Equilibrium
by lamardeuse

Rated:  NC-17

Pairing:  Jim/Blair

Warnings:  Slash, language, explicit sex (eventually), possible violence. 

Author’s Note:  This was originally intended as a nice little post-TS-by-BS first time story, an easy intro into the fandom—and ended up as a novel-length monster with plot that took seven months to complete.  It’s not as though this particular storyline is new territory, but I’m hoping it contains at least some elements of originality.  Thanks to all the people who gave me such wonderful support and advice as I reeled it out as a WIP—I am grateful for their patience and willingness to stick with the story.  And thanks in particular to doll, who introduced me to the roller coaster ride that is Jim and Blair.  I'm hangin' upside down and having the time of my life.

Archiving:  Please do not archive anywhere without my permission.

~ I ~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sandburg? Blair? Oh, my God!”

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

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

Jim stared at him, waiting.

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

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

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

Jim frowned. “How much did you stretch?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

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

Newsflash: because Blair Sandburg is about as far from normal as Mars is from my left butt cheek.

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

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

Fuck. Don’t think about that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“You want me to what?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim Ellison had offered him a back rub.

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

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

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

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

“Oh! Ohhhhhhh. Oh, fuck.”

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

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

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

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

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

Like his dick.

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

Sweet motherfucking Buddha.

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

Okay, this line of thought wasn’t helping.

“You want me to do your front?”

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

“Did I wake you up?”

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

Why wasn’t this helping?

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

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

“Sandburg, what the hell—”

A pause.

The sound of an indrawn breath.

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

Was smelling him.

Blair’s dick got harder.

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

The doorbell sounded.

Blair remembered how to breathe.

“Food’s here,” Jim said inanely.

“Yeah,” Blair grunted.

“I’ll, ah, get it.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

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

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

He glanced at himself in the mirror on the way out the window, and was faintly surprised he recognized the guy looking back at him.

 ~ II ~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Megan blinked at him. “What does?”

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

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

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Earth to Jim!”

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

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

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

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

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

“Sorry,” Jim muttered again, automatically.

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

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

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

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

Jim narrowed his eyes. “Why would you—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Jim. Jim.”

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

“What would you like to do about it?”

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

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

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

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

Oh, shit. Shit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Hey, loverboy!”

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

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

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

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

“I believe that’s what I said, yeah.”

“What can you do for me?”

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

“Hey! Where you think you’re going?”

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

Hardy frowned. “From what?”

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

“Looking for your boyfriend?”

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

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

“Take your hands off of him. Now.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ III ~

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

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

“You want something to eat?”

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

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

“That’s it?”

“Pretty much.”

“Oh, shit, was it my week to shop?”

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

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

“Your car’s still in the shop.”

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

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

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

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

“Yeah?  What’s your point?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Jesus, Blair,” Jim breathed.  “Who?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

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

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

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

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

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

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

“S’okay,” Blair said.  “I understand.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They won’t,” Jim said roughly.

“Will you?”

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

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

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

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

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

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sandburg.  I’m fine.”

Blair shut up.  Waited.

“C’mere.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you remember the moves?”

“Sure, sure,” Blair said.  “But—”

“Don’t think.  Just do it.”

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

And completely fake.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blair spread his hands in a Well? gesture.

“But it’s gonna take time—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blair winced.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim pursed his lips.

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

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

“Such as?”

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

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

“And?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Holy.  Shit.

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

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

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

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

~ IV ~

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

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

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

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

Jim chuckled. “Blind?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bellini raised an eyebrow. Jim sighed.

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

“What did he say to that?”

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

“And did you believe him?”

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

“Did he tell you that?”

“No. But I know it’s true.”

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

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

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

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

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

Jim’s jaw clenched. “I guess not.”

“What’s the real reason?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He’s not happy now?”

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

“Why not? Because he’s with you?”

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

“How long were you married, Jim?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Smart choice.”

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

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

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

Bellini laughed.

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

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

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

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

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

“Sandburg, I am not in the mood.”

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

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

“I just need to ask you one question.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And you backed him up?”

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

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

“How do you know he has?”

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

“Sandburg—”

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

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

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

“SANDBURG!”

Blair jumped. “What?”

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

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

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

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

“Blair.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He just wanted Jim to touch him.

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

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

~ V ~

Jim was this close to strangling him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey,” Blair said softly, his face close to Jim’s now,