"A date?"
"A conversation," Blair said, his anger seeping away like water into sand. "Jim, I'm going. I'm not turning this trip down. It's got nothing to do with anything going on between us, or the job --"
Even as he said it, he knew it wasn't true. The job, the day in, day out stress, the long hours, traumatic scenes; they were getting to him. He wasn't allowed to wander away, face screwed up in nauseated pity, when they were called to a scene with a dead body, flesh mangled, discolored. No, he had to squat down by Jim and study the crime scene, his lungs filled with tainted air, his vision clouded with horrors.
None of that was entirely new, though, and he hadn't thrown up yet; he guessed in time he'd get used to it all. It was a concern, but not a worry.
Jim's insecure possessiveness was both.
It wasn't, like the corpses, a total surprise. Blair knew Jim's issues through observation and a process of piecing together a mosaic of clues. Jim had shared stuff with him charily, sure, but there had been sharing, and Carolyn had been brutally frank when he'd interviewed her over the phone. He should have been prepared for what would happen to a Jim Ellison in a long-term relationship.
Which, for both of them, meant one that could be counted in months, not weeks.
Should have, but hadn't been. Too blindsided by lust and love, too giddy with the opportunity to get his hands on Jim and give him every touch he'd been storing up, the chance to share Jim's bed, wake up beside him, too happy to discover what a mushy sap Jim turned into when he'd had one beer too many.
Every single warning sign had gone unheeded for the first month or so.
Like the time he'd been in a bar talking to Andy, an old friend from the Rainier Art department, and Andy had leaned in close, laughing, as he semi-seriously asked Blair to pose for him. Jim had materialized at Blair's shoulder, his hand duplicating a move that naked, in bed, always made Blair mewl and shudder but which he really could've done without experiencing in public, and Andy's eyes had widened with a knowing, wicked amusement that had made Blair blush.
One incident, repeated, variations on a theme, until Blair got the message; Jim didn't like sharing him unless it was with a select, trusted few.
He thought, given time, that it would wear off, but he wasn't sure his patience was adequate to the wait. He didn't like it. Hated feeling suffocated, mistrusted.
And he should have realized how Jim would see this exchange program as soon as Simon had brought it up. Simon's friend from the Lima police department, Captain Sandoval, had proposed it. He was sending over one of his new detectives to Cascade and he wanted one of Simon's in return. The exchange was being funded by the Peruvian government and Blair was the obvious choice.
Obvious to everyone but Jim, who had thrown out objection after objection until Simon had flat-out ordered him to shut up.
"It's not us," Blair repeated. "I just want to do this and you know what? I don't need your fucking permission."
Jim stepped back and held up his hands palm out. "Hey. You go, Chief. Have fun. Bring me back a souvenir, huh?"
The door slammed behind him a moment later.
"You didn't say you were sorry for hitting me, you asshole," Blair said clearly, knowing it would be heard. "Thanks for doing it where it doesn't show. Saves me explaining it away tomorrow."
And the classic move of an abuser, but he didn't bother saying that aloud.
Jim already knew that.
***
Blair turned from a desultory study of the notice board in the lobby to see Jim striding out of the elevator doors, his face dark with anger. He was willing to bet Simon had improved the shining hour with a few comments but it didn't really matter. You couldn't wet water.
Jim walked past Blair without slowing, giving an ill-tempered jerk of his head in an invitation to follow him.
Blair fell into step beside him, matching Jim's raking stride without difficulty, and they walked around the building to the parking lot.
"You don't have the truck?" he commented as Jim paused by a nondescript pickup and fumbled in his jacket pocket for the keys.
"Rolled it in a chase. Totaled it," Jim answered briefly.
"Oh, man." Blair allowed himself a moment of regret -- he'd liked that truck and it'd had some good memories attached -- and then said, "Were you hurt? I mean, that sounds kind of --"
"I'm not made of glass, Sandburg. I was fine."
Blair watched the aborted move of Jim's hand, tracking its original destination to Jim's collarbone. He'd probably broken it, lurching hard against the seat belt.
"Sure," he said with a sigh. "Take more than that to put a dent in you, right?"
"Just get in the truck, will you?"
"Where are we going?"
He knew. Only one place Jim would go after a shock like this. Retreat to his lair. And, on a more mundane level, unless Jim had put it into storage, it was where his camping gear was and he'd want to look it over.
"Back to the loft." Where else? hung in the air.
Blair got into the truck which, like all of Jim's rides, smelled of coffee and gun oil with a faint whiff of fries. Interesting that Jim had assumed they'd drive off together. Blair had left his car in a long-term car park two blocks away but he'd been prepared to retrieve it and tail along behind Jim all the way to the woods.
Old habits or a need to keep Blair close, where he could see him? Blair didn't know.
Jim pulled away with a screech of rubber and Blair hastily fastened his seat belt. Seven years hadn't improved Jim's driving any.
***
"Jim? It's Blair. Look, the plane's about to board but I just wanted to say -- you know what I want to say. Miss you, okay? I haven't even left and I miss you and I -- I love you -- I told you that last night, right? -- and if you're there and not picking up so I can hear you wish me a safe trip -- Jim? Damn."
***
"Are you going to keep this up for much longer, Jim? The not talking, not even being halfway civil?"
"As long as it takes to get the message through that you're wasting your time coming back here."
"I'm doing something for a friend; I don't think that's a waste of my time."
"Brother Marcus is dead and I doubt he knows or cares what you're doing." Jim spun the wheel, taking the same route home he always had, from what Blair remembered. "You're doing this for yourself."
"I'm not going to pretend I'm not glad to see you," Blair said quietly. "It's -- I can't -- it's good." He stared at Jim's profile, glutting himself on the sight, hungry, avid. "God, I've never stopped loving you, you know that."
"I can't do this," Jim said softly. It sounded as if the words were directed at himself, not Blair. Jim turned his head for a moment and looked directly at Blair. "Blair. Don't. Please." He turned his gaze, if not his full attention, back to the road. "You promised."
"Yeah." Blair looked out of the window, absently noting the changes. " I did, didn't I." He drew in a long breath and exhaled. "So, how are the Jags doing?"
"Don't make conversation, either," Jim said. "It's too…" He took his hand off the wheel and waved it aimlessly. "Surreal. Weird."
"So what can we talk about?" Blair snapped.
Jim's mouth curved. "Not a lot left, so I guess you'll have to button it."
"No," Blair said firmly. "There's one thing we can talk about."
"And what's that?"
"The case."
"Hardly that," Jim objected, but he shrugged. "Okay. Fill me in on exactly what Marcus told you."
"Sure," Blair said, keeping the elation out of his voice. Within three blocks, Jim would be talking with him, not at him, he just knew it.
Old times. Good times.
Mostly.
***
"Blair? Ah, you're opening your eyes! That is good, my friend."
Eyelids had never seemed heavy before. Now his were weighted down, no, stuck down with something hard and crusty. Blair tried to reach up and knuckle the sleep from his eyes and cried out as the slight movement wracked his body with pain, minor shockwaves continuing after he'd frozen in place.
"Lie still," the soft voice commanded.
Blair sorted through memories and attached a face to it. Captain Sandoval.
"Wha -- what happened?" he said thickly. "Eyes… can't see."
Tell me I'm not blind, he begged silently.
"Blood," Sandoval said matter-of-factly. "Dried. It trickled down from the cut on your forehead and they were too busy stitching it to wash your face. I have a cloth and a bowl of water here, if you will permit?"
"Thank you," Blair whispered. He submitted to the discomfort of water trickling down his face and neck -- Sandoval was careful but not all that skilled -- and managed to prize open his eyes a few moments later.
Hospital. But he'd known that from the smell and the sounds and the crinkle of stiff sheets.
"What happened?" he asked again.
Sandoval's eyes narrowed. "What do you remember?"
Blair stepped back through his memories; breakfast, no, forward a little… leaving the small apartment in Santa Beatriz he'd been given for the duration of his stay… the blue sky overhead hazed with faint, high wisps of cloud, the streets bustling and noisy… walking down Tacna Avenue --
"Yes," Sandoval told him. "You were. You do not recall more…? No? No matter. You remember enough!" He struck his hands together in an emphatic gesture of approval and Blair winced. "You were run over. Or, rather, a car driven by a drunk who even now is in my cells, spun out of control and would have hit you but you jumped away."
"I jumped?"
"According to eye witnesses, you gave a mighty leap." The twinkle in Sandoval's dark brown eyes indicated that he, too, found this hard to believe. "It matters not; you avoided the car, which crashed into a lamppost, and you struck your head sharply on one of three steps leading up to a coffee shop."
"Huh." Blair cautiously experimented with his extremities and found they were all attached. "I didn't do anything else?"
"You have minor bruises, a sprained ankle and a cracked rib." Sandoval gave him a sympathetic grimace. "The lower of the three steps, I think."
"Could have been worse," Blair murmured. "Sorry."
"My friend!" Sandoval clucked his tongue. "It is I who am sorry that you have come here and been so shamefully mistreated. I apologize on behalf of my city."
"You're different than Simon," Blair murmured through the blossoming headache. "He'd have blamed me."
"Captain Banks --" Was that a hint of reproof at Blair's familiarity? "I do not know what I will tell him when I send you home. You will assure him that the miscreant will be dealt with to the full extent of the law?"
"Home?"" Blair blinked at him. "I don't go back for another seven weeks."
"Not after this," Sandoval said firmly. "As soon as you are discharged you will return to Cascade." He spread his hands wide. "What will you? It is a matter of insurance. Liability."
"Politics," Blair summed up. "Right."
Fuck. All that arguing with Jim about making this trip -- the effects of which had been shown in the very few stilted phone calls and e-mails they'd exchanged since he'd arrived -- and it'd only lasted five weeks. And his list of places to visit had very few items crossed out; he'd been kept busy at work and wiped out by the humidity. Total waste of time.
"I have spoken to your doctor and she tells me two days and you will be able to travel. Today is Wednesday; I have a flight out of Jorge Chavez airport booked for you on Saturday morning. All will be taken care of; your luggage, your transportation there, all. Do not trouble yourself to raise a hand."
"Thanks." He couldn't make it sound enthusiastic.
Sandoval stood. "And now you must rest, eh? Your partner, Martin; he will visit later to wish you a safe journey. He was most distressed to hear of your misfortune."
Martin had been kind; a softly spoken man, a year from retirement, his hair gray, his eyes tired. Blair had never felt much connection between them; Martin's English had been basic and Blair's Spanish not as fluent as he'd thought it was, but he'd gotten on with the man well enough.
"Thanks," he said again, unable to shape anything more complex. Shit, his head was pounding. And there was something not right about the explanation he'd been given. Too much of a coincidence for him to be the random target of a drunk driver. The time of day alone made it unlikely. His thoughts turned to the case he'd been working on with Martin, and he frowned, trying to piece together shattered fragments into a whole, his suspicions growing.
He gave up after a particularly vicious stab of pain. He'd think about it later. And after all, it didn't matter much now.
Saturday.
He'd be home.
A sudden longing for gray skies and soft rain, for Jim telling him it was okay, they'd be fine, he'd been missed, sprang up. It was waking in a hospital bed and not seeing Jim there; it'd made him feel homesick.
Closing his eyes, he snuggled down as best he could under the crisp sheet.
Going home.
***
"Tell me more about your senses going." Blair gave Jim a sidelong glance. "That had to suck, huh?"
"Not really. Made it simpler. I didn't have to worry that I was doing stuff I couldn't explain away." Jim's jaw set. "I didn't miss them."
"So you're not glad they're back?"
"They'll probably just go again." Jim, probably as tired as Blair of continuing a two-level conversation sagging under the weight of its own subtext, nodded at a row of shops. "That friend of yours; Marsha. She opened an aromatherapy therapy place there."
"I don't see it," Blair said. He craned his neck to look back. "Which one?"
"Closed down after six months," Jim said briefly. "I guess there weren't as many suckers in Cascade as she'd hoped."
"Nice, Jim," Blair murmured. "Real nice. She was the one who tracked down a source for that organic soap you liked when the shop on Salisbury stopped carrying it, remember?"
Jim's fingers tapped restlessly on the wheel and then he nodded. "Right. I remember." He shrugged. "Sorry."
It wasn't a convincing apology and Blair lapsed into a resentful silence for the rest of the journey to the loft.
***
Blair dropped his suitcase and flexed a cramping hand. He'd gone overboard on the souvenirs he'd accumulated, definitely. Unless whoever Sandoval had gotten to pack his case had thrown in the iron, toaster, and kettle from Blair's apartment. He hadn't checked the contents; it'd been packed by the police department after all. He'd been ushered through Customs like royalty, smiles and effusive best wishes ringing in his ears.
He transferred his backpack to his other shoulder and picked up the case.
No one was coming to get him and a thirty-minute wait was twenty minutes too long. Hurt pushed against the tiredness walling him off from anger and made a dent, enough that he didn't head toward the bank of phones. He was damned if he was going to call Jim or Simon and beg for a ride; if they'd wanted to see him, they'd have been waiting for him.
And maybe, just maybe, something big had come up. This was Cascade, after all. Stuff happened.
He got a cab and drowsed through the journey, fighting back alternate waves of hunger and nausea and a disconcerting tendency for the vision in one eye to gray out.
Tired. Four hours worth of jetlag added onto an eight-hour flight… and no restful sleep since the night before his accident.
He needed a shower and one of Jim's hero sandwiches, layered and thick, imaginative as Jim's hot food often wasn't.
And he needed Jim. Blue eyes happy, hands gentle, kisses urgent and -- well, okay, sex was the last thing Blair felt like doing, but lying down naked with Jim would feel good. Their bed, their sheets, the low rumble of Jim's voice lulling him into a sleep uninterrupted by the clatter of bedpans, his bed getting bumped, the lights which, even lowered, soon became intrusive. Just Jim. Restful, solid Jim.
He paid off the cab driver with all the dollars he had -- barely enough, and he had to haul his suitcase out of the trunk by himself by way of penance -- and then caught a glimpse of himself in the side view mirror and flinched. Pallid face, bruised and cut… he hoped Jim didn't start yelling when he saw him. It would be based in concern but he really didn't think he could cope with that.
Once outside the door, he fumbled for his key and let himself in, not bothering to call out, but a little surprised Jim, whose truck had been parked outside, hadn't heard him coming and opened the door.
It smelled funky. As if the windows hadn't been opened for days. It was only eight in the evening, the summer sun still setting, but all the blinds were closed, making it feel claustrophobic, not cozy.
He dropped his luggage and walked forward, uncertain, faltering, and then turned and saw Jim's feet appear at the top of the stairs.
Bare feet. Bare legs.
Jim had been in bed, maybe, and oh -- he'd woken him from a post-stakeout nap or --
"I'm sorry," he began to say as the room spun around him in what was becoming a distressingly familiar way.
Jim's feet, which were all Blair could see because he couldn't seem to tilt his head, pattered quickly down the stairs. He thought he heard Jim say his name.
Blair. Yes. That was him and yes, of course he was back.
Then a second pair of bare feet appeared at the head of the stairs and Blair frowned because he was seeing double and that wasn't good.
Jim thought so, too, because he was saying 'no' over and over.
Blair bit down hard on his lip, something one of Naomi's boyfriends had taught him; a sharp pain can ground you, clear your head.
It allowed him to focus on the man -- wearing Jim's robe which really, really pissed him off -- who appeared beside Jim, his hand laid familiarly on Jim's arm. Good-looking, tall, buff. A Jim-clone.
"Babe? Who the hell is this? Your kid brother?"
"Fuck you," Blair said distinctly. He stared at Jim, whose face was a shamed, defiant mask. A stranger's face. A wall.
He tried to break it with his fist and Jim's head jerked back, a red mark rising, but his expression didn't change, not even when Blair staggered back, one step, two, out of reach of Jim's outstretched hand, and crumpled to the floor .
"Sorry," Blair mouthed into the two faces above him -- too tall, both too tall, both so high; when did Jim get so tall? "Thought that would work."
He turned his head, feeling the cool wood of the floor press against his face and realized that he'd been right to be suspicious about Sandoval's facile explanation of his 'accident'. Strange how clear it all was now when everything else was formless and gray.
And Sandoval had spoken a partial truth. He'd taken care of everything he needed to do to get the inconvenient, in danger, foreigner out of his city before the drug dealer Martin had been investigating desultorily and Blair with enthusiasm did a better job of killing him at his next attempt.
But he hadn't troubled to call Simon to tell him his officer was returning and that meant that Jim, well, Jim had had no warning at all.
"Sorry," he murmured one final time.
***
The loft looked barren. Clean, tidy, empty of personality. And the walls were white again.
When Blair had first moved in, Jim's belongings had been dotted around in an attempt to fill the space two people had once shared. It wasn't entirely successful, but it had still felt like Jim.
Hell, the gutted space Jim had made of it when he was dealing with Alex Barnes' presence in the city had felt homier than this.
Blair looked out at the balcony, devoid now of plants, swept bare, a single chair in one corner, and rolled his eyes. "Love what you've done with the place."
"What?" Jim stared around. "It hasn't changed much. I don't have time to fuss with it the way you used to."
"I didn't fuss."
"You spent an entire weekend obsessing over where to hang that tribal mask. You make feng shui seem sensible."
Blair opened his mouth to refute that and paused, feeling the momentum of the banter slip away from him before he'd grasped it tight. Jim stared at him, his expression mirroring Blair's, loss and confusion twisting his features.
"Jim…"
"I'm going to take a shower," Jim said abruptly. "If you need a drink, you know where everything is."
"Make myself at home?" Blair said to Jim's retreating back.
Jim didn't break stride. "What for? You're not staying."
The bathroom door slammed and Blair frowned. Had that sounded like Jim regretted the fact that, yes, Blair had a life -- and a job -- to go back to? Or was it a reminder, a dig?
The shower hissed and Blair counted to twenty to make sure Jim was under the water, wet and naked -- and did his best not to picture it -- and then walked up the stairs to Jim's bedroom, not troubling to be overly stealthy.
If Jim's senses were back, stealth was impossible; if they weren't, well, out of fairness he was giving Jim a chance to hear him and stop him.
Sort of.
He hesitated at the head of the stairs, his hand gripping the metal rail. This was snooping and he should have felt shame but he didn't. Just an aching need to see this space again.
He'd been happy here. In this city, in this apartment.
In this bed, in this fucking white-sheet, antiseptic, bounce a quarter, military corners bed that had once been rumpled and messy and full of the two of them, wrapped around each other, murmuring endearments and laughing at themselves for being sentimental, until the punctuating kisses grew too close together and silenced them.
He took one last look, noting changes -- not many, not enough; there should have been changes -- and turned to retreat.
Jim was at the foot of the stairs, dripping wet, a towel around his hips, loosely hitched, another in his hand.
His gaze flicked past Blair and then back. "I wouldn't have let you come here if there was someone waiting."
"I wasn't looking for signs of my replacement." Blair took a steadying breath. The light on Jim's shoulders was delineating muscles with a broad brush, a swoop of shadow. "I was just… remembering."
Jim began to walk up the stairs, slowly, each step taken with a deliberate care. "I replaced you a long time ago. The last person in that bed was a woman. And she was replacing…" Jim paused, two steps below Blair, which brought their heads level and close. "Someone you once dated; how's that for irony? Of course, she waited until after I'd fucked her to share that piece of information." Jim inhaled sharply, his mouth twisting in a lemon-sour smile. "She wondered what had happened to you. Got your last name wrong, and was sure you had brown eyes, but hey, it's been a long time and I bet you can't even do that well with her."
"Not even going to try," Blair said evenly.
"No?" Jim jerked his chin up in a clear signal. "Going to try and get the hell out of my way?"
"Sure." Blair stepped to the side and allowed Jim to finish climbing the stairs, getting a heady whiff of clean, wet Jim as he brushed by.
With a slightly self-conscious air of nonchalance, Jim walked to the middle of the room and put his hand on the tuck of the towel. "You've seen my bed. That's all you get to gawk at, Chief."
"Right," Blair said, nodding as he spoke. "Because your bare ass is just such a treat. Get over yourself, man. You're what -- forty-five? -- and I bet the last time you dated was months ago. You, this place -- they stink of loneliness."
Jim turned, a flush rising in his face. "I'm doing just fine, thank you for asking."
"Liar," Blair said recklessly, spurred on by the sick regret that Jim was there, right there, and he couldn't go to him, lick that damp skin wetter, run his hands over the water-sheened skin and feel it warm his palms, heat his blood.
He used to love fucking Jim fresh from a shower, imprinting the clean skin with a myriad scents, raw and rich.
"You want to give me a pity fuck, is that it?"
Jim had tried to make that sound like a sneer but to Blair's hopeful ears, it came over as a plea.
"No." The towel slipped and Jim grabbed at it. Blair watched a flash of skin, a curve of ass, disappear as Jim fastened the towel in place. He dragged his gaze up to Jim's face. "I don't have much pity to spare these days. Sorry. And what I want from you -- well, sex is a part of it, sure, but seven years of waiting -- oh, you're going to have to put a lot more on the table than that."
"I'm not asking you to come back."
"I don't want you to ask." Blair walked the three, four, five steps needed to get him close enough to touch Jim. Jim didn't move, his breath uncontrolled, harsh, loud in the quietness around them. Blair drew his hand down from Jim's throat to the telltale tilt of the towel, keeping his palm from making contact through an effort of will, an inch of space between it and Jim's skin. "I want you to beg. I want you on your fucking knees, Jim. I want you…"
He shook his head and stepped back. "I want you," he repeated flatly. "I always will. But it's time you stopped thinking you've got any right to the high ground here and it's time you stopped punishing me for your fuck-ups and insecurities. I don't care that you're flawed and a mess emotionally. I'm not much better myself. Doesn't matter. We fit. We work. Or we used to."
He leaned in, hands by his side, tilted his face, and kissed Jim's cheek, faking casual and doing a better job of it than Jim was with indifference. He felt a shock of remembrance, vivid as a summer-blue sky, and had to step back quickly to stop himself from accepting what was on offer.
It wasn't enough and it wouldn't help.
"I'll be back in the morning at seven, okay? We need to be on the road early but there's no need to start at the crack of dawn."
"You're going?" The words sounded jerked out of Jim's mouth, unintended.
"If I stay it won't go well," Blair said. "I'll probably forget all my good intentions and end up sobbing on your shoulder or something and hate myself in the morning."
Jim smiled at that, a quirk of his lips and a brief lightening of his expression. "I can't see that, Chief, but I -- yeah, probably for the best." He frowned, with a belated realization. "Your car…You need a ride somewhere?"
"I've got some things to do," Blair said evasively. He didn't. "Seven, okay? And I'll grab something to eat so don't bother cooking breakfast."
Jim was still frowning. "Okay…"
"Great. I'll see you, man." The stairs were behind him. He turned and ran down them, feet finding their rhythm on the second step. "Tomorrow," he called without looking back.
God, he had to get out, had to just get the hell out.
And Jim's senses were back. He could tell. That distant look in Jim's eyes as he processed data, that air of listening to ghosts.
He had to get a long, long way from Jim now lying to him wasn't an option.
"'On your knees'," he mimicked savagely under his breath when he'd reached a safe distance. "You pathetic, delusional --"
***
Waking up in a hospital again gave Blair a strong sense of déjà vu which, when added to his headache, made him close his eyes after a very brief glimpse of a room mostly filled with Simon.
"Blair?" Simon's voice was pitched low enough not to grate but still made Blair's face screw up in a reaction. "Sorry," Simon went on, in a hoarse whisper. "I'll find the nurse."
"Jim?" Blair asked, futilely, because if Jim had been in the hospital he would have been where Simon was sitting.
"He brought you here." Simon cleared his throat and Blair forced his eyes to open and stay that way. "Don't you remember?"
Blair thought it through. Floor. Jim's hand on his face. A phone call for an ambulance. Slam of door as Jim's date left, good-looking face sharp with temper, his clothes tugged on haphazardly. Jim staring at him intently, shame and contrition pushed aside, a calm, professional concern in the questions he asked as his cool, shaking fingers explored the injury on Blair's head, ran over Blair's body, assessing, totaling every bruise.
The jolting hell of the ambulance ride, Jim silent beside him and then fading out of the picture once Blair had been admitted.
A gray and white picture by then, painted by Escher, muted, subdued, senseless.
"Now?"
"He left," Simon said reluctantly. "They've been running all these tests on you --"
He didn't want to remember them. The prick of a needle, the squeeze of a blood pressure cuff… the machines that had photographed him inside and, well, yes, inside mostly.
"I fell asleep."
Simon snorted, his hand groping toward the pocket of his coat for a cigar and then falling away as he glanced at the No Smoking sign. "More like passed out."
"What's wrong with me?"
Jim needed to hear that question, not Simon. He needed to know the answer from Jim. What was wrong with him that he hadn't been worth waiting for, for a lousy fucking five weeks…
"Low-grade infection," Simon said, ticking off ailments on his long fingers. "Probably something in the water --"
"Stomach flu the first week," Blair said. "Never really got over it."
"Exhaustion and mild dehydration…"
"Couldn't sleep in the hospital. Couldn't eat on the plane."
"Long-term exhaustion," Simon said sternly. "And before you waste your breath, I've spoken to Sandoval." Simon's face tightened. "Kept you busy, didn't he?"
"It was interesting," Blair protested.
"I'm not going to talk about it now," Simon said. "But he's getting his officer back on the next plane out of here. All she's done is shop and flirt, anyway."
"Simon…"
"Oh, all right," Simon snapped. "She's fine but she's still going back. This exercise is over." He shoved an unlit cigar into his mouth and clamped his teeth down on it. "Head injury."
And they were at the good part now.
"They're going to operate. Piece of your skull pressing on a piece of your brain." Simon took the cigar out of his mouth and gestured with it. "Vision blurry, headaches?"
"Oh, yeah," Blair said fervently.
Simon nodded. "You'll be fine."
"After a spot of brain surgery."
"Want me to tell them to stir in some actual brains while they're in there?" Simon smiled at him sourly. "Going after drug lords by yourself in a foreign city…. Tchah."
"I'll never do it again," Blair mumbled, half meaning it.
"Oh, you can do it all you want here in Cascade," Simon went on. "With Jim to help you, not some tired old man counting down to retirement."
Blair closed his eyes at that, and Simon, after a brief pause and a clumsy pat on Blair's hand, tiptoed out.
Jim's partner. Technically he still was, but really, looked at dispassionately, it just wasn't going to work out, was it?
Four years of avoiding temptation; two months of reveling in it, and now it was payback time.
Being used as a pawn in a foreign country.
Brain surgery.
Jim cheating on him.
Payback like that, it had to have been one hell of a two months... but he wasn't even sure of that now. Distrust and suspicion were spreading backward, staining every memory.
He felt tears gather and spill and let them fall.
Some things were worth crying over.
Part Three
"Two months on the streets and I shoot someone," Blair said, knowing he was being unreasonable and not caring. "You told me some officers put in their twenty years without shooting anyone, and I do it after two months."
He leaned back against the couch, noting with an irritable familiarity that with his hair short it didn't get caught between his shoulders and the furniture. He didn't want to notice that. He was bored with noticing that, but it didn't stop him doing it every single fucking time.
Jim sat down on the coffee table facing him and patted his knee reassuringly. "It's not like he's dead, Chief. You shot him in the arm."
"And the bullet shattered his shoulder and he'll never use that arm again."
"He'll never use it to fire a gun at an eight-year-old kid whose only crime was riding her bike on his yard and ruining his precious fucking grass," Jim said. "Blair, the guy was a nutcase, hopped up on drugs, seriously unstable; if you hadn't shot him his next bullet might have hit her."
"You," Blair muttered.
"What?"
Blair lifted his head and met Jim's gaze. "It might have hit you," he said, making it clear because sometimes you had to be honest or hate yourself in the morning. "Tanya was safe; she'd gotten out of the line of fire; he was aiming at you and that's why I shot him." He stared up at the distant ceiling of the loft. "And I was aiming for his heart, going for the kill. I just missed."
"Chief…" Jim murmured, sounding shaken. "That's not what you said in your report."
"Well, no," Blair said with a bitter sarcasm, dragging his gaze back to Jim with an effort. "It wasn't. Somehow, I thought putting it in black and white that when it comes to you I've got a protective streak a mile wide, and God help anyone who tried to hurt you, might be misunderstood."
Jim was gaping at him, thunderstruck and speechless, his throat working as he tried to swallow.
"And it doesn't matter that we don't do the deed; we're still fucked even if we're not fucking," Blair went on recklessly, flinging words against the silence, bullets against glass. "Because you matter more to me than anyone I'm supposed to be out there protecting and you always will and I'd never put anyone before you."
"Not even Tanya? Or any other kid, any other citizen?" Jim asked, his voice quiet enough that Blair had to concentrate to hear him.
Citizen. It was an oddly formal word to use, one Blair knew the history of and Jim most likely didn't because he didn't need to. Jim knew what it meant at a simpler level; people he was sworn to protect by profession, by nature, by choice. That was a good enough definition for him.
"I can give you the proper answer, the textbook one," Blair said tiredly. "I can even say honestly that I'd be willing to die myself to keep her safe -- anyone safe." He smiled, a crooked smile, one that bent his mouth in ways it didn't want to go. "I'm just not willing for you to do it."
"That's not your call."
"No. I know that. Doesn't change anything."
"Why? And don't give me crap about it being a shaman thing; a true shaman knows there's no greater honor, no better death, than to go out protecting the people of the tribe."
"It's nothing to do with the Sentinel thing." Blair sighed. "You're going to make me say it, aren't you? I love you. I fucking love you and you die and I'm lost. Man. I'm just --" he sliced his hand across the air. "I'm gone. You brought me back; I can't do that. You probably wouldn't let me, even if I knew how, and I don't know, don't have a fucking clue."
"I didn't know, either." Jim's face was flushed now, his eyes darkening. "And what, you think I've got some sort of death wish? You bring me back, you hear me, Sandburg?"
He could hear him; no trouble hearing Jim when he was yelling at him from a distance of about a foot.
"Okay," he said, the single, inadequate word all he had to offer.
Jim gave an incredulous snort and shook his head, repeating the word under his breath. "Sandburg, only you could make resurrection sound as mundane as getting takeout."
"Whatever," Blair mumbled, feeling exhausted. He closed his eyes. "I shot someone."
"This where I came in."
Jim's voice was amused now, relaxed. Blair wasn't sure whether to be grateful Jim had accepted his declaration so calmly or insulted. Though, thinking about it, it wouldn't really have come as much of a surprise, after all.
"This love thing…" Jim's fingers brushed Blair's knee lightly as if in warning. "It's the friendly, brothers in arms, best buds type still?"
"Always," Blair affirmed. And then, because he could be a vicious son of a bitch at times, the kind you really didn't want mad at you, he cracked his eyes open and added, "And it's the want to fuck you raw, wake up wrapped around you, lick whipped cream off your six-pack type, too. And that love came first, and man, has it gotten to be a habit."
'That's love?" Jim sounded thoughtful, not shocked. "Sounds like something from below the waist, not behind your ribs, Chief."
"You got a problem with good old-fashioned lust? When it's attached to everything else I've got in my head and my gut when it comes to you?"
Jim pursed his lips and then shook his head slowly. "Can't say that I have."
The hand on Blair's knee was a heavy weight now, an anchor.
"Chief?"
"Mmm?" Blair managed to say through the beat of blood, racing, rushing, changing direction. "Yes, I do."
"You answered the question before you even heard it." Again with the considering purse of the lips. "But that's okay. I don't mind you being in my head or any other part of my body."
"You think I can read your mind?" Blair chuckled, the sound a little shaky to be amused. "No. Lucky guess. Extrapolation of where the conversation was going based on how well I know you. I skipped to the bit where you asked if I wanted to have sex to save time."
"Sometimes it feels that way. Like we've got this telepathy thing going on." Jim pulled a pained face. "Not really. I can't hear you or anything, Chief. It's just… this connection."
Blair looked at him. "Do you mind?"
"Used to." Jim's hand rose and Blair felt Jim's finger draw a wavering line from his temple to his chin. "Not now. Sometimes with you I lose sight of where the lines are between us. If there even are any."
"The anthropologist in me says there are," Blair told him. "Two males, sharing a home, a job; forget the Sentinel stuff; the power dynamics between us as men are fascinating as hell."
"Lines can get erased." Jim's expression was serious, even abstracted, all his attention seemingly concentrated on the route his finger was taking, the light touch of that single fingertip imbued with so much intimacy that Blair's throat ached from it.
Jim. Touching him. Doing something that was a world away from flirtation and seduction. Making Blair hard without him even noticing it happening, a side-effect, not a goal, until his confined erection protested, alerting him, and he dropped his hand automatically to ease it into a more comfortable position.
Jim's gaze went to Blair's lap and he smiled, a bare twitch of lips Blair had once spent a whole sleepless night obsessing over, allowing himself feverish fantasies from the romantic to the raunchy, vanilla to kinky. Kinky enough, in fact, that he'd gotten up early, staggering with weariness, dick chafed, head swimming, and let himself out of the loft before Jim woke. It had been worth the early start because he'd have babbled blushing apologies and Jim would have wanted details -- maybe -- and they weren't, oh, God, they really weren't, anything he wanted to share with a man scratching his ass sleepily as he waited for the coffee to brew.
"I suppose." Blair drew in a deep breath and tried to snatch some oxygen from the air because clearly Jim was hogging it all, if Blair's lightheadedness was anything to go by. "If we wanted to."
Jim's smile grew and the cock of his eyebrow as he glanced up at Blair was so deliberately lecherous that Blair grinned back, losing his doubts and, for the moment, setting aside his distress over the day's events.
Which, genuine though it was, was tempered by the fact that Jim was in one piece and that was never going to be something Blair regretted, no matter how dearly bought.
"I can see yours; want to see mine?" Jim offered, his gaze returning to the outlined thrust of Blair's erection.
"Wouldn't be the first time," Blair said dryly. "Anyone ever tell you that you've got an exhibitionist streak, Jim?"
"I thought you were going to say 'sadistic'," Jim answered. "Though it sometimes felt more like masochism. You may have thought I was showing you what you couldn't have, but it was the other way around."
"I wasn't the one wandering around in my shorts."
"No. you were the one looking at me in my shorts and coming close to tripping on your tongue." Jim went from the coffee table to his knees in a single, graceful slide and pushed Blair's legs apart casually so that he could shift even closer. Staring down into Jim's face, not up, was novel, but Blair barely spared it a thought. That act of unthinking possessiveness, as if Blair's body was Jim's to move, pose, position -- that should have been a line that needed to be erased, and it had taken him this long -- years -- to realize that it had never existed between them. It had always been this way and he did it, too, every time he pushed Jim's senses to their limits and then manipulated Jim's strung-out body to a quiescent calm with words or touch.
Jim's hands came to rest on Blair's hips, his fingers spread, his thumbs describing small circles in the shallow hollows there, the warmth of his hands tangible even through a layer of denim. "You looked at me as if you had this list of things you wanted to do to me."
"Well… not a list exactly. I may have given it some thought from time to time."
"In the shower?"
Jim's head ducked before Blair could admit that, yes, the shower and thinking about Jim had often gone hand in hand. A low murmur, verging on a growl, came from Jim's throat, and sent a shiver through Blair.
"Jim?" he asked uncertainly.
Jim mouthed the swell of Blair's balls, the damp heat of his breath soaking through to Blair's skin a moment later. Or maybe Blair's body had flushed hot; it didn't really seem important. Blair gave a high, shocked whimper even as he was arching his hips and grinding against that open, eager mouth.
Jim looked up at him, a brief, swift glance. "I need you to get out of these jeans. Or just push them down."
"That's not very romantic --" Jim made a frustrated snarling sound and rubbed his forehead against Blair's thigh, clearly making an effort to stay calm. "Screw romance," Blair decided. "Sure."
He unzipped and pushed his jeans and shorts down with a wriggle he tried to make sensuous and spread his legs as wide as they could go. The tough fabric dug into his thighs but he didn't care. Jim nuzzled the bared skin of Blair's leg and bit down, sucking hard enough to leave a mark on the skin.
It hurt and Blair threaded his fingers through the soft, short hair on Jim's head and tugged, remonstrating with him silently and getting a penitent kiss on the stinging skin.
"Sorry," Jim whispered. "Sorry --"
Blair leaned forward and used the hand in Jim's hair to angle Jim's head and expose his neck. "Don't apologize. Just let me get even."
This close he could smell Jim, the familiar scent concentrated, intensified. Blair took one approving snuffle, moaned, and licked at skin, marking his territory, claiming his spot. Then he let the kisses he peppered over it get harder, wetter, until without using his teeth -- much -- he'd left a patch of reddened skin.
He drew back, feeling the ache in his untouched cock, and surveyed the mark with satisfaction. It would fade before anyone else saw it, but for now it was there.
"Why are you in such a rush?" Blair asked softly. "Years of not doing anything, and you decide it has to happen now, in the next thirty seconds? And that's all the time you'll get before I come, just to warn you."
"I didn't decide; you did." Jim rubbed his hand over his marked neck. "When you told me all that stuff."
"Still not getting the connection between me telling you something you already knew and wham-bam, Blair gets a blow job."
"Yousaidit," Jim said doggedly. "You've never said it before. It made a difference and I just -- Sandburg, I'm fucking hurting here. Let me do this or say no and I'll go and jerk off in my room."
Blair scowled at him. "Just try leaving me like this and see how far you get. Jesus, Jim, do it. Just go easy on the teeth, that's all."
He got a surprisingly sweet smile and then Jim wrapped his hand around the base of Blair's cock and rubbed the head of it over his closed lips, once, twice, three times. By the third pass, Jim's mouth had relaxed enough that Blair could feel the smooth, damp skin of his inner lips but it wasn't enough. He tried to push inside that waiting haven and Jim's free hand smacked down on his hip and held him in place.
"I can make it last longer than thirty seconds," Jim said, the words a caress because he didn't move his mouth away as he spoke. "Two minutes, at least."
"Okay, okay. God." Blair dug the fingers of one hand deep into a cushion lying beside him and stroked roughly, awkwardly at the back of Jim's head. "I can't believe you're doing this. Really can't. We were just talking, three minutes ago, talking, and now --"
"You're still talking." Jim gave him a look so annoyed, so exasperated that Blair relaxed. Not everything had changed. Jim waited until Blair had been silent for long enough to suit him and then nodded. "Thank you."
It didn't sound sarcastic.
Blair leaned back and let his hand drop to Jim's shoulder and then away in as clear a message as he could send that he was done interrupting.
Jim sighed with relief and went back to what he'd been doing.
***
Simon glanced at his watch. "Damn. I'm supposed to be in a meeting… Look, just go down to the lobby, will you, Blair? There isn't anyone on duty you know upstairs and I don't think it's a good idea to make Jim deal with you in front of people he works with."
"He's not going to hit me, or yell," Blair protested.
"Hit you? No." Simon showed his teeth. "Not while I'm there, he won't. Yelling at you is a different story and if he says something in the heat of the moment and lets more slip than he means to… well."
"Fine," Blair said, sighing. "I'll wait down there."
"He won't be long," Simon assured him. "Clearing his desk -- you know him; there's never that much on it. He works hard. Too hard, sometimes. He lost a week's leave last year because he didn't use it."
"Sounds like Jim." Blair stood. "Simon… I thought you knew. What had happened, where I was; Jim knew so I thought he'd tell you."
"Does that sound like Jim, too?" Simon asked dryly. "He didn't say anything much, Blair. Just came in one morning looking like hell and an hour later I got the call from admin. that you'd handed in your resignation, effective immediately. I had him in my office right away and all I got was that blank stare of his." Simon looked rueful. "Took me the best part of ten minutes yelling to get a few details out; you weren't happy being a cop, the trip away and all that happened out there had made you re-evaluate your life's direction… Got to hand it to him, he had your line of bullshit down. It rang true."
"Thanks," Blair said, not hiding the bitterness. "And I thought I was doing okay as a cop. Guess I was wrong, huh?"
"You were doing fine," Simon said. "Not sure how well you'd have made out working with anyone but Jim, but no one expected you to swap partners. But are you going to tell me you don't like it better where you are? Teaching, writing, researching?"
"I like it," Blair said. "I'm probably even better at it than being a cop. But it's not where I chose to be. And it's not -- Simon, I miss him."
"Hold it right there." Simon raised his hand, palm out. "Don't want to know if you've been crying into your pillow for seven years."
"I miss him," Blair repeated through his teeth. "This is all so fucking stupid but he wouldn't listen to me."
"That must have been a shock."
"Yeah, actually it was," Blair admitted. "Sometimes it took a while to get through to him but I always managed it in the end. Not that time."
"Mmm." Simon walked to the door and paused. "Think you'll do better this time?"
Blair smiled brightly. "Count on it."
"Huh." Okay, he hadn't really expected Simon to buy that. "Just as long as he remembers he's supposed to use his shovel to dig up the money, not hit you over the head with." Simon nodded at the notebook. "You know how to decode that?"
"I already have."
It had been easy enough; a cipher based on Brother Marcus' favorite psalm.
"So you didn't really need Jim at all?"
Blair looked at him. "I wouldn't say that, Simon."
***
"Didn't we go through this once before?"
"It's not the same, Jim! I'm not going for a year and you know I'm coming back. It's not the same at all."
"You still won't be here. You're supposed to be my partner, dammit."
"Megan knows what to do. I've discussed it with her and she's going to be fine. You haven't zoned in months, anyway."
"You just can't fucking wait to go, can you?"
"I can't --? Jim, what the hell is this? It's three months. Three. An exchange program, not an expedition. I'll be working in a city with access to phones, e-mail -- we can talk every day."
"I don't need you to hold my fucking hand, Sandburg! I just don't see why they're sending you."
"Because I volunteered. Because it's going to be fascinating to see how the infrastructure of a foreign police force compares to ours. Because it's Peru and I feel a connection to that place because of you, because of my own trip there."
"Because you can't wait to get away from me."
Blair stared at Jim, refusing to back down although Jim was looking pretty intimidating, his face reddened, his jaw muscle jumping. "It's looking more appealing every moment. Jesus, what's gotten into you? Think I'm going to hook up with someone tall, dark and handsome? Because I've --"
The planned, half-formed words 'already got that covered with you' were lost in the red haze of pain as Jim's fist collided with his gut, driving in, knocking the breath out of him in one undignified grunt and gasp.
He doubled over, fighting to drag air back into his body, flashing back to the time he'd drowned and the world had narrowed, collapsed to the atoms of oxygen held within the shell of his skin, the fragile dying flesh.
Even then, even knowing who'd reduced him to this, his hand groped out for Jim, needing something to hold on to because he was damned if he was going to his knees. Jim allowed his arm to be grabbed but that was it. No words of apology, swift and flurried, no encircling hug, no anxiously rubbing hand.
Blair glanced up through watering eyes and saw the shock in Jim's face, a mirror for his own expression a few moments earlier.
Well, at least Jim didn't look satisfied with himself; if he had, Blair would have been tempted to hit him back. He didn't fool himself that a few months of training made it likely that he'd manage to connect his fist with Jim's jaw, but male pride demanded some response.
"Are you going to hit me again?" he said thickly through the pain.
Jim stared at him and then shook his head, a slow, heavy movement.
"You're insane, you know that. I wouldn't screw around on you, Jim. I just wouldn't."
"Why am I different from everyone else you've been with and fucked over?"
The insult, and the judgment implied, was as much of a blow as the actual one had been. Blair saw himself briefly through Jim's eyes, remembered every shared confidence about the women he'd dated, realized just how he must have appeared. He'd always assumed Jim's occasionally sarcastic comments about his love life were Jim's way of joking, based maybe in envy; finding out that they'd been no more than the simple truth hurt.
"You are, okay?" He was standing straight now, his hands curled into fists by his side. "And yes, I've had trouble committing, but you of all people should know I haven't left a trail of broken hearts. I've dated for fun, for sex -- never serious and they knew that. Hell, apart from Sam, name me one who holds a grudge; I could pick up that phone right now, call any one of them and get --"
"A date?"
"A conversation," Blair said, his anger seeping away like water into sand. "Jim, I'm going. I'm not turning this trip down. It's got nothing to do with anything going on between us, or the job --"
Even as he said it, he knew it wasn't true. The job, the day in, day out stress, the long hours, traumatic scenes; they were getting to him. He wasn't allowed to wander away, face screwed up in nauseated pity, when they were called to a scene with a dead body, flesh mangled, discolored. No, he had to squat down by Jim and study the crime scene, his lungs filled with tainted air, his vision clouded with horrors.
None of that was entirely new, though, and he hadn't thrown up yet; he guessed in time he'd get used to it all. It was a concern, but not a worry.
Jim's insecure possessiveness was both.
It wasn't, like the corpses, a total surprise. Blair knew Jim's issues through observation and a process of piecing together a mosaic of clues. Jim had shared stuff with him charily, sure, but there had been sharing, and Carolyn had been brutally frank when he'd interviewed her over the phone. He should have been prepared for what would happen to a Jim Ellison in a long-term relationship.
Which, for both of them, meant one that could be counted in months, not weeks.
Should have, but hadn't been. Too blindsided by lust and love, too giddy with the opportunity to get his hands on Jim and give him every touch he'd been storing up, the chance to share Jim's bed, wake up beside him, too happy to discover what a mushy sap Jim turned into when he'd had one beer too many.
Every single warning sign had gone unheeded for the first month or so.
Like the time he'd been in a bar talking to Andy, an old friend from the Rainier Art department, and Andy had leaned in close, laughing, as he semi-seriously asked Blair to pose for him. Jim had materialized at Blair's shoulder, his hand duplicating a move that naked, in bed, always made Blair mewl and shudder but which he really could've done without experiencing in public, and Andy's eyes had widened with a knowing, wicked amusement that had made Blair blush.
One incident, repeated, variations on a theme, until Blair got the message; Jim didn't like sharing him unless it was with a select, trusted few.
He thought, given time, that it would wear off, but he wasn't sure his patience was adequate to the wait. He didn't like it. Hated feeling suffocated, mistrusted.
And he should have realized how Jim would see this exchange program as soon as Simon had brought it up. Simon's friend from the Lima police department, Captain Sandoval, had proposed it. He was sending over one of his new detectives to Cascade and he wanted one of Simon's in return. The exchange was being funded by the Peruvian government and Blair was the obvious choice.
Obvious to everyone but Jim, who had thrown out objection after objection until Simon had flat-out ordered him to shut up.
"It's not us," Blair repeated. "I just want to do this and you know what? I don't need your fucking permission."
Jim stepped back and held up his hands palm out. "Hey. You go, Chief. Have fun. Bring me back a souvenir, huh?"
The door slammed behind him a moment later.
"You didn't say you were sorry for hitting me, you asshole," Blair said clearly, knowing it would be heard. "Thanks for doing it where it doesn't show. Saves me explaining it away tomorrow."
And the classic move of an abuser, but he didn't bother saying that aloud.
Jim already knew that.
***
Blair turned from a desultory study of the notice board in the lobby to see Jim striding out of the elevator doors, his face dark with anger. He was willing to bet Simon had improved the shining hour with a few comments but it didn't really matter. You couldn't wet water.
Jim walked past Blair without slowing, giving an ill-tempered jerk of his head in an invitation to follow him.
Blair fell into step beside him, matching Jim's raking stride without difficulty, and they walked around the building to the parking lot.
"You don't have the truck?" he commented as Jim paused by a nondescript pickup and fumbled in his jacket pocket for the keys.
"Rolled it in a chase. Totaled it," Jim answered briefly.
"Oh, man." Blair allowed himself a moment of regret -- he'd liked that truck and it'd had some good memories attached -- and then said, "Were you hurt? I mean, that sounds kind of --"
"I'm not made of glass, Sandburg. I was fine."
Blair watched the aborted move of Jim's hand, tracking its original destination to Jim's collarbone. He'd probably broken it, lurching hard against the seat belt.
"Sure," he said with a sigh. "Take more than that to put a dent in you, right?"
"Just get in the truck, will you?"
"Where are we going?"
He knew. Only one place Jim would go after a shock like this. Retreat to his lair. And, on a more mundane level, unless Jim had put it into storage, it was where his camping gear was and he'd want to look it over.
"Back to the loft." Where else? hung in the air.
Blair got into the truck which, like all of Jim's rides, smelled of coffee and gun oil with a faint whiff of fries. Interesting that Jim had assumed they'd drive off together. Blair had left his car in a long-term car park two blocks away but he'd been prepared to retrieve it and tail along behind Jim all the way to the woods.
Old habits or a need to keep Blair close, where he could see him? Blair didn't know.
Jim pulled away with a screech of rubber and Blair hastily fastened his seat belt. Seven years hadn't improved Jim's driving any.
***
"Jim? It's Blair. Look, the plane's about to board but I just wanted to say -- you know what I want to say. Miss you, okay? I haven't even left and I miss you and I -- I love you -- I told you that last night, right? -- and if you're there and not picking up so I can hear you wish me a safe trip -- Jim? Damn."
***
"Are you going to keep this up for much longer, Jim? The not talking, not even being halfway civil?"
"As long as it takes to get the message through that you're wasting your time coming back here."
"I'm doing something for a friend; I don't think that's a waste of my time."
"Brother Marcus is dead and I doubt he knows or cares what you're doing." Jim spun the wheel, taking the same route home he always had, from what Blair remembered. "You're doing this for yourself."
"I'm not going to pretend I'm not glad to see you," Blair said quietly. "It's -- I can't -- it's good." He stared at Jim's profile, glutting himself on the sight, hungry, avid. "God, I've never stopped loving you, you know that."
"I can't do this," Jim said softly. It sounded as if the words were directed at himself, not Blair. Jim turned his head for a moment and looked directly at Blair. "Blair. Don't. Please." He turned his gaze, if not his full attention, back to the road. "You promised."
"Yeah." Blair looked out of the window, absently noting the changes. " I did, didn't I." He drew in a long breath and exhaled. "So, how are the Jags doing?"
"Don't make conversation, either," Jim said. "It's too…" He took his hand off the wheel and waved it aimlessly. "Surreal. Weird."
"So what can we talk about?" Blair snapped.
Jim's mouth curved. "Not a lot left, so I guess you'll have to button it."
"No," Blair said firmly. "There's one thing we can talk about."
"And what's that?"
"The case."
"Hardly that," Jim objected, but he shrugged. "Okay. Fill me in on exactly what Marcus told you."
"Sure," Blair said, keeping the elation out of his voice. Within three blocks, Jim would be talking with him, not at him, he just knew it.
Old times. Good times.
Mostly.
***
"Blair? Ah, you're opening your eyes! That is good, my friend."
Eyelids had never seemed heavy before. Now his were weighted down, no, stuck down with something hard and crusty. Blair tried to reach up and knuckle the sleep from his eyes and cried out as the slight movement wracked his body with pain, minor shockwaves continuing after he'd frozen in place.
"Lie still," the soft voice commanded.
Blair sorted through memories and attached a face to it. Captain Sandoval.
"Wha -- what happened?" he said thickly. "Eyes… can't see."
Tell me I'm not blind, he begged silently.
"Blood," Sandoval said matter-of-factly. "Dried. It trickled down from the cut on your forehead and they were too busy stitching it to wash your face. I have a cloth and a bowl of water here, if you will permit?"
"Thank you," Blair whispered. He submitted to the discomfort of water trickling down his face and neck -- Sandoval was careful but not all that skilled -- and managed to prize open his eyes a few moments later.
Hospital. But he'd known that from the smell and the sounds and the crinkle of stiff sheets.
"What happened?" he asked again.
Sandoval's eyes narrowed. "What do you remember?"
Blair stepped back through his memories; breakfast, no, forward a little… leaving the small apartment in Santa Beatriz he'd been given for the duration of his stay… the blue sky overhead hazed with faint, high wisps of cloud, the streets bustling and noisy… walking down Tacna Avenue --
"Yes," Sandoval told him. "You were. You do not recall more…? No? No matter. You remember enough!" He struck his hands together in an emphatic gesture of approval and Blair winced. "You were run over. Or, rather, a car driven by a drunk who even now is in my cells, spun out of control and would have hit you but you jumped away."
"I jumped?"
"According to eye witnesses, you gave a mighty leap." The twinkle in Sandoval's dark brown eyes indicated that he, too, found this hard to believe. "It matters not; you avoided the car, which crashed into a lamppost, and you struck your head sharply on one of three steps leading up to a coffee shop."
"Huh." Blair cautiously experimented with his extremities and found they were all attached. "I didn't do anything else?"
"You have minor bruises, a sprained ankle and a cracked rib." Sandoval gave him a sympathetic grimace. "The lower of the three steps, I think."
"Could have been worse," Blair murmured. "Sorry."
"My friend!" Sandoval clucked his tongue. "It is I who am sorry that you have come here and been so shamefully mistreated. I apologize on behalf of my city."
"You're different than Simon," Blair murmured through the blossoming headache. "He'd have blamed me."
"Captain Banks --" Was that a hint of reproof at Blair's familiarity? "I do not know what I will tell him when I send you home. You will assure him that the miscreant will be dealt with to the full extent of the law?"
"Home?"" Blair blinked at him. "I don't go back for another seven weeks."
"Not after this," Sandoval said firmly. "As soon as you are discharged you will return to Cascade." He spread his hands wide. "What will you? It is a matter of insurance. Liability."
"Politics," Blair summed up. "Right."
Fuck. All that arguing with Jim about making this trip -- the effects of which had been shown in the very few stilted phone calls and e-mails they'd exchanged since he'd arrived -- and it'd only lasted five weeks. And his list of places to visit had very few items crossed out; he'd been kept busy at work and wiped out by the humidity. Total waste of time.
"I have spoken to your doctor and she tells me two days and you will be able to travel. Today is Wednesday; I have a flight out of Jorge Chavez airport booked for you on Saturday morning. All will be taken care of; your luggage, your transportation there, all. Do not trouble yourself to raise a hand."
"Thanks." He couldn't make it sound enthusiastic.
Sandoval stood. "And now you must rest, eh? Your partner, Martin; he will visit later to wish you a safe journey. He was most distressed to hear of your misfortune."
Martin had been kind; a softly spoken man, a year from retirement, his hair gray, his eyes tired. Blair had never felt much connection between them; Martin's English had been basic and Blair's Spanish not as fluent as he'd thought it was, but he'd gotten on with the man well enough.
"Thanks," he said again, unable to shape anything more complex. Shit, his head was pounding. And there was something not right about the explanation he'd been given. Too much of a coincidence for him to be the random target of a drunk driver. The time of day alone made it unlikely. His thoughts turned to the case he'd been working on with Martin, and he frowned, trying to piece together shattered fragments into a whole, his suspicions growing.
He gave up after a particularly vicious stab of pain. He'd think about it later. And after all, it didn't matter much now.
Saturday.
He'd be home.
A sudden longing for gray skies and soft rain, for Jim telling him it was okay, they'd be fine, he'd been missed, sprang up. It was waking in a hospital bed and not seeing Jim there; it'd made him feel homesick.
Closing his eyes, he snuggled down as best he could under the crisp sheet.
Going home.
***
"Tell me more about your senses going." Blair gave Jim a sidelong glance. "That had to suck, huh?"
"Not really. Made it simpler. I didn't have to worry that I was doing stuff I couldn't explain away." Jim's jaw set. "I didn't miss them."
"So you're not glad they're back?"
"They'll probably just go again." Jim, probably as tired as Blair of continuing a two-level conversation sagging under the weight of its own subtext, nodded at a row of shops. "That friend of yours; Marsha. She opened an aromatherapy therapy place there."
"I don't see it," Blair said. He craned his neck to look back. "Which one?"
"Closed down after six months," Jim said briefly. "I guess there weren't as many suckers in Cascade as she'd hoped."
"Nice, Jim," Blair murmured. "Real nice. She was the one who tracked down a source for that organic soap you liked when the shop on Salisbury stopped carrying it, remember?"
Jim's fingers tapped restlessly on the wheel and then he nodded. "Right. I remember." He shrugged. "Sorry."
It wasn't a convincing apology and Blair lapsed into a resentful silence for the rest of the journey to the loft.
***
Blair dropped his suitcase and flexed a cramping hand. He'd gone overboard on the souvenirs he'd accumulated, definitely. Unless whoever Sandoval had gotten to pack his case had thrown in the iron, toaster, and kettle from Blair's apartment. He hadn't checked the contents; it'd been packed by the police department after all. He'd been ushered through Customs like royalty, smiles and effusive best wishes ringing in his ears.
He transferred his backpack to his other shoulder and picked up the case.
No one was coming to get him and a thirty-minute wait was twenty minutes too long. Hurt pushed against the tiredness walling him off from anger and made a dent, enough that he didn't head toward the bank of phones. He was damned if he was going to call Jim or Simon and beg for a ride; if they'd wanted to see him, they'd have been waiting for him.
And maybe, just maybe, something big had come up. This was Cascade, after all. Stuff happened.
He got a cab and drowsed through the journey, fighting back alternate waves of hunger and nausea and a disconcerting tendency for the vision in one eye to gray out.
Tired. Four hours worth of jetlag added onto an eight-hour flight… and no restful sleep since the night before his accident.
He needed a shower and one of Jim's hero sandwiches, layered and thick, imaginative as Jim's hot food often wasn't.
And he needed Jim. Blue eyes happy, hands gentle, kisses urgent and -- well, okay, sex was the last thing Blair felt like doing, but lying down naked with Jim would feel good. Their bed, their sheets, the low rumble of Jim's voice lulling him into a sleep uninterrupted by the clatter of bedpans, his bed getting bumped, the lights which, even lowered, soon became intrusive. Just Jim. Restful, solid Jim.
He paid off the cab driver with all the dollars he had -- barely enough, and he had to haul his suitcase out of the trunk by himself by way of penance -- and then caught a glimpse of himself in the side view mirror and flinched. Pallid face, bruised and cut… he hoped Jim didn't start yelling when he saw him. It would be based in concern but he really didn't think he could cope with that.
Once outside the door, he fumbled for his key and let himself in, not bothering to call out, but a little surprised Jim, whose truck had been parked outside, hadn't heard him coming and opened the door.
It smelled funky. As if the windows hadn't been opened for days. It was only eight in the evening, the summer sun still setting, but all the blinds were closed, making it feel claustrophobic, not cozy.
He dropped his luggage and walked forward, uncertain, faltering, and then turned and saw Jim's feet appear at the top of the stairs.
Bare feet. Bare legs.
Jim had been in bed, maybe, and oh -- he'd woken him from a post-stakeout nap or --
"I'm sorry," he began to say as the room spun around him in what was becoming a distressingly familiar way.
Jim's feet, which were all Blair could see because he couldn't seem to tilt his head, pattered quickly down the stairs. He thought he heard Jim say his name.
Blair. Yes. That was him and yes, of course he was back.
Then a second pair of bare feet appeared at the head of the stairs and Blair frowned because he was seeing double and that wasn't good.
Jim thought so, too, because he was saying 'no' over and over.
Blair bit down hard on his lip, something one of Naomi's boyfriends had taught him; a sharp pain can ground you, clear your head.
It allowed him to focus on the man -- wearing Jim's robe which really, really pissed him off -- who appeared beside Jim, his hand laid familiarly on Jim's arm. Good-looking, tall, buff. A Jim-clone.
"Babe? Who the hell is this? Your kid brother?"
"Fuck you," Blair said distinctly. He stared at Jim, whose face was a shamed, defiant mask. A stranger's face. A wall.
He tried to break it with his fist and Jim's head jerked back, a red mark rising, but his expression didn't change, not even when Blair staggered back, one step, two, out of reach of Jim's outstretched hand, and crumpled to the floor .
"Sorry," Blair mouthed into the two faces above him -- too tall, both too tall, both so high; when did Jim get so tall? "Thought that would work."
He turned his head, feeling the cool wood of the floor press against his face and realized that he'd been right to be suspicious about Sandoval's facile explanation of his 'accident'. Strange how clear it all was now when everything else was formless and gray.
And Sandoval had spoken a partial truth. He'd taken care of everything he needed to do to get the inconvenient, in danger, foreigner out of his city before the drug dealer Martin had been investigating desultorily and Blair with enthusiasm did a better job of killing him at his next attempt.
But he hadn't troubled to call Simon to tell him his officer was returning and that meant that Jim, well, Jim had had no warning at all.
"Sorry," he murmured one final time.
***
The loft looked barren. Clean, tidy, empty of personality. And the walls were white again.
When Blair had first moved in, Jim's belongings had been dotted around in an attempt to fill the space two people had once shared. It wasn't entirely successful, but it had still felt like Jim.
Hell, the gutted space Jim had made of it when he was dealing with Alex Barnes' presence in the city had felt homier than this.
Blair looked out at the balcony, devoid now of plants, swept bare, a single chair in one corner, and rolled his eyes. "Love what you've done with the place."
"What?" Jim stared around. "It hasn't changed much. I don't have time to fuss with it the way you used to."
"I didn't fuss."
"You spent an entire weekend obsessing over where to hang that tribal mask. You make feng shui seem sensible."
Blair opened his mouth to refute that and paused, feeling the momentum of the banter slip away from him before he'd grasped it tight. Jim stared at him, his expression mirroring Blair's, loss and confusion twisting his features.
"Jim…"
"I'm going to take a shower," Jim said abruptly. "If you need a drink, you know where everything is."
"Make myself at home?" Blair said to Jim's retreating back.
Jim didn't break stride. "What for? You're not staying."
The bathroom door slammed and Blair frowned. Had that sounded like Jim regretted the fact that, yes, Blair had a life -- and a job -- to go back to? Or was it a reminder, a dig?
The shower hissed and Blair counted to twenty to make sure Jim was under the water, wet and naked -- and did his best not to picture it -- and then walked up the stairs to Jim's bedroom, not troubling to be overly stealthy.
If Jim's senses were back, stealth was impossible; if they weren't, well, out of fairness he was giving Jim a chance to hear him and stop him.
Sort of.
He hesitated at the head of the stairs, his hand gripping the metal rail. This was snooping and he should have felt shame but he didn't. Just an aching need to see this space again.
He'd been happy here. In this city, in this apartment.
In this bed, in this fucking white-sheet, antiseptic, bounce a quarter, military corners bed that had once been rumpled and messy and full of the two of them, wrapped around each other, murmuring endearments and laughing at themselves for being sentimental, until the punctuating kisses grew too close together and silenced them.
He took one last look, noting changes -- not many, not enough; there should have been changes -- and turned to retreat.
Jim was at the foot of the stairs, dripping wet, a towel around his hips, loosely hitched, another in his hand.
His gaze flicked past Blair and then back. "I wouldn't have let you come here if there was someone waiting."
"I wasn't looking for signs of my replacement." Blair took a steadying breath. The light on Jim's shoulders was delineating muscles with a broad brush, a swoop of shadow. "I was just… remembering."
Jim began to walk up the stairs, slowly, each step taken with a deliberate care. "I replaced you a long time ago. The last person in that bed was a woman. And she was replacing…" Jim paused, two steps below Blair, which brought their heads level and close. "Someone you once dated; how's that for irony? Of course, she waited until after I'd fucked her to share that piece of information." Jim inhaled sharply, his mouth twisting in a lemon-sour smile. "She wondered what had happened to you. Got your last name wrong, and was sure you had brown eyes, but hey, it's been a long time and I bet you can't even do that well with her."
"Not even going to try," Blair said evenly.
"No?" Jim jerked his chin up in a clear signal. "Going to try and get the hell out of my way?"
"Sure." Blair stepped to the side and allowed Jim to finish climbing the stairs, getting a heady whiff of clean, wet Jim as he brushed by.
With a slightly self-conscious air of nonchalance, Jim walked to the middle of the room and put his hand on the tuck of the towel. "You've seen my bed. That's all you get to gawk at, Chief."
"Right," Blair said, nodding as he spoke. "Because your bare ass is just such a treat. Get over yourself, man. You're what -- forty-five? -- and I bet the last time you dated was months ago. You, this place -- they stink of loneliness."
Jim turned, a flush rising in his face. "I'm doing just fine, thank you for asking."
"Liar," Blair said recklessly, spurred on by the sick regret that Jim was there, right there, and he couldn't go to him, lick that damp skin wetter, run his hands over the water-sheened skin and feel it warm his palms, heat his blood.
He used to love fucking Jim fresh from a shower, imprinting the clean skin with a myriad scents, raw and rich.
"You want to give me a pity fuck, is that it?"
Jim had tried to make that sound like a sneer but to Blair's hopeful ears, it came over as a plea.
"No." The towel slipped and Jim grabbed at it. Blair watched a flash of skin, a curve of ass, disappear as Jim fastened the towel in place. He dragged his gaze up to Jim's face. "I don't have much pity to spare these days. Sorry. And what I want from you -- well, sex is a part of it, sure, but seven years of waiting -- oh, you're going to have to put a lot more on the table than that."
"I'm not asking you to come back."
"I don't want you to ask." Blair walked the three, four, five steps needed to get him close enough to touch Jim. Jim didn't move, his breath uncontrolled, harsh, loud in the quietness around them. Blair drew his hand down from Jim's throat to the telltale tilt of the towel, keeping his palm from making contact through an effort of will, an inch of space between it and Jim's skin. "I want you to beg. I want you on your fucking knees, Jim. I want you…"
He shook his head and stepped back. "I want you," he repeated flatly. "I always will. But it's time you stopped thinking you've got any right to the high ground here and it's time you stopped punishing me for your fuck-ups and insecurities. I don't care that you're flawed and a mess emotionally. I'm not much better myself. Doesn't matter. We fit. We work. Or we used to."
He leaned in, hands by his side, tilted his face, and kissed Jim's cheek, faking casual and doing a better job of it than Jim was with indifference. He felt a shock of remembrance, vivid as a summer-blue sky, and had to step back quickly to stop himself from accepting what was on offer.
It wasn't enough and it wouldn't help.
"I'll be back in the morning at seven, okay? We need to be on the road early but there's no need to start at the crack of dawn."
"You're going?" The words sounded jerked out of Jim's mouth, unintended.
"If I stay it won't go well," Blair said. "I'll probably forget all my good intentions and end up sobbing on your shoulder or something and hate myself in the morning."
Jim smiled at that, a quirk of his lips and a brief lightening of his expression. "I can't see that, Chief, but I -- yeah, probably for the best." He frowned, with a belated realization. "Your car…You need a ride somewhere?"
"I've got some things to do," Blair said evasively. He didn't. "Seven, okay? And I'll grab something to eat so don't bother cooking breakfast."
Jim was still frowning. "Okay…"
"Great. I'll see you, man." The stairs were behind him. He turned and ran down them, feet finding their rhythm on the second step. "Tomorrow," he called without looking back.
God, he had to get out, had to just get the hell out.
And Jim's senses were back. He could tell. That distant look in Jim's eyes as he processed data, that air of listening to ghosts.
He had to get a long, long way from Jim now lying to him wasn't an option.
"'On your knees'," he mimicked savagely under his breath when he'd reached a safe distance. "You pathetic, delusional --"
***
Waking up in a hospital again gave Blair a strong sense of déjà vu which, when added to his headache, made him close his eyes after a very brief glimpse of a room mostly filled with Simon.
"Blair?" Simon's voice was pitched low enough not to grate but still made Blair's face screw up in a reaction. "Sorry," Simon went on, in a hoarse whisper. "I'll find the nurse."
"Jim?" Blair asked, futilely, because if Jim had been in the hospital he would have been where Simon was sitting.
"He brought you here." Simon cleared his throat and Blair forced his eyes to open and stay that way. "Don't you remember?"
Blair thought it through. Floor. Jim's hand on his face. A phone call for an ambulance. Slam of door as Jim's date left, good-looking face sharp with temper, his clothes tugged on haphazardly. Jim staring at him intently, shame and contrition pushed aside, a calm, professional concern in the questions he asked as his cool, shaking fingers explored the injury on Blair's head, ran over Blair's body, assessing, totaling every bruise.
The jolting hell of the ambulance ride, Jim silent beside him and then fading out of the picture once Blair had been admitted.
A gray and white picture by then, painted by Escher, muted, subdued, senseless.
"Now?"
"He left," Simon said reluctantly. "They've been running all these tests on you --"
He didn't want to remember them. The prick of a needle, the squeeze of a blood pressure cuff… the machines that had photographed him inside and, well, yes, inside mostly.
"I fell asleep."
Simon snorted, his hand groping toward the pocket of his coat for a cigar and then falling away as he glanced at the No Smoking sign. "More like passed out."
"What's wrong with me?"
Jim needed to hear that question, not Simon. He needed to know the answer from Jim. What was wrong with him that he hadn't been worth waiting for, for a lousy fucking five weeks…
"Low-grade infection," Simon said, ticking off ailments on his long fingers. "Probably something in the water --"
"Stomach flu the first week," Blair said. "Never really got over it."
"Exhaustion and mild dehydration…"
"Couldn't sleep in the hospital. Couldn't eat on the plane."
"Long-term exhaustion," Simon said sternly. "And before you waste your breath, I've spoken to Sandoval." Simon's face tightened. "Kept you busy, didn't he?"
"It was interesting," Blair protested.
"I'm not going to talk about it now," Simon said. "But he's getting his officer back on the next plane out of here. All she's done is shop and flirt, anyway."
"Simon…"
"Oh, all right," Simon snapped. "She's fine but she's still going back. This exercise is over." He shoved an unlit cigar into his mouth and clamped his teeth down on it. "Head injury."
And they were at the good part now.
"They're going to operate. Piece of your skull pressing on a piece of your brain." Simon took the cigar out of his mouth and gestured with it. "Vision blurry, headaches?"
"Oh, yeah," Blair said fervently.
Simon nodded. "You'll be fine."
"After a spot of brain surgery."
"Want me to tell them to stir in some actual brains while they're in there?" Simon smiled at him sourly. "Going after drug lords by yourself in a foreign city…. Tchah."
"I'll never do it again," Blair mumbled, half meaning it.
"Oh, you can do it all you want here in Cascade," Simon went on. "With Jim to help you, not some tired old man counting down to retirement."
Blair closed his eyes at that, and Simon, after a brief pause and a clumsy pat on Blair's hand, tiptoed out.
Jim's partner. Technically he still was, but really, looked at dispassionately, it just wasn't going to work out, was it?
Four years of avoiding temptation; two months of reveling in it, and now it was payback time.
Being used as a pawn in a foreign country.
Brain surgery.
Jim cheating on him.
Payback like that, it had to have been one hell of a two months... but he wasn't even sure of that now. Distrust and suspicion were spreading backward, staining every memory.
He felt tears gather and spill and let them fall.
Some things were worth crying over.
Part Three
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